Comments for The Pennsylvania Review

Comment on The Faux Conservatives by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:29:48 +0000

Dear Kip –

I don’t generally get complaints from fundamentalist types, since as a rule they don’t read poetry, coming as they do from a Low-Church Puritan tradition that distrusts anything fictive on principle. Their reading is limited to the Scriptures and the L.L. Bean catalogue.

The loudest howls of outrage come from that intellectual Sahara known as the American Midwest, where alcohol, amphetamines, and adultery are a way of life, but where everyone gets righteously indignant if a poem has dirty words in it. Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri constitute the American Heimat for the anti-sex and anti-bad language watchdogs.

And my pre-emptive apologies to any TRINACRIA contributors who happen to come from those states.

Comment on Wildwood by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:51:26 +0000

I get it. In the 50′s and early 60′s, in eastern Pennsylvania where I grew up, behind the houses across the street was “The Little Woods.” Beyond that was a meadow, and farther on was what we called the Giant Woods, a place where only big boys dared to go.

The memories your poem recalled to me could fill a novelette, at least, but I will keep it short: I think that you are writing of the precious inner sabbaths that formed us long before we learned how to forget.

Comment on The Faux Conservatives by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:25:13 +0000

As a frequent contributor to Trinacria, I daresay I've added my share of "indecent" language. How it comes to pass that anything consenting adults do together could be considered unfit subjects for good poetry is beyond me. (And please note that approbative treatments of rape and pedophilia are excluded by the phrase italicized above.) Bible study, if done thoroughly, is not for the squeamish, and all those who are easily offended might be better off studying the Bill of Rights. When they erect a stake at which to burn you, Joseph, they had best place another one alongside for me, from which I would proudly cry, "Mea maxima culpa!"

Comment on Dialectics on Dialect by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:08:33 +0000

Calvert Watkins is one of the finest Indo-Europeanists that America has ever produced. You are very fortunate to have been able to take a class with him. I envy you. The reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European has, of course, been the work of many scholars from many different lands. But Watkins can take a large share of the credit for it, and this is totally separate from his brilliant analysis of our Western literary traditions in the magisterial study “How to Kill a Dragon.”

Comment on Longinus, Spearman by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:56:36 +0000

Thank you, Kip, for your very kind words. I appreciate them.

Comment on Longinus, Spearman by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:24:27 +0000

Just when we thought another satire or polemic was coming, we get something like this: a poem that stands alongside “The Lilacs on Good Friday” and “The Homeward-Bound Armada, 1588″ as another jewel in the muse’s crown (and one more reason to play by the rules).

Comment on Metabiology 101 by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 02:48:46 +0000

At first I was puzzled by the image that appears below the title and the byline. But then I got it, and I laughed out loud. Later on it occurred to me that I had gotten into the habit of taking these images for granted, when in fact they often say as much, or even more, than the text that follows. Speaking specifically in regard to the illustrations that have accompanied my own poems, I think that the selection thereof has been nothing short of masterful.

Comment on Dialectics on Dialect by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:27:45 +0000

At Harvard University Extension more than twenty years ago, as I was belatedly finishing up the bachelor degree I started at Wesleyan University in 1967, I had the good fortune to take two classes taught by Calvert Watkins. Professor Watkins, as you may know, edited The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. The first course was called, if I remember correctly, Introduction to Indo-European. As you can imagine, I was spellbound by the very idea that this proto-language had to some extent been reconstructed. And I was fascinated (but sometimes baffled or disconcerted) by the methods employed to do so. In our exercises, we were exhorted to use the rules of correspondence and transformation freely. Reduplication, assimilation, lenition, etc. were to be expected.

What for you is a profession — language and linguistics — became for me, from that time, a major hobby and obsession. I’m used to seeing people roll their eyes when I go on about such subjects.

Watkins seemed to know every word of every attested Indo-European language, but his classroom delivery in plain English was typically halting and staccato. Go figure.

The second course was about poetics. As it turns out, running parallel to ordinary language evolution there’s an undercurrent of poetic evolution. It’s a long story, but to make a long story short, the fundament of modern English poesy is expressed in a simple nursery song:

Oats, peas, beans and barley grow…

End rhyme was added later, a development for which I am extremely grateful.

Now, of course, the lot of us published on these and other pages are participants in this long and ongoing tradition. Evolution might be a fine and proper thing, but my own approach to issues involving conventional grammar and usage is fairly conservative. For instance, I always write “e-mail” and never “email.”

I’ve only begun to comment on the subtle antinomies your article addresses, and you can thank me later for ending my comment… like, right now.

Comment on Breasts by George Held

George Held — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:07:03 +0000

Anita Ekberg–perfect image for this verse.

Comment on She Dwelt Amid a Drug-Sodden Haze by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:22:53 +0000

Well, she certainly made the splashiest of splashes. You have to admit that her life story seemed to be taken from the cheaper sort of pulp fiction novels, and for that reason was interesting. As in the case of Dagmar in the 1950s, her mammoth mammaries made up for a great many other deficiencies. Personally, I think we need more of these big brainless bimbos, rather than the frigid bluestocking feminist types who tend to dominate academia, and to a lesser degree, the poetry scene.