Article View: alt.arts.poetry.comments
Article #829568Re: PPB: July / Robert F. Skillings
From: Michael Pendrago
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:25
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:25
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2940 bytes
On Sunday, July 31, 2022 at 6:53:32 PM UTC-4, george...@yahoo.ca wrote: > On 2022-07-31 5:08 p.m., W-Dockery wrote: > > George J. Dance wrote: > > > >> On 2022-07-31 2:13 p.m., W-Dockery wrote: > >>> George J. Dance wrote: > >>>> > >>>> Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog: > >>>> July, by Robert F. Skillings > >>> > >>>> A very pleasant mo[n]th is this > >>>> To be in a country town. > >>>> The sunlight doth the foliage kiss > >>>> [...] > >>>> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/07/july-robert-f-skillings.html > >>> > >>> > >>> "Pleasant mouth"? > >>> > >>> A typo or a Edmund Spenser style spelling? > > > >> Heh! I'd say it's a typo, though it is an interesting image, when > >> combined with "kiss" in L3. So I've changed it to "month" on the blog, > >> and changed it everywhere it's promoted on the web. > > > >> Sadly, while it's probably a typo, it's on all the online copies I've > >> seen -- I've looked at 3, and had to make decide which one to use (as > >> they vary in whether or not they indent the lines). Yet all of them > >> have "mouth". And I think I understand why. I must have read the poem > >> 6 times, and each time I read "month" -- and I expect that everyone > >> else who put it on their site did the same. > > > >> The other problem was that there's no authoritative source for the > >> text online, just websites that appear to have simply c&p'd each > >> other. I suspect that it's from one of the two anthologies Skillings's > >> son says he had poems published in, but I haven't been able to find > >> either. If it was typed in from a print book, that could explain the > >> appearance of the "mouth." > > > >> Thanks for bringing that to my attention here. There is a silver > >> lining, when I or a reader catches an error like that: unlike the run > >> of the mill poetry site, it gets corrected. So I'd say, provisionally, > >> that unlike those other sites, PPB is a place to find a correct > >> version of the poem. > > > > Again, it does seem to be a typo, and should be corrected, until further > > information surfaces. > By luck, I was able to find the original publication. It's in this book, > on this page (bottom left-hand corner). > > https://archive.org/details/localnationalpoe00herr/page/746/mode/2up > > It looks like a vanity press, and the type is small, but it can be blown > up online, and it definitely says 'month'. > > That also led me to the source of the typo. It was made by the OCR > scanner in the "Full Text" version of the poem, which just as definitely > says 'mouth'. > > https://archive.org/stream/localnationalpoe00herr/localnationalpoe00herr_djvu.txt > > (You'll have to scroll down to the page. The easiest way is to Ctrl+F > for "Skillings" - it takes just 2 clicks.) NancyGene beat you to it, George. You should try forming an alliance with her. She's a great person to have on your side.
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References:
<tc6c4j$ehrt$1@dont-email.me> <d1cda8731a1868b87afa93eecf397c22@news.novabbs.com> <tc6mn5$fm4m$1@dont-email.me> <a61572ed49a7a54ed29caab2595f007b@news.novabbs.com> <tc715a$gkjo$1@dont-email.me>