http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/11/no-yes/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:15:10 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/11/no-yes/#comment-1927 bill knott Sun, 02 Dec 2007 15:58:37 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=552#comment-1927 ". . . the drive for variety"—— as opposed to "adopt[ing] one style deliberately and try[ing] to perfect it" . . . like Karen Volkman's book of sonnets (not yet published, is it?)—— (surely the most successful poets (Creeley and Mary Oliver, to name two examples) are those who have presented a coherent brand-name poetic personality over the course of their careers . . .?)—— Is the desire for variety inherent in English: Michael Drayton, in the introductory sonnet to his sonnet sequence Ideas Mirrour. Amours in quatorzains (first edition, 1594; revised in subsequent editions of 1599, 1600, 1602, 1605 and 1619): A Libertine, fantastickly I sing: My Verse is the true image of my Mind, Ever in motion, still desiring change; And as thus to Varietie inclin'd, So in all Humours sportively I range: My Muse is rightly of the English straine, That cannot long one Fashion entertaine. ("Drayton was an inveterate reviser . . . . He was also extremely sensitive to criticism and to changes in poetic fashion." —Roy Booth, notes to "Elizabethan Sonnets," 1994)—— —Is "Varietie" the true English straine? * “. . . the drive for variety”——
as opposed to “adopt[ing] one style deliberately and try[ing] to perfect it” . . . like Karen Volkman’s book of sonnets (not yet published, is it?)——
(surely the most successful poets (Creeley and Mary Oliver, to name two examples) are those who have presented a coherent brand-name poetic personality over the course of their careers . . .?)——
Is the desire for variety inherent in English:
Michael Drayton, in the introductory sonnet to his sonnet sequence Ideas Mirrour. Amours in quatorzains (first edition, 1594; revised in subsequent editions of 1599, 1600, 1602, 1605 and 1619):
A Libertine, fantastickly I sing:
My Verse is the true image of my Mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change;
And as thus to Varietie inclin’d,
So in all Humours sportively I range:
My Muse is rightly of the English straine,
That cannot long one Fashion entertaine.
(”Drayton was an inveterate reviser . . . . He was also extremely sensitive to criticism and to changes in poetic fashion.” —Roy Booth, notes to “Elizabethan Sonnets,” 1994)——
—Is “Varietie” the true English straine?
*

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