Quote:
Originally Posted by conny
I love JC. And EmilyD also. I don’t mean their voices are the same.
it’s as if there are echoes of others in the sounds. Maybe it’s a Victorian
Sensibility thing, not sure.
I know she was a big Shakespeare-holic, certainly writing at a time when you
could get away with much more metaphysics than you can today.
Hardy in Larkin also. Yeats within Heaney. Not the same voices,
but when you hear it you think, yep, that’s a subtle thing that the
Poet has trained into the voice, consciously or not.
Clare is bloody great though. Not infallible, but pretty awesome
a lot of the time, as is ED.
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I went back to both this morning - I think it's just people reading things differently. I can see what you mean, but although I like some of Clare's work, it always strikes me as a bit overblown, a bit 'easily' bucolic. A bit self-obsessed. I read ED as the opposite - precisely defined, external, observant/reflective. Having said that, Clare's 'I am' is amazing - the end of it the kind of writing that knocks you over.
I don't know anything about any of this, though - my knowledge very subjective. I'd like to see a surreal alt-classification of poetry which locates people through random themes, like how often they used the word 'moth', ate cake, wrote on a Tuesday or had an interest in map-making.
Sarah-Jane