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I’m attracted by poetry that’s easily understandable. Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Tennyson, for example. Life’s puzzle enough – I don’t appreciate artists who demand that I spend a chunk of my very short time on Earth riddling their riddles.
- This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by davidsmith.
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South Riding, Winifred Holtby
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La Peste, Camus.
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There are few Holtby books. Died young. I just became aware of her. Both funny and deep.
My French is only elementary to intermediate, but la Peste isn’t that hard a read, as I recall. (Zola, on the other hand, is a slog, mainly because of the vocabulary. Otherwise, I’d probably nominate something from the Rougon-Macquart. Awesome.)
- This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by davidsmith.
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I confess I can’t remember. When I reject something, I usually forget all about it. I have too small a mind to keep much more – well, consciously – than I want to remember. I suspect that most contemporary “New Yorker” poets would leave me longing for a V8.
Yes, of course, everything is taste. The trouble with just saying that, though, is that it leaves Mr. A free, in his column in the New York Review of Books, to declare something wonderfully worthy even if it’s clearly junk, so long as he’s respected among the “in” people and, in turn, respects them. By far the best thing someone who cares deeply about art can do, I suppose, is to sync his thinking with that of the right crowd.