tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post435506078763125715..comments2023-10-28T02:56:49.710-07:00Comments on Alfred Corn's weblog: MovingAlfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120701708290725662noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-54090380157157220942008-10-11T02:56:00.000-07:002008-10-11T02:56:00.000-07:00Czechmate...when did we discuss Sarah Waters? Anyw...Czechmate...when did we discuss Sarah Waters? Anyway, I haven't met her, though I'm sure it would be a charming experience. I've seldom knocked on doors of writers I haven't met. Just leave it to chance.Alfred Cornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08120701708290725662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-9274137660974342792008-10-10T19:05:00.000-07:002008-10-10T19:05:00.000-07:00Alfred, reading your posts make me feel as if I'm ...Alfred, reading your posts make me feel as if I'm in Britain again....wonderful. Any chance you've had the chance to meet Sarah Waters? You introduced me to her "Night Watch", and I've sought her out since then. "Tipping the Velvet", and "Fingersmith." Thank you for your thoughts and sensations. One disagreement, on completely friendly terms: one must look at "Three Studies for the Base of a Crucifixion", and realize what Bacon presented with that piece at that moment in time. It can be used even today to signify every torture and human suffering we still endure. Everything that came after never measured up to it, and yet, he simply kept painting out of pain. And the pain often revealed his inability to love. However, love crept in, and died, with little fanfare. At least, the portraits, unto themselves, stand as unique biography. Love, indeed, is the devilPhilip F. Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02326858745454753374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-28003462006488889472008-10-09T02:03:00.000-07:002008-10-09T02:03:00.000-07:00Hello Poet In Residence. It might interest you to ...Hello Poet In Residence. It might interest you to read this blog for June 16, where I speak of going to see the former hotel in Vienna where Auden died. As for his nationality, of course he was born in England and never lost a love for things English, but he changed his nationality and became, if not a U.S. citizen, then at least a citizen of New York; and his lifelong partner Chester Kallman was American. The twentieth century gives us several examples of British-American cross-pollination: Pound, Eliot (who took British citzenship), Thom Gunn, Sylvia Plath, Anne Stevenson, Ruth Fainlight, and a few others readers may want to mention. The exchange seems to have done good things for all concerned.Alfred Cornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08120701708290725662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-51037259335665773862008-10-07T10:29:00.000-07:002008-10-07T10:29:00.000-07:00Hi Alfred, I thought I'd better mention that W H A...Hi Alfred, I thought I'd better mention that W H Auden was a British poet born in York in 1907. <BR/><BR/>He died at 5, Wallfischgasse, Vienna, Austria in 1973; a grubby plaque on the wall of an half-empty office building with ground floor pub (closed now 10 months) glorifies the spot. I walked along there today.Gwil Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305768121713053837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-14930106613494386662008-10-04T07:36:00.000-07:002008-10-04T07:36:00.000-07:00Of course we have many poets worthy of the big pri...Of course we have many poets worthy of the big prizes. The question is, are the prizes are worthy of them? The main contention of what I said was that prizes are very often given to people less good than those who were ignored. It's really instructive to review the list of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, going back over the last half century. And the same for the Nobels. And yet people still take them seriously. Partly because serious money is attached to some of them, particularly the Nobel. (Along the same lines, =Poetry= magazine enjoyed an honorable obscurity until the Lilly bequest made it the richest literary magazine on earth.) I'd be interested to know if other winners besides Derek Walcott used the money for charitable purposes. He took his award and founded a community theatre in Saint Lucia. Anybody know of other like instances?Alfred Cornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08120701708290725662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-6319723805441770012008-10-03T11:02:00.000-07:002008-10-03T11:02:00.000-07:00Bill, howdy, I must be my nitpickayune self. Prose...Bill, howdy, I must be my nitpickayune self. Prose and verse are modes of writing; play, essay, novel, and poem are genres. You and I both have written prose and verse poems. You have some magnificent ones (perhaps you will have mercy on me, but my praise is sincere.) John is a prose writer, prose poems many. I spend half my waning days as a prosodist. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps give four, one for each genre each year.<BR/>My list would include Ashbery, but also - only poets - some departed who should have been considered like Denise Levertov, William Carlos Williams, Robert Haydn, Lorine Niedecker, Wilfred Owen, Paul Blackburn, and H.D., and Wallace Stevens. My partial peeve done. Some alive: John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, Andrei Codrescu, Russell Atkins, Harvey Shapiro, Diane Wakoski.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6740358940867847508.post-27842607416276095362008-10-03T07:19:00.000-07:002008-10-03T07:19:00.000-07:00living Nobel poets at this point should include As...living Nobel poets at this point should include Ashbery, Parra, Bonnefoy, Enzensberger, Tanikawa Shintaro, Carol Ann Duffy, and make your own list!<BR/><BR/>Why can't they split it and give two each year, one to a poet and one to a prose writer . . .Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10848525067425082815noreply@blogger.com