Carroll,
At this point, Jon has agreed that there was no vitriol in my first reply
to his post, only a straightforward suggestion that he reread a poem he
admittedly did not recall the details of -- and that, only if he would like
to engage me in discussion of it.

For me to have said such a thing should not put a damper on good
conversation. (Nor should it have raised an ad hominem attack.) To look at
a thing closely before offering an opinion of it should be a basic element
of EPOUND-L etiquette.

The "conversations" we have on this newsgroup are not like those we have,
say, in a train car, where we may say something merely to keep the palaver
going out of politeness or the desire to avoid an awkward silence. Here in
cyberspace there's no immediate need to "keep it going" -- there's plenty
of time to read, in this instance, a 112-line poem, before one ventures an
opinion of its "metaphysics". We're not stuck in a train-car together.

We can agree to disagree if you think list etiquette and train-car
etiquette are identical. I'd prefer to get back to Pound and to poetry that
may have influenced him.  In my second post to Jon, I attempted to draw a
connection between The Wanderer and "Exile's Letter".  I'd be happy to
discuss either poem, or both poems, with anyone who has taken the time to
read them.

Tim Romano

At 09:32 AM 3/8/03, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Tim Romano wrote:
> >
> > We have different expectations from conversation, Carrol. I expect people
> > to look closely at the thing they're talking about before they opine. Not
> > before they ask a question. Before they opine.
> > Tim Romano
> >
>
>This really won't wash. Conversation (even the conversation of the 18th
>c. Paris salons) would be killed by such "expectations." To fulfill
>those expectations _once in a while_ the basic expectations must
>acknowledge that conversation, whether in a room or on a maillist, is
>primarily phatic.
>
>Perhaps the standards for maillists must be looser yet, for maillists
>(a) eliminate background knowledge of the participants (the kind of
>background that allows recognition that the stupidity of a statement
>does not reflect stupdity of the speaker) and (b) kill tone. Note that
>this thread has degenerated into Did Too -- Did Not in reference to the
>tone of a post.
>
>One way to learn through conversation is to make statements without
>thinking them out too fully, and letting the conversation winnow out the
>wheat from the chaff -- but that is only possible if participants don't
>throw a fit about the chaff in the air.
>
>Carrol