Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poetry/Archive 3

Rudyard Kipling FAR
Rudyard Kipling has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Assessments
Just a heads-up, folks... It seems that the "C-Class" assessments aren't being listed in our handy table of assessments. In fact, the C-Class articles are still listed in the category for unassessed poetry articles. I'd like to recommend we avoid rating C-Class because of this. A couple weeks ago, our list of unassessed articles numbered about 700. Currently, it's just under 300. Let's keep going and get that number to zero! --Midnightdreary (talk) 12:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Poetry
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:01, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Modernist poetry in English FAR
Modernist poetry in English has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Philitas of Cos FAC comments requested
I nominated Philitas of Cos as a featured article candidate; comments are welcome at Featured article candidates/Philitas of Cos. Eubulides (talk) 05:00, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Assessing poetry articles
A couple weeks ago, I began a personal mission to assess articles in the category for unassessed Wikiproject Poetry articles. When I started, there were about 700 articles in that category. It's now under 130. Whew!

I've been noticing, however, that many of the articles are questionable to include in the project. Should we have set standards for inclusion? For example, this article Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister" is neither a poet, nor a poem, nor a poetic term or type. --Midnightdreary (talk) 12:04, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I removed it from the category. Were an article to be written on Hölderlin's actual poem, it would be under the auspices of this wikiproject. Lithoderm (talk) 15:27, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Forgot a term
I'm looking for a term. The case at hand: Francois Coppee often wrote poems in a specific form: 5 interlinked Alexandrine couplets one after another (5 couplets, ten lines). I would use the term stanza, but my dictionary says a stanza is a part of a larger poem, and that's what I recall, but I used the term stanza for lack of a better term. What term am I looking for for Coppee's ten-line stand-alone verses? the term Verse? Is there a specific term? Here is the verse form I'm talking about:


 * J'adore la banlieue avec ses champs en friche
 * Et ses vieux murs lépreux, où quelque ancienne affiche
 * Me parle de quartiers dès longtemps démolis.
 * Ô vanité! Le nom du marchand que j'y lis
 * Doit orner un tombeau dans le Père-Lachaise.
 * Je m'attarde. Il n'est rien ici qui ne me plaise,
 * Même les pissenlits frissonnant dans un coin.
 * Et puis, pour regagner les maisons déjà loin,
 * Dont le couchant vermeil fait flamboyer les vitres,
 * Je prends un chemin noir semé d'écailles d'huîtres.

No Copyright. A is putting the smack down (talk) 03:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Not to sound pedantic, but I think that's just called "a poem" - unless there's a specific term for this type of poem (i.e. it's not a sonnet but it might be something else). --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That wasn't pedantic at all, I was expecting that. There may not be a specific term for this form so the term would be "verse(s)" or "poem". Thanks. Not to be pedantic myself, but there are a lot of forms that have specific terms: sonnet, quatrain, rondel, rondeau, ballad, etc. A is putting the smack down (talk) 23:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Right, that's what I was saying: I think you might be looking for a poem type rather than a poetic term. If that makes sense. Anyone with better ideas is welcome to jump in! --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I understand what you're saying. By "poetic term" you mean terms such as "verse", "poem", "stanza". By "poem type" you mean sonnet, quatrain, etc. You're saying there is probably no "poetic term" I'm looking for, rather I'm looking for the specific term for that form ("poem type"), if there is one. A is putting the smack down (talk) 00:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Tagging and assessing
Opinions requested! --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:39, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Should our poetry project template be added to categories?
 * 2) Should the template be added to the many, many "year in poetry" articles? For example, 1896 in poetry be part of our project? How do we assess them if so?
 * I can see your point. The categories present a challenge for us-- they can never be assessed as anything more than a cat, which puts them under the unassessed articles. I think we should probably shy away from the "years in poetry" and other categories with our tags. They are not actually poetry articles, and I would not be sad if they no longer had the template. But we do need to do something about the C-class articles... so many of the pages out there are more than start class but no where near a B.

On another note, I myself am not sure how a page is put up for reassessment, and I have read our WP:Wikiprojet Poetry/assessment page six times. Perhaps we could attempt to make it a bit clearer?... or maybe I am just a moron:)Mrathel (talk) 13:54, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * C-class does still exist, by the way. It is just so new that it hasn't spread very far (i. e. to our assessment page.) Wrad (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Right Right, but for practical purposes, I have stopped using it and have switched most c-class to start-class at the moment just so they dont continue appearing on our unassessed page. No one has complained about it yet, so I think there will be little backlash. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrathel (talk • contribs) 17:18, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it would be better to change the template so that it recognized C-class. Would you change all the articles that used to be c-class back? Then I will fix the template and the problem will no longer exist. Wrad (talk) 17:39, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Very well, i am a strong advocate for a C class, and I would gladly change all the start classes back to C class. I just suck at templates:) Mrathel (talk) 18:14, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

With the Template now fixed I have put all of my Start changes back to C class, but now we have a C class with about 10 articles in it. I have started with the A's in the start class, looking for articles that deserve a higher assessment. Just FYI.Mrathel (talk) 20:43, 5 December 2008 (UTC) Also, can we modify the template to include Category and any other term to remove all tagged items from the unassessed that have an assessment?Mrathel (talk) 21:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If anyone knows how to do it, I think this would be really helpful. --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:42, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Help editing an article
I have been working for about a week editing the article on Ode on a Grecian Urn, and I wanted to see if anyone has any suggestions as to what content does/does not belong and how to keep origional research out of a description of a poem. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Mrathel (talk) 20:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Likewise, I have reviewed the Philip Larkin page, which has undergone many changes since its last assessment on June 18,2008, and I think it is close to being a GAC.Mrathel (talk) 15:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Great choice spending time on Ode to a Grecian Urn. I might drop by for some Wikipedia style edits, if that's something you need help with. Otherwise, when I get a moment, I'll look at the content too. --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Borges - review as good article
Jorge Luis Borges has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Tom B (talk) 18:20, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

help with article assessment
Last week, while our template was missing the C class, I assessed an article on artistic inspiration as start class, which upset a lively admin named user:geogre. While I agree that the article is very well-written and an excellent source on the subject, my concern about putting it at a B class was that the interlinear references don't appear to give enough information to allow a reader to verify the claims made about or in reference to the sources. I was of the opinion that the style guide suggests that all information about a source should be given to allow the reader to quickly verify a reference and that the more information that can be supplied, the better. If anyone has the time, I would love to get some mentoring on interlinear references and would like hear what you have to think about whether or not the reference method should detract from the articles assessment, which I would personally put at C-class because my foundation in research papers is probably a bit too strong for my own good. I would appreciate any discussion of the subject here or on my talk page.Mrathel (talk) 01:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I would support a Start-class assessment of that article. This particularly user is incredibly valuable to the project, but can be defensive of articles (as we all can be, and I'm no exception). The assessment, we must all remember, is only relevant to this project (with the exception of GA and FA class). Those who are not members shouldn't be too concerned about our assessments. --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * John Greenleaf Whittier I came across this artice which was listed as a Start-class. after a quick look, I put it at C, but would like to see what others think in terms of a higher ratingMrathel (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Wide range. Missing only a few cites. Has pictures. It could be a low B class. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:31, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I was the one that introduced most of the sourced info in that article and I very rarely upgrade class listings for my own work. :) Someday I'll get back to Whittier and bring it up to GA, but I'm distracted by Transcendentalists right now! --Midnightdreary (talk) 21:23, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * How about this one: Michael Palmer. It is well-sourced, though it is not written from a NPOV. But what I am most curious about is the crazy format for the quotations with the different colors. It makes me want to tear my eyes out, but am I allowed to subtract from an assessment for that? Mrathel (talk) 06:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Egads!! I went in and toned down a couple quote boxes (cquotes in particular are rarely used; some of those quotes were also too short to be in boxes). My guess is that the big colored box quotes are meant to serve in place of artwork. It's silly and needs to go. In this instance, I'd feel that the layout problems are significant enough to downgrade the article (though I doubt I'd rate it high based on the tone of the article and that it's written in first person!) but I'd be sure to offer a friendly note on the talk page about what the problem is and why it doesn't conform to standards. See if the main editor is still active and maybe even leave a personal note for him. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

How about this one: Alexandru Macedonski. It looks good from a quick view, but I do want to put it up for review before moving it any higher than a C Mrathel (talk) 19:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * And this for that matter Anatol E. Baconsky Mrathel (talk) 05:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, they're both over the recommended limit of 50K (the first one is too big by almost 5X) so I think that's a strike against them. The excessive redlinks are also awful to look at. But I'd still rate at a B because of the decent citations (assuming they meet RS; I didn't really check it out deeply). --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have gotten mixed reviews on red links: is it ok to go through and delete them if they are not likely to generate an article, or are they supposed to be left as they are? Mrathel (talk) 22:29, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the policy is purposefully ambiguous (see WP:REDLINKS. Many of the links in those articles could definitely be created some day, but they probably won't. I'd suggest, for example, that the links in the "References" in the first article are unnecessary, as are most of the redlinks to his works. I can't assume that the people linked are too obscure but it seems to me that might be the case (at least, in the English language). I think the article creators should show more discretion when it comes to redlinks, but that's just me. To answer your question more directly, for our purposes I think it might be worth leaving a note on those talk pages, and let editors with a more vested interest take action, if they deem it necessary. --Midnightdreary (talk) 23:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

article poet
I was looking through the poetry articles, and I came across poet only to find that it is a list of various poets. The list does not have any rhyme or reason (no pun intended) and seems to include the favorite poets of the various editors who have happened across the page. They WP:Style article says that lists that are too broad have little value. I was wondering if, since an article on Poet is of the highest importance to our project, anyone else would like to lend a suggestion as to how we should approach this article. God knows I don't want to write an article on Poet when the definition is almost implicit in the Poetry article, but should we do something?Mrathel (talk) 02:41, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * My gut reaction is that "poet" should be "list of poets". I say we take whichever we like better and make that the main article and leave the other as a redirect. There's no need to be so redundant (there's also categories on poets, which work pretty well). --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:40, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Assessment standards
You know, I've been planning on proposing this for some time but was just nudged by a comment from Ottava Rima. I think we should take a moment and come to an agreement on what our importance assessment standards should be. Granted, these assessments aren't really of any consequence, even to most members of this project; even so, it might make things go easier when we get those tags up there.

In my head, I've been using a couple standards. First, I always assume that the general overview article of a poet is more important than any individual poem. I very rarely assess at "high" importance - I usually reserve that rating for the absolute canonical poets that every kid learns in high school (the Shakespeares, Miltons, etc.). The balance, battling between mid and low importance, I usually base on how important poetry was to their career. For example, if someone wrote poetry but is remembered as a politician first and foremost, our interest in him in this project, I believe, is of low importance. I also use low importance for the really inconsequential poets (I've seen a few articles on self-published 18-year olds; I don't find them important).

Okay, that's really just about the poets. It gets complicated when you talk about individual poems, poetry collections, and characters from poems. Anyone have suggestions for standards? Oh, I also think most poetic terms (like "stanza") are so basic that they should be high importance.

Let's chat about this. Chime in with feedback, criticism, suggestions, etc. --Midnightdreary (talk) 16:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with almost everything you said. However, I think we should probably take an objective stance on the importance of some poems to the project. Obviously, the John Keats article should probably be higher in importance than say Lamia, since it is obviously more dear to our project. However, I think that many of the poems that are in most Anthologies should probably have an importance of mid, since these will be searched by many readers who intend to learn more about them, and a good article can provide references that will assist the avereage reader in further study. My criteria I have been using to assess poems has been based on a few quick facts I am looking for.


 * Does this provide a clear overview about the poem itself with limited information about the poet.
 * is it referenced with credible sources
 * Does it contain links to major themes and stylistic terms that are important to the project.
 * I have to admit that poems such as The Red Wheel Barrow would get a mid to high level of importance from me because of its importance not only as a work but its place within the history of poetry and its use of a certain style. We can not help being arbitrary in the importance selection, but I guess my question comes when we are dealing with poems that will receive a high level of hits from students studying basic English courses. I tend to believe that poems and poets who will receive the highest amount of attention should have the highest importance, to make sure we focus first on articles that will reflect the strength of our project to the most people Mrathel (talk) 13:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that a good rule of thumb for importance is to rank any poem listed in the Norton Anthology or similar textbooks composed by a major author as "mid" or higher based on exposure of these works. Any author who writes them should be high. Mostly, this agrees with Mrathel. I think we are going off of exposure to highschool/undergraduates, which is a key demographic to Wikipedia. Any terms that would be used to understand the structure of a poem should be high. Any major poetic or critical (New Criticism, Deconstruction, Structuralism, etc) movements should be listed as high. Any major critics who helped shape their field or an interpretation should be mid (Walter Jackson Bate, M H Abrams, or Harold Bloom, for example). Those are just my thoughts and are up to change. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Apparently, we have this section in our project: WikiProject Poetry/Assessment. It looks like a generic copy/paste job. May I recommend we start working on a working guide to assessment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poetry/Assessment? I think we all know where we are going with this... --Midnightdreary (talk) 21:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll copy out some indexes of some books, including the Norton compendium. We could then go off of major authors from there. Major authors should be high and their major works mid. Their minor works low. Minor authors should be mid, with works low. Obscure authors not listed on the compendium or in various text books should be low. On Wikiversity, I'm compiling a "canon" list of English lit, so this would dovetail with what I am currently working on. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for being so inquisitive, but I am still not sure how an article is put up for reassessment. On the Assessment page of our project there is a part that says "List below". Are they supposed to just list the article in that section (that seems kinda given) but then the section below states that logs are generated automatically and should not be manually edited. Being a wiki N00b, I can only guess that they list manually and it will be added to the log upon assessment, but I just want to be sure. Mrathel (talk) 16:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't worry about asking questions; that's the point of collaboration. You're looking at two different things: one is for editors (say, non-members of this project) to request assessments of poetry-related articles (though, in practice, they'll probably just ask right here on the main discussion page). The other section on there is for the bot assessments, like what's in that big grid on the main poetry page (and at the top right of the assessments page) – the one that shows how many of each assessed article there are. --Midnightdreary (talk) 16:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

http://www.poetryfreedom.com/
Hello, I am close to 3rr on Poetry over this website, which as far as I can tell is essentially composed of user-contributed content- it is a poetry myspace, and does not belong in the external links section. I just want to be clear that there is consensus for these reverts. Comments?  Litho  derm  00:10, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems you're right to keep reverting. Have you considered putting it up for semi-protection at WP:RFPP? --Midnightdreary (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

http://www.shmoop.com/
I know that numerous individual conversations have take place regarding "Shmoop", both on user talk pages and on article talk pages (see Talk:Jane Eyre and Talk:Mending Wall). Shmoop claims that it is for "High-schoolers raised in the IRC age", or something to that effect. As a recent high school graduate, I despise cloying condescension, which is exactly how Shmoop feels: one of the reason that WP is great is that we don't dumb things down- we assume that people come here to learn. Each article on Shmoop consists of a summary of the material (which is usually not as comprehensive as the wikipedia version-- definitely not the "further research" that ELs are intended to provide) and then, the main basis of my objection, the "Why should I care?" section. Of course, my objection is mainly on policy grounds-- they do not add anything to the content of the article, and the link-adders are not here to add anything to the encyclopedia other than shmoop links. Whatever one's assessment of Shmoop may be, their stereotype of people of my age group is an agenda, and they are here to push it- nothing more. The main point is that external links are there to enhance content and provide scholarly context-- not to dumb it down. I would like to obtain consensus one way or the other in this thread. One point in User:Barriodude's favor is that he has not re-added the links without discussion. I leave you with some excerpts from Shmoop's analysis of London, 1802:

A country in the midst of an identity crisis…a passionate need for change…major stress about the state of the nation. Sound familiar?

"London, 1802" doesn't get into specific political issues, but instead asks readers where the character of England went astray. Imagining that very same question being posed on Capitol Hill is not difficult. We can be certain that, were Wordsworth to time-travel his way into modern day America, he'd be pretty riled up about the kind of change going down.

The second half of the poem dwells on Milton's high points; the speaker gets all swoony about Milton's writing, and uses celestial imagery to show us just how divine it is. Not only is Milton's writing admirable, apparently, so was his character. The man could do no wrong. The speaker goes gaga over the all-around loveliness that was Milton, and ends the poem by praising the deceased poet's humility.

This poem is extra-special-fancy by Wordsworth's standards; we can imagine him sitting down, clearing his throat, cracking his knuckles, and thinking, "What would Milton like?" This is kind of like buckling down to write a fan letter to your favorite celebrity, dead or alive, in which you want to tell them just how totally amazing he/she is, and how much you really, REALLY love him/her.

 Litho  derm  16:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm... well, I'm not sure this project is the spot to build a Wikipedia-wide consensus. I'm not sure where to go on something like that, but I'm sure there's a spot. Anyone know better? --Midnightdreary (talk) 17:03, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I noticed a link to this being added to the Ode on a Grecian Urn article, but I am not really sure how we can decide on something like this and didn't feel compelled to take it off because it was under external links and was not obvious. As a matter of policy, allowing these links to stay would only open the door to other age-based sites putting their link underneath, and I can only imagine that you would end up with a tedious discussion about making sure all age groups are represented. If the reader comes to wp, I can only imagine they do it to get an encyclopedia article and not an age-appropriate reader guide, but I also fail to see how our project has much of a say in the matter as a whole even if we agree to systematically remove the links from articles without clear policy to back those actions up. Mrathel (talk) 18:43, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Lithoderm is absolutely right about shmoop.com, but a WP-wide consensus is probably best discussed in Wikipedia talk:External links. (The site appears to be very US-centric which means that adding links to it would be problematic with regard to WP:GLOBAL. That's in addition to the points brought up above, of course.) --Bonadea (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have copied this discussion over to Wikipedia talk:External links, and will notify User:Barriodude.  Litho  derm  20:42, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge of 2 editions
I recently merged articles on the 1988 and 2003 versions of Collected Poems (Philip Larkin), which was published in 2 editions, the second fixing selection and odering problems of the first. While the selection of poetry is different in the second edition, I considered the fact that it was a book by the same editor with the same title, and boldy put both pages together since they were stubs. almost-instinct has not taken this merger well, and I just wanted to be sure that I am doing the right thing here. In the case of faulkner's Flags in the Dust and Sartoris, I can see how the book would have two different articles since they have seperate titles for two editions of the same novel, but in this case, the names are the same, and i can only guess that someone searching for one edition would not object to having information about the other on the same page. Please lend me your thoughts if you have a second. Mrathel (talk) 14:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think it's good to keep them as one article. "Publication history" sections are great places to expand on future editions, changes, updates, additions, etc. --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Looking at some of the talk page discussions, I'm not sure if I stand by my first response. Can we confirm if these are two versions of one book or two completely different books? Is there a scholarly consensus out there? For example, though the first edition of Leaves of Grass and the final "death-bed" edition are extremely different, Walt Whitman (and everyone since) has considered it one book, Leaves of Grass. Is the same true for Larkin's book? --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:28, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The difference is noticable: mostly, a reordering of the poems and addition of 40 poems that were omitted from the origional (as was the editiors choice at the time, which he later recanted). There is no doubt that the 2003 edition is an updated version of the 1988 edition, but my objection came from the fact that it was a reworking of the same collection by the same author under the same title and printed by the same company. There is no scholarly consenus on the subject from what I have read, and the second edition is supposed to be the ediors reordering of his previous work to fit a better chronology of what Larkin might have intended. Of course, Larkin was not around when the second volume was published, so there is no way to settle the matter. Even so, having a seperate article for 2 editions of the same book, neither one really asserting singular notability, seemed unreasonable. To the average reader, it is rather unlikely that a distinction would be made between the two editions to the point that he or she would search for an article on Collected Poems (1998) or Collected Poems 2003 as the result of a conscious decision. Mrathel (talk) 16:18, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The 2003 version is not "an updated version" - it is the publishing in a single volume of four seperate collections of poetry, plus appendices of poems published but not collected ie it contains only what Larkin himself chose to publish. The 1988 version is all this plus a very contraversial selection of the unpublished material. Furthermore Thwaite chose not to follow Larkin's own ordering, but put all the poems in a strict chronological order, thus placing published poems alongside unfinished poems & finished poems not suitable for publication etc. In a sense the two volumes had two different editors, in that all decisions vis-a-vis inclusion in the 2003 edition were essentially made by Larkin. The two volumes could easily have been called "Complete Poems (ed. Thwaite)" (1988) and "The published poetry of Philip Larkin" (2003). Would people still want to merge the two articles? The release of the 1988 vol. did much to damage Larkin's image: his careful selections were unsettled by being published alongside private expressions. The 2003 vol, on the other hand, seems to co-incide with a feeling that Larkin has been given enough of a kicking and that we're going to have to get on with the fact of the poetry's continued importance, whatever we might feel about his politics etc. I recommend that anybody getting involved with this discussion reads this review in the New York Review of Books of both vols etc Here's a quote from it: The 2003 Collected Poems, then, is not intended as a corrective or a replacement of the earlier book, but as a sort of companion volume. This is an odd arrangement, and one wonders what Larkin the librarian would have made of it. Would he have been flattered, amused, reprehending? One can imagine a tag line in a letter to his pal and confidant Kingsley Amis: "Two Collected Poems bum."  almost - instinct 18:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Very Well, I have undone the merge and stand smilingly corrected. Mrathel (talk) 01:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)