Big Books and New Computer
Substantial snowfall today. BBC's headline, at least until some political scheming butted in, was 'Frozen Britain'. The university is shut with staff advised to work from home. So work from home I did; mostly involving my sustained revisiting of 'Reading Poetry'; I'm actually so swamped in the text that I can't comment on it at the moment. Hopefully it will make the lectures on Poetic Form and Genre come together better though.
But it's also been a day of deliveries, how exciting! First off my latest bulky buy from Amazon, another poetry reference book. Why is it, I wonder, that poetry as a genre produces such slim, concentrated volumes of individual work, yet such enormous compendiums of critical essays or definitive anthologies? Some sort of compensatory production drive?
Are there in fact definitive histories, anthologies and essay collections that all aspiring or practising poets or lecturers on the subjects should own, risking the groans of the writing desk?
Here are my top five, in no particular order.
Furniss and Bath (eds) Reading Poetry (well, it had to be in there)
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Jon Cook (ed) Twentieth Century Poetry in Theory
Neil Roberts (ed) The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry
If I was being a good poet, or a studious poet, these would be my desert island bibles, stacked together fatly in the sand, a little ivory tower of poetic knowledge. Are there any I have left out (remember they have to be BIG books)?
Anyway I said there were other deliveries: New Laptops are Here! K- ordered both of us splendid new computers, complete with Windows 7, integrated microphone and webcam too. This laptop is BIG too, as I don't have such a need to transport my little netbook about with me everywhere (to Norwich and back every week for example). Excellent. I downloaded Iplayer straight away though had to use the virtual XP desktop to do it. The blog template's back to basic clarity too. Lots of white; white laptops, white paper, snow white outside with big flakes falling. All good and feeling like fresh starts.
But it's also been a day of deliveries, how exciting! First off my latest bulky buy from Amazon, another poetry reference book. Why is it, I wonder, that poetry as a genre produces such slim, concentrated volumes of individual work, yet such enormous compendiums of critical essays or definitive anthologies? Some sort of compensatory production drive?
Are there in fact definitive histories, anthologies and essay collections that all aspiring or practising poets or lecturers on the subjects should own, risking the groans of the writing desk?
Here are my top five, in no particular order.
Furniss and Bath (eds) Reading Poetry (well, it had to be in there)
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Jon Cook (ed) Twentieth Century Poetry in Theory
Neil Roberts (ed) The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry
If I was being a good poet, or a studious poet, these would be my desert island bibles, stacked together fatly in the sand, a little ivory tower of poetic knowledge. Are there any I have left out (remember they have to be BIG books)?
Anyway I said there were other deliveries: New Laptops are Here! K- ordered both of us splendid new computers, complete with Windows 7, integrated microphone and webcam too. This laptop is BIG too, as I don't have such a need to transport my little netbook about with me everywhere (to Norwich and back every week for example). Excellent. I downloaded Iplayer straight away though had to use the virtual XP desktop to do it. The blog template's back to basic clarity too. Lots of white; white laptops, white paper, snow white outside with big flakes falling. All good and feeling like fresh starts.
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