post-elegiac; anti-plagiarist

Just heard the Woodberry Poetry Room’s somber, and yet celebratory, reading by three poets known for their recent elegies, their poetry of mourning: Mary Jo Bang, Catherine Barnett and Noelle Kocot. Kocot’s new book, more enthusiasm than elegy, just came in the mail: I’m not sure what I think, except that she has energy, admirable, strange energy.

Also new, also something I’ve been happy about as I’ve begun to read; Jessica Bozek was one of the seven students in the first poetry-writing, and the first poetry-reading, class I ever taught, at any level. I taught the class at the now-defunct Massachusetts Advanced Studies Program, a summer program for gifted high school juniors, together with the poet and critic Andrew Osborn. Jessica went on to Boston University, then to the MFA program at the University of Georgia, then to various small-press ventures and to teaching poetry in and around Boston, and now she has a really stunning book. I may have more to say about it later, maybe here, maybe elsewhere.

If you’re in Cambridge on April Fool’s Day you may want to see me, Maureen McLane, and Adam Kirsch chat about contemporary poetry, in a debate or conversation or something, ably moderated by Rob Casper of the Poetry Society of America and also of this influential magazine.

And if you’ve been reading academic writing about British poetry lately, you might have suggestions, and might help me avoid shame: I’m finishing up the talk, or paper, or essay-in-draft, I’m to deliver in Glasgow on Tuesday March 24, where I will be trying to characterize recent British poetry in general in ways that suggest both why Americans should read it, and why most Americans (Americans who read American poetry) don’t. I’m going to say something about British ideas of nature (not much, but something) and I want to mention the very high population density in England, and the rather high population density (higher than most U.S. states) of the UK as a whole, but I’m haunted by the idea that a critic– perhaps Donald Davie? perhaps Edna Longley? perhaps someone younger than either?– has used that fact to talk about British poetry and British “nature” before. I thought it was in Thomas Hardy and British Poetry, now reissued and very much worth reading, but I haven’t found it there. Have I skipped a page? Or ought I simply give the talk saying “I don’t think this comparison is original to me, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere?” I’ve seen that manuever done, and it beats unwitting plagiarism, but it’s best, of course, to give a source.

Comments (2) left to “post-elegiac; anti-plagiarist”

  1. Accommodatingly» Blog Archive » another close call wrote:

    [...] new post on the literary-professional-poetry blog, where posts wholly literary, professional, poetry-related, or academic will henceforth go. (This [...]

  2. auslenda wrote:

    Hi,

    bought “close calls…” a couple of days ago… and I cannot stop reading it. Thankx a lot for it. I will see the sea through your eyes. Next Monday I am driving to the end of the world; hope to break the piers and sails with your words

    By the way… I am in Barcelona

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