Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ross Clark Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: Laura Riding died (2/9/1991) Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2024 22:12:56 +1200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 30 Message-ID: Reply-To: r.clark@auckland.ac.nz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2024 12:13:02 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="1ba82aa92891f8ad0a24015dbad457bc"; logging-data="2764280"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+8Djb+8hLlKvDAPhqbTMtlT9ESOUwXoaQ=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:8RmR7HKDB2TFYfun8lJIb3ViTes= X-Mozilla-News-Host: news://news.eternal-september.org:119 Content-Language: en-GB Bytes: 2570 American poet. Born NYC 1901. Cornell graduate. Went to Europe in 1925 and hung out with Robert Graves and his wife, then without his wife (see Wiki for "famous literary scandal") for 14 years. Big influence on his work. Back in USA, married someone named Jackson and settled in Florida. "Lived quietly and simply" (Wiki) until her death*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Riding Oh, and about language? Yes, Crystal: "a fascination with words was always present [in her poetry]...Her writing is full of intriguing and unconventional linguistic observations, such as: 'Language is a form of laziness; the word is a compromise between what is possible to express and what is not possible to express." About 1941 she gave up writing poetry, and didn't start to explain why until 20 years later. "Her later writings attest to what she regarded as the truth-potential contained in language and in the human mind. She might be regarded as a spiritual teacher whose unusually high valuation of language, led her to choose literature as the locus of her work." (Wiki) *Some of the quiet and simple living was done in what Wiki calls a "vernacular cracker house" at Vero Beach FL. Wiki links us to an article describing this type of architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker_architecture I have always encountered "cracker" as a mildly offensive term, somewhat like "redneck". It's interesting to see it being rehabilitated in this way.