The ‘intentional fallacy’ was proposed by Wimsatt and Beardsley in 1954 in The Verbal Icon. It suggested that no work of art, especially a literary one, should be read with an assumption that the author’s ‘intention’ with regard to the poem’s meaning or function as discourse should or indeed can be made. Yet scholarship remained … More Being ‘other than the things I touch’
They say retirement’s a time for leisureBut not necessarily for pleasure. The little iambic couplet I composed, with obligatory soft and feminine rhymes (don’t blame me though for the sexist nomenclature of the discourse of poetic technique where double rhymes are named both feminine and weak), for this sad blog is meant to look at … More “They say retirement’s a time for leisure / But not necessarily for pleasure”.
Let’s wait for a moment on a peak in Darién Province in Panama in South America. Why are we waiting? We got to Darién Province, not through its history of colonisation, though it is a fairly interesting story, having seen off the ill-fated Scottish mercantile project of subsuminf it to Scottish rule in the eighteenth … More A ‘wild surmise’ whilst ‘Silent, upon a peak in Darien’.
What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can? … to sleep, / To Sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub! Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, lines 72 – 73). [1] Iris Murdoch had long before written her wonderful novel based on the model of Hamlet, The Black Prince, … More … to sleep, / To Sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub! (‘Hamlet’, Act 3, Scene 1, lines 72 – 73) – and a prompt question!
In Danez’s Smith’s latest collection, Bluff, one way of reading the course of history lies in the poem made from footnotes within a longer poem, rondo:‘freedom was a door into a bigger cage & when they couldn’t shackle the necks anymore, their metal met the mind, they chained time, chained the money, chained the dreams … More And, as for our destination; ‘there ‘is a place’ but that’s ‘my own / somewhere far from your knowing’. This is a blog concerning Danez Smith (2024) ‘Bluff’.
Joseph Addison Anyone who attempts this question will soon get caught in a trap, for the first word of their answer will be their downfall: ‘I am most proud of …….’, they start and then describe a quality of their personality or appearance in the world, or perhaps some past action undertaken that they feel … More The living deadness of the static ‘I’ infects our pride in self.
The Forward Poetry Prize is probably the most prodigious of prizes for a working poet and I have followed the short list for best collection with joy , mounting interest and some intense feeling generated by superb works of which I could not predict the winner (see my blog at this link) for I enjoyed … More Forward Poetry Prize fills the stage with meaning, truth, beauty and not a little fun.
In my blog on Victoria Chang, I spoke of her use of largely regular iambic pentameter lines of verse in Section II of her new volume With My Back To The World, in an elegy or obit called Today, and based on the Date Paintings of On Kawara. Do schools teach metre and basic metrical … More Get used to feelings, including our fears, that occur in time and embrace them whilst within the flow of time itself – in the varying heartbeat of a poet’s verse.
‘Agnes must have miscalculated’:[1] The math that we get wrong in art, perhaps deliberately. This is a blog on Victoria Chang (2024) With My Back To the World London, Corsair Poetry. Ekphrasis is an exercise in written words, used in poetry since Ancient times, to describe visual art in a way that tests whether words … More Agnes must have miscalculated’: The math that we get wrong in art, perhaps deliberately. This is a blog on Victoria Chang (2024) ‘With My Back To the World’
Steve_Bamlett_blog 