1.29.2003

Some helpful "rants" from Jonathan today on formalism. I like what he says about Pound's metronome. "The sequence of the musical phrase" would mean a rhythm & tempo not dominated by the fixity of the metronome.

But a more sophisticated use of traditional form & metrics must be represented by poets outside the camps of "early" New Formalism! I just don't know where they are.

& O critics, O reviewers: show me the wheels within wheels!!

The Wheel of (Virgilian) Form: how the innate primal perennial poetic IMPULSE emerges as lyric receptivity; didactic forthright argument; epic vision.

The Wheel of Metaform: how the impulse circles around, from ephebic formal imitation, to mature absorption of experience, to the recapitulation of these experiential metaforms in original, inward form.

"Sounds really German to me, von Heinrich", quoth Socrates.

Well, Socky, I'm looking for a paradigm. I'm weary of the promos for pomo innovative elliptics; I'm weary of threadbare surfing attention to traditional means. Bring your reviews to the table & we will evaluate them in Russian translation.

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