Part of the writing life is putting up with yourself when you should be writing but can’t. Tonight I read a little Jean Follain, a little Martyn Crucefix (Hurt). I thought a lot about the importance of relevant details– the contingent world– to any poem that manages to break the silence. The principle of relevance is the killer, otherwise you just have piles of this and that. Jean Follain was a master of discreet details: his poems so arrange them that to read his poem is to climb a little hill only to suddenly look out over a burning city or a hidden garden.
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Author: Tom D'Evelyn
Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Portland OR and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. His blogs include poemswithoutborders.com He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites.
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