woof-woof

meow

Alicia,

I'm sad to see you go. It was a pleasure reading what you had to say about forms and rhyme. Your voice was interesting. Hard to believe it's been six months. You kept me reading.

Dwayne

I too will miss hearing your thoughts on poetry and form. I hope that among the new bloggers will be at least one who engages with those issues regularly and in a positive way.

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget that you can get an additional fix of Alica in the Q&A section of the March 2008 issue of Poetry, the online version of which is just a click away from Harriet! She even elaborates there on some of the blog comments folks made here about sonnets... Sorry, but I couldn't resist the plug!

Alicia,

You're welcome. Thanks for writing.

Thank you, Don, for the reference to Alicia's poems, and the accompanying Q & A. The most effective riposte to the declaration that a form such as the sonnet is dead is to write one that is obviously alive. I found both these poems delightful and instructive. Take the delight away - as I think Christian Bok does - and the instruction one is left with is intriguing, sometimes, but not more than that. It's easy to dismiss the consolatory power of poetry as a placebo that helps maintain the status quo. It's this power that first drew me to poetry, and though I hope I'm a more sophisticated reader of it than I was then, it's what keeps me reading it.

By the way, Alicia's lines, "Every night it rises like a fish / Out of the deep" reminded me not so much of Bishop's poem as the end of Plath's "Mirror": "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish."

Thanks for making it a fun and worthwhile read, Alicia! Hope to see you soon.

Robin

Alicia, wonderful having you as a presence on Harriet and virtually meeting you. Very soon.

I'm sorry to see the blog go. I've only just discovered it! But I shall enjoy perusing the archives. Xairete from Canada!