Thoughts on poetry collections and anthologies….
I find, like my favorite music, poetry collections often end up leaving out something I know and really like. Just the difference between individual taste and the choices that must be made to assemble the “collections”, I suppose.
Anthologies seem to follow a similar vein, limiting each contributor to one or two pieces that may or may not represent them effectively.
To trace the evolution of an artist’s work from these objective assemblages, is at best, a matter of personal familiarity with the entire body of work and an overall desire to “rock the boat” in order to find developmental continuity historically.
Throw into the mix a “perpetual revisionist” like Yeats and poetry, unlike other art, becomes an ego-evolution, an obsession with perfecting the craft.
DaVinci couldn’t paint the Mona Lisa again, neither could Galileo deny the truth he saw in the stars before the oppressive power of his church.
To read oneself and constantly revise, I believe, would be the ultimate embrace of our inherent ugliness. To come out of it with truly better works, a testament to the beauty of human being.
CB 