NPPF: CANTO ONE D. Fowler/ for Jasper

[Jasper Fidget]

> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of cfalbert
> 

> 
> CFA  note......Pope and Goldsmith wrote in this form, Wordsworth had
> already moved on to "free verse" and Tennyson (as  Jbor has pointed out, a
> major influence on PF) was switching to a "abba"  (Italian Sonnet) rhyme
> scheme, and what I believe is iambic tetrameter....
> 
> this may all sound somewhat techincal, but if you take a look at a few
> representative verses of each, you will quickly note the differences in
> "effect".
> 
> love,
> cfa

> 	It just dawned on me that the use of this particular scheme
> contrasts nicely with the ambiguous codes it looks to communicate.....


Thanks for the clarification, Charles.  Given your timeline (with which I
have some distant familiarity from my previous career as an English major),
I think it might be useful to ask why Shade positions himself before
Wordsworth.  Shade is a Pope scholar of course, so he is likely to be more
familiar or comfortable with this form, and perhaps he prefers it, but it's
certainly not cutting-edge poetry (I have a friend who may still have
Charles Bernstein's number and email -- maybe I'll ask him to ask for an
opinion).  We can surmise Shade's opinion of Eliot.  Is he a "retro" poet?
Does Shade want a return to older forms, is he an anti-modernist?  Is he
therefore likely to be as widely accepted and lauded in 1959 as we are given
to believe?

Also, as you say, why is the form of the poem so clearly at odds with the
subject?  Is poetry a closed ("vicious") circle to him?  Is "Pale Fire"
thematically an attempt to escape from its own form?  Are twenty questions
enough?

Jasper