Barry Brenesal  responding to Mimi's excellent post:

>Somebody once referred to poetry as emotion recalled in contemplation.

Wordsworth called poetry "emotion recollected in tranquility." Well,
that's probably true of Wordsworth's poetry.  I do like the idea of the
composer or poet as an actor:  the emotion is realized through technique
and contemplation and there's a certain distance between the artist and
the emotion "for real."

Anyone ever see the movie A Double Life? It came in at the tail of the film
noir craze of the 40s.  Ronald Coleman plays a Shakespearean actor in the
role of Othello who comes to believe he is indeed Othello.  As scary as Di
Niro got in Taxi Driver, you knew deep down it was a performance and that
someone was in superb control.  An actor who completely melded with the
part scares *me*, by golly.

Steve Schwartz