Subject
"Pale Fire" poem (quality of)
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Charles said:
>I was mainly hoping to provoke a discussion on whether Pale Fire, the
poem, can truly be accepted as "poetry".
Charles,
I'm not sure that the distinction between "well-crafted verse" and
"poetry"
is any distinction at all.
One can argue whether or not a poem is good, but you seem to be saying
that
in order for
something to be called a poem at all, it must be a great work of art.
By
this logic, there is no
such thing as a bad poem, since the terms are mutually exclusive.
As for the particular merits of "PF"--and here I speak as a poet
myself--I
find much of it profoundly
impressive and deeply felt. I'm not alone in this assessment. Nabokov
himself seemed to think it
was pretty good, as he gave at least one reading of it to a public
audience. More recently, the
well-respected literary journal Fence reprinted Canto One. Fence's
editor,
Rebecca Wolff, writes
the following in her "Editor's Note": "Herewith...you will find Canto I
of
Vladimir Nabokov's virtuousic
foray into deep metapathos, "Pale Fire," from the novel of the same
name:
as (over)determined
a contraption as ever was. That so much genuine emotion could be
generated
by such a well-
oiled machine continues to please me even after I have paid $100 to
Random
House for the
privilege of reprinting it for you here." (7.1, Spring/Summer 2004)
Best,
Matthew Roth
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
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View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
>I was mainly hoping to provoke a discussion on whether Pale Fire, the
poem, can truly be accepted as "poetry".
Charles,
I'm not sure that the distinction between "well-crafted verse" and
"poetry"
is any distinction at all.
One can argue whether or not a poem is good, but you seem to be saying
that
in order for
something to be called a poem at all, it must be a great work of art.
By
this logic, there is no
such thing as a bad poem, since the terms are mutually exclusive.
As for the particular merits of "PF"--and here I speak as a poet
myself--I
find much of it profoundly
impressive and deeply felt. I'm not alone in this assessment. Nabokov
himself seemed to think it
was pretty good, as he gave at least one reading of it to a public
audience. More recently, the
well-respected literary journal Fence reprinted Canto One. Fence's
editor,
Rebecca Wolff, writes
the following in her "Editor's Note": "Herewith...you will find Canto I
of
Vladimir Nabokov's virtuousic
foray into deep metapathos, "Pale Fire," from the novel of the same
name:
as (over)determined
a contraption as ever was. That so much genuine emotion could be
generated
by such a well-
oiled machine continues to please me even after I have paid $100 to
Random
House for the
privilege of reprinting it for you here." (7.1, Spring/Summer 2004)
Best,
Matthew Roth
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm