Dating poems (1 Viewer)

[growing beard]

Hello, I notice now that I am fortunate enough to have a quality Black Sparrow earlier edition of it that Roominghouse Madrigals is said to contain poems from 1946-1966. Is going to the 'search for poems' tab at the topmost toolbar the only way to find out if a given poem has been dated (and, if so, how it was in the sack.). Is anybody else obsessive about feeling a need to know this kind of thing? Advance apologies for all the different ways in which my perspective is annoyingly limited.

-Mike B

 

[bospress.net]

A lot of the poems in Roominghouse came from magazine appearances, so although you cannot tell when EXACTLY they were written, you can tell when they were first published. An example:

To the Whore Who Took My Poems first appeared in Quagga in 1960. He could have written it earlier, but not later. Signed manuscripts from the 60's and earlier are rarer than hen's teeth, so you cannot tell if it was written in 1960 or 1950.

 

[roni]

[...]you cannot tell when EXACTLY they were written, you can tell when they were first published.[...]

just to be a little smartassy: it's what the kids call a terminus ante quem.

 

[growing beard]

In Europe, maybe. Here in the US, kids think "Latin" is the southern dialect pronounciation of the name of some middle eastern guy who was friends with the bushes oil crowd and accused of blowing stuff up.

 

[growing beard]

In more general terms, does it seem to be true that poems published in a collection were written since the release of the previous collection? So for example The Last Night of the Earth Poems would mostly be from 1990-1992?

 

[Purple Stickpin]

During his lifetime, that's generally true. An exception is Burning in Water..., which compiles material from It Catches...('55-'63), Crucifix...('63-'65), and At Terror St...('65-'68), along with new material from '72-'73. The other books of poetry generally represent one-four years of poems immediately prior to publication.

The Days Run Away... (late '68-'69)
Mockingbird... (late '69-'72)

All of this is from the intro to Burning in Water... As for the remaining volumes of poetry and mixed poetry/stories (Roominghouse excluded), they generally came out every two-four years apart, so they most likely represent the output from the years in between. That doesn't preclude the possibility that Buk may have found and older piece or three that he worked into publication form.