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  #61  
Unread 03-31-2021, 11:32 AM
John Riley John Riley is offline
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Seriously, I have to ask. Do you ever stop to think that she was aware of the "faulty rhyme" and did it for a purpose? It is so condescending to think the little lady in her house needs some 21st-century man fixing her rhymes. Do you really not understand that she was aware that the gong rhyme of "be" and "ecstasy" was available to her and she chose to not have that resolution. That perhaps the point of the poem in one regard is that the price we pay for ecstasy is never the full satisfaction of a full rhyme, but the inevitable incompleteness of an off-rhyme. We are always left wanting. Are you so blinded by pippity pop, pippity pop, that you are incapable of reading the poem?
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  #62  
Unread 03-31-2021, 11:47 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Tim, can you please fix Shakespeare next?
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  #63  
Unread 03-31-2021, 12:49 PM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is online now
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Your edits are always worse than the original, Tim, and show a stunning lack of imagination.
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  #64  
Unread 03-31-2021, 12:51 PM
Tim McGrath Tim McGrath is offline
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Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul
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  #65  
Unread 03-31-2021, 01:41 PM
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RCL RCL is offline
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March Madness

March Madness is a perverse Sense - but that's enough crying over spilled madness.

This infraction will dissipate in 10, 9, 8, …… BOOM!
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Last edited by RCL; 04-01-2021 at 10:16 AM.
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  #66  
Unread 04-01-2021, 02:12 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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I wish Todd had been more careful of the originals when she did her edits, because sometimes Todd's version is all we have left.

But since the originals are unharmed in the process, Tim's thought experiments (like mine) don't strike me as more blasphemous than what Thomas Jefferson did to the Christian Bible. It's just a way of engaging actively with the text. It should be obvious to all that our presumptuous liberties are just that--presumptuous liberties.

Personally, I prefer the active "pay"--which leverages the "ratio" notion much more forcefully--to the passivity of "be." And there's also a nice a bit of ambiguity as to whether "to / the ecstasy" goes more closely with "pay" or "in ratio."
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  #67  
Unread 04-01-2021, 03:40 PM
John Riley John Riley is offline
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Quote:
I don't know why Mabel Loomis Todd left this one alone, but there is an easy way to fix the faulty rhyme.
This is what chafes me--"faulty rhyme"--the implicit assumption that she was some sort of primitive who did not have the refined skills of some dude in the 21st century. Play with her work all you want but stop the assumption you know what she was doing better than she did.

I'm not saying that is what you do, Julie.
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  #68  
Unread 04-01-2021, 04:12 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I'm with John. You make it sound like you have identified some sort of self-evident mathematical error on Emily Dickinson's part, as if she had written that two plus two equal seventeen. It would be better if you stated your view with at least a glimmer of acknowledgement that it is merely your judgement and not something that is self-evidently correct.
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  #69  
Unread 04-02-2021, 09:05 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Yep. What John said in post 61. What a weird conclusion to reach that Dickinson's off rhymes are mistakes that need correcting.
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  #70  
Unread 04-02-2021, 11:33 AM
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RCL RCL is offline
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It continues to fascinate me that she’s almost slavish to fixed quatrain variations and regular meter but is so tentative by contrast with her punctuation and rhyme—in effect, counterpoints of fixed and fluid, certainty/uncertainty/skepticism in so many of her poems. Added: when I say "tentative," I mean she intends to be slant with punctuation and rhyme.

If I were still stupefied in academe, I’d write a right nice note on “Bi-polar Structures in E.D.’s Poetry.”

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Imagine the crits of this in this neighborhood. Suppression of caps. Screwing with the dashes that displace common practice, a knee-jerk cry of “identity!” at the most important rhyme in the poem: Ground/Ground. . . for example.
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Last edited by RCL; 04-23-2021 at 11:38 AM.
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