Denis Fodor wrote:

>Stirling, kindly tipping us to the inner meaning of his lyrics sheds light
>on a particularly murky problem:
>
>>What does "Sensucht" suggest but - "senses" - the opening and
>>closing words of both stanzas are Sensuous, and Senses [?]...
>
>Sensucht as a title strikes one as a strident solecism, whether inadvertent
>or deliberate.  If inadvertent, it doesn't belong there; if deliberate
>it keys the lyrics to the sardonic mood-- which, it transpires, does not
>inform the body of the lyric.

Readers ought to have more faith - if the advise to a poet to, while
drawing strength of direct yearning, to express obliquely is not sardonic,
then it isn't anything.  After some consideration I altered the last two
lines to read

   However, feint at meaning -
   Thought: near to inner senses.

To make the use of the word feint more clearly an imperative.  Though this
interupts the flow of the verse somehat it is not too terrible.

Mr. Fodor raises some serious objections to my stylistic means, which
deserve some serious reply.

They seem to be:

He does not like to puzzle over individual words.

He does not like the use of unexpected words.

He does not like the contradiction between the lyrical and the ironic
juxtaposed in a single verse.

He thinks the trail of meaning too tenuous.

He does not like the poetical device which creates meaning for the
construction "Sensucht".

Easiest things first.

The poem is of fine lyric surface, like all fine - that is pure - things,
the surface it presents is related, but not the same as, its intrinsic
structure.  One reason for presenting my ideas with this kind of a surface,
rather than a more jagged modernistic one, is to make it easier to accept
the verse as verse, without necessarily being able to parse all of its
meaning.  It sucedes on the first level if one can read it and sense the
prosodic ordering.  Having had a few readers of iot by noiw, I find that it
does do this on consistent basis.  As the previous post noted it is very
conservative in its construction - the only real twist being that English
Blank verse favors units of 2 and 4 rather than 3.  But the use of three
line units is forced by the reference - to Dante, and by the word chosen
for treatment - "Sehnsucht".

That individual words stand out as being away from the general texture is
not accidental.  Instead each of the words which are translated between the
two verses have specific and important functions.  The yearing/yearning
pair is crucial, so is the different use of the word crowning/crowned and
most importantly faint and feint.

Indeed the message of the poem is that however faint the outlines of the
poetical are, the meaning is "near to inner senses".  The puzzling over
indivvidual words is in fact, specifically part of the experience of the
poem, the juxtaposition of familiar lyric surface with unfamiliar twist of
meaning part of the artistic intent.  For those who want everything lock
step in their art, I can provide little in the way of sustenance -
contradiction is the source of all drama, and polyphony the source of the
lyrical.  The first because without divided expectations and sympahties
there is no concern for th outcome, nor doubt of its progress, and the
second because the lyrical is the experiential, and to be faithful to our
experience - which is one of many layered thoughts and feelings progressing
at once.

Without unexpected words, there is no poetic meaning here, merely one
thought repeated twice, greeting card like.

- - -

Which brings me to the objection that I should provide more of a trail so
that the reader is certain of his track.

I think that the facts of careful construction - metrical and acrostic
ought to be enough to surely stamp the work as being possessed of careful
web of construction.  More would be tasteless.

In the end this objection amounts to a belief by Mr.  Fodor that the poem
makes too many demands, takes up too much space.  It is only a little
lyric, and should not enforce a more viscuous progress through it, it
should be scanned and panned.

To this I can only reply that the verse does what it does to achieve its
effect, without the slowing enforced by its construction, the thought is
over before it has begun, a kind of dreamy progress through dream worlds
is essential.

- - -

The last objection is the most serious, and it is the one for which there
is no easy reply:  it goes to Mr.  Fodor not liking what it is this poem
does artistically.  He engages it, finds the experience in it, and does
not like the contradictory expression which it evokes in him, he does not
like the rules of spell checking which it violates in pursuit of that
expression, and he does not like the way the verse uses superposition and
self-similarity to achieve its effects.

Part of this I can say is of the novelty of the form - he's only
encountered two poems like this, and thought perhaps that this was a simple
translation from some verse of Hoffman's that he was not familiar with.
Instead the title too, tropes strangly - the poem is a translation, and it
is after the ideas of Hoffman.  Rather than being a translation of a poem
"Sehnsucht" by Hoffman.  This turning - of a literary work which claims to
be another literary work, but then reveals that it is not, is as old as
Don Quijote.  If one of the opinion that it has been all down hill since
Petrarch, then I can't say much other than - your probably won't like this
work, which owes to Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Hoffman and a bit to Borges
and Byron.

But the other part is a hard objetion which cannot be met.  If a reader
decided that a work produces in him experiences which he does not desire,
which however intended by the author are unwelcome, it is beyond the
authors control.  The author has created artistic expression, expression
which evokes the desired response - but I cannot make you like the
response, nor can I force the ideas which the poem works with from that
response.

There are (many) people admittedly queasy about my demand that art can be
both rigorous intellectually and lyrical.  Some say that structure is all,
that the artists inner drive is everything, and so long as there has been
execution, the artist has sufficed in his duty.  There are others who want
art to be all mysterious ressonance, that somehow it is ruined by being
explained or by having deeper layers.  To both of these camps my work will
fall on deaf ears.  I am neither ressolute in my defense of artistic
progress irrespective of an audience, nor am I unbending in my demand that
art is solely about ones response to its immament surface.

That is the reader's right - to reject.  But it is also the artist's right
to demur and ask "is this really just and sufficent ground to reject the
work? Because it makes - of all things - uncomfortable with its methods?"

Stirling S Newberry
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