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OUTCROPPED

The controversy surrounding the 1865             [link]
poetry anthology "Outcroppings" shows
a tension between rural and urban
California poets.  Harte had been
commissioned to edit the definitive           Tarnoff refers to a remark by
volume of California poetry, but he           Harte in the introduction that
rejected over a thousand submissions          makes it sound as if he
dominated by a type of pastoral poetry        thought overall, California
that he hated, and instead focused on         poetry sucked because of the
19 poets, most of them friends from           "monotonous climate".  I think
his San Francisco scene.                      that distorts the meaning:

  Many objected to the exclusion of           The full quote:
  the rural authors, and criticized
  the book for including so many                 "It might be expected that a
  weak imitations of East coast                  country whose scenery is
  poetry.                                        remarkable for sublimity and
                                                 grandeur would have inspired
  I'm afraid the critics had a point:            some suitable expression
  "Outcroppings" is dominated by the             here. But the attempts at
  lame, enlivened by an occasional               descriptive and pastoral
  merely mediocre piece--                        poetry have not been
                                                 generally successful: perhaps
                     Iambic quadrameter          a monotonous climate, lacking
                     and the abcb rhyme          those vicissitudes of seasons
                     scheme out the wazoo.       which elsewhere inspire the
                                                 imagination, has obliged the
     "The sorrowful Sun, in the west,            poet to look oftener in his
       Is bleeding to death in the wave,         own heart for that Spring and
     Staining and tinting with crimson           Autumn from which so much
       The corals that fashion his grave."       imagery is supposed to flow,
                                                 or in the fortunes of his
     Charles Warren Stoddard,                    fellow-men, which are mostly
     "Through the Shadows"                       exempt from this climatic
                                                 influence."

                                              Harte was blaming the
                                              "monotonous climate"
                                              for the poor state of
                                              the pastoral poetry,
                                              not the poetry in general.




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