Tisis form DIA which (one year) I spent weeks studying and finding connections in - is (especially the "main poem" - though I see it as an integral) - simply extraordinary - it is one of the greatest poems/books written in NZ or anywhere else - it is both joyful lyrical and complex and perhaps tragic and uses language in a way I might imagine a msucial compostion by - who? - say Stravinsky of his neo-classical time but - and the "sonnets' in DIA BTW are - I think based on a format of one edition (double spaced) of "Sonnets for the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Browing (as DIA is on one level a love poem or the main poem is...(there are also many "quotes" eg Ben Jonson (or is it also Herrick?) and thru him or both E. Pound and many NZ women poets) - but one can simply read DIA (and the - erotic and complex imgae poem Melismata) - as it is so to speak - if one likes - it is incredible music. Melismata is a brilliant idea on its own.
[Michele Leggott, DIA (Auckland: AUP, 1994) 7].
Tisis form DIA which (one year) I spent weeks studying and finding connections in - is (especially the "main poem" - though I see it as an integral) - simply extraordinary - it is one of the greatest poems/books written in NZ or anywhere else - it is both joyful lyrical and complex and perhaps tragic and uses language in a way I might imagine a msucial compostion by - who? - say Stravinsky of his neo-classical time but - and the "sonnets' in DIA BTW are - I think based on a format of one edition (double spaced) of "Sonnets for the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Browing (as DIA is on one level a love poem or the main poem is...(there are also many "quotes" eg Ben Jonson (or is it also Herrick?) and thru him or both E. Pound and many NZ women poets) - but one can simply read DIA (and the - erotic and complex imgae poem Melismata) - as it is so to speak - if one likes - it is incredible music. Melismata is a brilliant idea on its own.
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