Comments on: Taste in Poets http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287 Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:56:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Jonathan http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287&cpage=1#comment-3601 Jonathan Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:26:21 +0000 http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287#comment-3601 It doesn't, graduate school, because that kind of talk is regarded as quaint and altogether unsophisticated. I am coming to think that the true avant garde in literary analysis comes from precise aesthetic evaluation--a sabrmetric statistical analysis of which writers win ballgames and the critics who use them. It doesn’t, graduate school, because that kind of talk is regarded as quaint and altogether unsophisticated. I am coming to think that the true avant garde in literary analysis comes from precise aesthetic evaluation–a sabrmetric statistical analysis of which writers win ballgames and the critics who use them.

]]> By: Michael Bérubé http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287&cpage=1#comment-3599 Michael Bérubé Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:38:06 +0000 http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287#comment-3599 Quite true, different maturity periods. And as I tried to suggest in my comment 12 in that thread (via the Great Poets/ 1975 Masters analogy), it's best to take all this best-of talk with a light heart. (Though I really do believe that Yeats's self-refashionishings are extraordinary in their intensity and variety.) After all, we don't want to become the Christopher Ricks cited in comment 16, who declares that Yeats never wrote a true poem other than "Sailing to Byzantium." Given that caveat, though, graduate school would do well with a bit more talk about what kind of writing pleases well and why -- however informal. Quite true, different maturity periods. And as I tried to suggest in my comment 12 in that thread (via the Great Poets/ 1975 Masters analogy), it’s best to take all this best-of talk with a light heart. (Though I really do believe that Yeats’s self-refashionishings are extraordinary in their intensity and variety.) After all, we don’t want to become the Christopher Ricks cited in comment 16, who declares that Yeats never wrote a true poem other than “Sailing to Byzantium.” Given that caveat, though, graduate school would do well with a bit more talk about what kind of writing pleases well and why — however informal.

]]> By: Jonathan http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287&cpage=1#comment-3592 Jonathan Thu, 20 Jul 2006 04:43:44 +0000 http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287#comment-3592 Different maturity periods. I personally would have liked and would like to spend more time arguing about who's a greater, better, longer lasting, aesthetically superior writer in graduate school; but it just didn't seem to be done. Different maturity periods.

I personally would have liked and would like to spend more time arguing about who’s a greater, better, longer lasting, aesthetically superior writer in graduate school; but it just didn’t seem to be done.

]]> By: Michael Bérubé http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287&cpage=1#comment-3591 Michael Bérubé Thu, 20 Jul 2006 04:36:17 +0000 http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=287#comment-3591 No, it's that "Sailing to Byzantium" makes the trousers-rolled line in "Prufrock" and the opening of "Gerontion" seem thin and watery. And the "something I haven't heard anyone take seriously" bit is just too fashionable. No, it’s that “Sailing to Byzantium” makes the trousers-rolled line in “Prufrock” and the opening of “Gerontion” seem thin and watery. And the “something I haven’t heard anyone take seriously” bit is just too fashionable.

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