tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post1437137831452063881..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Tribute to a Lost Writer & Friend - Patrick SchnoorCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-21832649896171186502009-10-27T17:04:27.756-07:002009-10-27T17:04:27.756-07:00This was nearly an interesting thread--sort of Ubi...This was nearly an interesting thread--sort of Ubi-Suntish, even--until the Olsenator arrived with some two-bit sunday school moralizing.<br /><br />(I would not have allowed KO's comments)Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-3644234561145968042009-10-24T14:33:25.583-07:002009-10-24T14:33:25.583-07:00Marianne Moore didn't need drugs. she saw NYC...Marianne Moore didn't need drugs. she saw NYC as accessibility to experience. But she wrote many of her best poems in Carlisle. I think it's sad to read about this waste of talent. There must be a moral of some kind to this story, or what are we to make of it? I, personally, see it as a mistaken aspect of a promising generation that killed itself with Ginsberg's ideas. He tried to rally his generation around the previous generation as a kind of Moloch. But to my generation, he was Moloch the Molester.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-13688606767402327972009-10-24T11:17:05.952-07:002009-10-24T11:17:05.952-07:00Kirby:
I see here once again your tendency to ass...Kirby:<br /><br />I see here once again your tendency to associate a literary work with some politically charged aspect of its author's life. <br /><br />Patrick wrote his sonnets long before he ever got into drugs. Drugs don't taint the writing. Drugs got in the way of his career. <br /><br />If Ginsberg had never addressed his own homosexuality in his work, there'd be no reason even to mention it. <br /><br />Connections between the work and the life are usually considered a badge of honesty. Would we feel better about people if they studiously avoided personal references in their work? Would we like it better if Whitman had simply lied about his sexual proclivities in his poetry? The work and the life are, in the end, inseparable, but they may not be a matter of public (or critical) concern.<br /><br />Patrick never addressed his drug obsessions in his poetry, but he might have, if he had not abandoned his writing career. It's probably a cautionary tale about the temptations of luxury and excitement. The seamier side of indulgence. But Patrick's appetite for experience is clearly related to his drug experiments. That has a long history in literature, going back to Rimbaud, etc.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-41813761870262255852009-10-24T10:29:42.784-07:002009-10-24T10:29:42.784-07:00P.S. I hate looking people up and finding an obitu...P.S. I hate looking people up and finding an obituary.<br /><br />I have had that happen to me several times, too, never with good friends, but with people I was trying to contact for various reasons. One of them used to work at the university I was at in Finland. He got fired, and the only lead I could find was a funeral notice. I had wanted to send him my novel, Temping (set in Finland at the university we both worked at). I was about a year late.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-86330107266797684302009-10-24T10:27:32.305-07:002009-10-24T10:27:32.305-07:00Ginsberg's ideas of drugs drugs drugs killed t...Ginsberg's ideas of drugs drugs drugs killed the best minds of his generation.<br /><br />Why again were drugs such a good idea back then?<br /><br />It seemed to me that drug use and Marxism were both utopian opiates that were to your generation what Moloch was to another.<br /><br />The poems remind me a little bit of Edwin Denby's sonnets. I don't know how widespread that sonnet notion was -- take a classical form and fill it with American daily reality to get a jarring effect.<br /><br />It was an interesting idea. Denby did it better, but he had a lot more time to work on it.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.com