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Burt Hatlen <[log in to unmask]>
Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:20:28 -0400
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Listers,

Here'a a question, born out of something a little more than idle curiosity: In the first poem of Canzoni, "Canzon: The Yearly Slain," EP's envoy reads as follows: "Be sped, my Canzon, through the bitter air! / To him who speaketh words as fair as
these, / Say that I also know nthe "Yearly Slain" (CEP 134). Who is the fellow-poet, that EP sees as the destined audience of his canzon? I've checked Jackson, Witemeyer, and Grieve, but haven't found an answer in their books on the early poetry.
My best guess is that he's sending the poem to Ovid: see the lines from the Marlowe's translation of the Amores, as quoted in the ABC of Reading: "And brydes from Memnon yeerly shall be slaine." But maybe I'm missing some obvious reference to a
classical poet who wrote about the "Yearly Slain"?

Burt Hatlen

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