Re: February / George J. Dance

George Dance wrote:

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February

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Unnoticed beauty:
ocean waves in winter,
the curve of your cheek.

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- George J. Dance, 2023

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Commentary for those who need it:

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This is a revision of an old poem I wrote and posted here in 2009. It's
still on the group; I considered deleting it, but decided there's no
need as it's obviously an older version. (It was posted before I started
using my middle initial.) I also published it in print form in a 2015
book.

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My reason for revising it is that it recently came up that a couple of
people didn't understand the poem. IMO, if a reader tells a writer that
he can't understand something he's written, a reader should take that in
and look for an explanation. Sometimes it's just a stupid reader, but it
can also be that the poem is unclear. So I looked at it, and decided
that indeed the idea I was trying to express ws not clearly expressed.

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That idea, for those who need it spelled out, was a simple thought that
came to me one day. Here I was, sitting at my computer day in and day
out, and missing out on the wonderful things around me, the natural
world and my wife. (The two images of LL2-3 are meant as synecdoches for
both.) Nothing "profound," or intellectually deep, but it hit me as a
revelation or epiphany at the time, so I wanted to see if I could
express it in the poem.

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This revision incorporates an abstraction, "beauty", which one is never
supposed to do in modern poetry, a rule that can be traced back to Ezra
Pound. However, that's a rule I've never subscribed to. In fact, there
have been many good poems that depend on abstractions, which is enough
to refute Pound's rule. That point was made by Northrop Frye years ago;
I don't remember the name of the essay I read it in, but I do remember
that Frye's counterexample was Byron's "She walks in beauty" (which,
ironically, uses the same abstraction that I've used here).

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Kool...