Rick's Place: The Oxford Book of English Verse

[jporter]

Had the oppotunity to hear Christopher Ricks interviewed by Chris Lydon of
NPR (WBUR- Boston) on "The Connection," Friday evening (replayed over WNYC
in the Metro area).

http://www.wbur.org/connection/archive/2000/02/0204b.shtml

 It was interesting. Ricks has a zillion lines of english verse at his
command, and is the current editor of the new edition of the poetry
anthology: _Oxford Book of English Verse_. Some suprising tidbits (to me)
were revealed.  I had no idea, for instance, that the estates of various
poets, e.g., Robert Frost get relatively exhorbitant royalties (commision
fees) for the reprint of  whole poems. Thousands of dollars per poem, in
Frost's case. This alone is enough to limit the appearance of works by
certain author's whose poems are not yet in the public domain. The
territory of cyberspace is still uncharted, but how long can it last?

Another surprise- Ricks feels that the poems of Kipling are underrated, and
those of Yeats, way overrated! He feels thatYeats was a brilliant
rhetorician, but apparently not up to his reputation as a great poet.

He also feels that Bob Dylan is a genius, so he can't be all bad.

jody