NPPF Canto 1: 1-4

[jbor]

>> 
>> As the bird hits the window it leaves a "smudge of ashen fluff" (the first
>> of many jarring prosodies and a hopelessly overwrought image to boot) --

on 23/7/03 11:22 PM, charles albert at calbert at hslboxmaster.com wrote:
 
> Smudge works because its a WAXwing, and as I pointed out, ashen plays to
> both Gray and shade........

It doesn't work because the series of consonant blends creates a dissonant
effect which, as a soundscape, doesn't correlate in any way to the scene or
attempted mood. And that "smudge" goes with "wax" (rather than the actual
remnant of bird) isn't poetic; it's corny.

> but the "I"s don't consistently point to the same "entity" and more
> importantly, have you eyeballed many elegies lately? 1st person, singular
> and plural dominates the action. Elegies, are, after all, the reminiscences
> of someone.....
> 
> For one of many Wordsworthian examples see
> 
> ODE: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

The first person in the first stanza is Shade talking about himself ("And
from the inside, too, I'd duplicate myself ... ".) But I do acknowledge the
connections made by Paul & MalignD to Shade's recount of his own near-death
experiences later on (comical though at least one of these also is).

I think 'The Prelude' or Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' are more likely
candidates, and the latter's 'Maud' might be worth another look (I'll cite
the first four lines below as contrast). Shade's poem suffers in comparison
to any of these, in any capacity you'd like to name.

Did Nabokov compose and publish this style of poem under his own name? Did
he express a liking for this style of poem in his interviews and critical
work? These questions need to be addressed if you're arguing that Nabokov
meant to depict Shade's 'Pale Fire' (Shade the poet, Shade the man) in an
unironic light.

My point, of course, is not that Shade is using Pope as his model, but that
Nabokov is. It's traditional parody -- parody which ridicules and condemns.
Here, as in 'The Rape of the Lock', it ridicules and condemns a particular
mode and style of poetry (my first reaction to the poem was that it was a
parody of Eliot, and of some of the worst excesses of the Romantics, and I'm
pleased to see from one of your subsequent posts that I'm not totally out on
a limb there -- Is this "Fowler" Douglas Fowler of the reader's guide to
_GR_ fame perchance?) Anyway, it's quite unlike the type of "blank parody"
which Pynchon deploys in _Vineland_, in his tv show and telemovie send-ups
for example, where there's an underlying ambivalence towards the erstwhile
cultural referents themselves, such as noted in the Mark Robberds _Critique_
essay on that novel for example. Though not the first to identify the shift
in how irony and satire are articulated in postmodern fiction, this sort of
thing is criticised by Fredric Jameson (he calls it "parody that has lost
its sense of humour", which is, after all, a rather subjective judgement --
I find Pynchon's send-ups, if nothing else, quite hilarious). Even though
largely critical of it (he's coming from a Left political stance, of course,
and I guess he perceives it as something which depoliticises the satiric
mode, or that dilutes its function as social critique) Jameson does
acknowledge that such a shift in the mode has occurred.

Anyway --

'Maud; A Monodrama' (1855)

Part 1

Section 1

I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood;
Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,
The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers "Death."

http://tennysonpoetry.home.att.net/mma.htm

best