Comments on: What Keeps Me Coming Back

By: Jason Guriel

Jason Guriel — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:42:40 +0000

That’s a nice point, Martin. I like this idea of the personal canon.
Report this comment

By: mearl

mearl — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:51:34 +0000

Camille,
One thing that is becoming apparent to me, vis-à-vis your posts, is that canon formation is a natural tendency. But the personal canon has little to do with the institutional one, and more to do with how poets become poets.
John Ashbery’s Other Traditions, a compilation of his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures delivered at Harvard in 2000 is one of the most wonderful accounts of the formation of a personal canon to be published recently.
You’re going about it in your own way, showing us how to read Gwendolyn Brooks along side Gerald Manly Hopkins, how to make ourselves “ready to dream about poems again.” This is not only practical (for us), but revealing about you. How you like the staccato line, the quick delivery of direct observation, how you situate yourself between the “shadow that swam or sank”…
Martin
Report this comment

By: Charles Godwin

Charles Godwin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:16:41 +0000

Camille, thanks for identifying the photo. Pulling an old Penguin edition of Hopkins from the shelf to read “Binsey Poplars” again, I said a silent “thank you Camille” and turning a few pages came upon
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,”
So by reminding me to reread Binsey Poplars, you led me to reread The Windhover; Hmmm, maybe Hopkins remains off the shelf for a bit longer. Thanks again
Report this comment

By: Megan Quigley

Megan Quigley — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:46:14 +0000

Posting your comments on my door in the English department–
Always good to have students reminded why we read!
Report this comment

By: Jason Guriel

Jason Guriel — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:48:50 +0000

Just lovely, Camille. Thanks for this.
Report this comment

By: Amanda Sandos

Amanda Sandos — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:09:33 +0000

Camille,
Thanks for offering up great words to feed my process and my soul. I miss your classes!!! Please add me to your list, so I can read what you offer every week.
Love, Amanda
Report this comment

By: Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:29:08 +0000

Charles, glad you were happy to be reminded of “Binsey Poplars.” The sounds in that poem just swim. I adore it. And, though I do not mind being confused with the brilliance and beauty that is Gwendolyn Brooks, I must tell you and other readers that is Ms. Brooks, not Ms. Dungy, hard at work in the photo that opens my post.
–Camille
Report this comment

By: Shana Rose

Shana Rose — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:56:12 +0000

This post is so great for me. If I can’t spend my days reading, examining, and talking about poetry, then at least I can live vicariously in the places where poets do.
Report this comment

By: Charles Godwin

Charles Godwin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:46:28 +0000

Thanks Camille, for reminding me to read “Binsey Poplars “again.. and again.. I LOVE the photo of you in front of your trusty Underwood, writing these interesting posts.
Report this comment