Hear hear, as it were. Carrol, when you get out your tools and go to work on poetry, you're amazing, a really superb critic. I've always said we should get more of that from you. You can make a poem or passage stand up and walk around. Not many can do that.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 10, 2007, at 6:07 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > The material C.G.E. quotes may contribute to
> explaining both the power
> > of much in Shakespeare _and_ this sort of response
> (which is fairly
> > common, just not often voiced so vocifereoulsy).
> "His comforts thrive"
> > _does_ force a fairly concscious shifting of
> mental gears.
> > "Comfort" is
> > not usually plural, and comforts are not the sort
> of thing that,
> > usually, "thrive" (with its marginal sexual
> force). And after taking
> > this in, one has to mentally first reword
> "'trials well are spent" as
> > "trials are spent well," then again sort our the
> senses of "trials"
> > and
> > "spent" that make sense of the conjunction. But
> that kind of complex
> > response is about as "natural" or "spontaneous" as
> the butterfly
> > stroke
> > in swimming. (And to follow it on stage is yet
> another matter;
> > since my
> > hearing has degraded I get nothing from
> Shakespeare on stage or screen
> > -- but a good deal from Shakespeare on TV with
> close captioning. You
> > have to hear and take in _all_ the words: "His
> drawl is pent" would
> > not
> > quite do it.
> >
> > There is a technical matter too, beyond my
> capacity to analyze, but
> > there is something to be said about (a) the vowel
> progression in the
> > first line as a whole and (b) in particular in the
> last three words,
> > combined with the stress there. The line is in
> some (weired?) way
> > uplifting. And the second line rests at the end.
>
> Carrol I know I give you lots of shit but this is
> terrific.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ