Re: PPB: August / Edmund Gosse

> Will-Dockery wrote:
> 
>> George J. Dance wrote:
>> Saturday's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog
>> August, by Edmund Gosse
>> 
>> The soul is like a song-bird, and must hold
>> Its silent August, or its heart would break
>> [...]
>> 
>> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2026/08/august-edmund-gosse.html
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Gosse
> 
> Edmund Gosse is a new poet to me, enjoyable read, though.
> 
> See JLA Forums attachment below for illustration of Edmund Gosse.



Thanks, Will. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Gosse can truly be called a forgotten poet. Though he was known as a
critic and for his autobiography when he died in 1928, his poetry was
already out of fashion by then; and succeeding years have not been
any kinder to him. The problem wasn't just with his form but also his
content.

Take this poem. It's actually my favorite of all the Gosse
poems I published, but look how it opens: he uses "soul" in L1, and
"heart" in L2. "Heart and soul" poetry was already taboo in those days,
even in poetically backward Canada. (A.M. Klein's first submitted poem
was rejected by the /McGill University Daily/ precisely because it
included the word "soul".)

Nowadays, though, it looks like the modernist hold on poetry has finally
died, another casualty of the internet; so there's hope he can find a
new audience. 


This response appears in the discussion at:
http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=709623857#709623857

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