Friday, May 20, 2005
I got a questionnaire from Fulcrum asking some very basic questions.
1. What is and what isn't poetry? What is poetry's essential nature (if any)?
Poetry is the art form that uses language as its medium. That’s a very broad statement & doesn’t tell you a lot. But, beyond that, any discussion of “essential nature” has to be about the old & tired problems of essentialism in general, not poetry.
2. What is the most important poetry? Who are the greatest poets? What do they accomplish?
The best art in any medium is that which expands our understanding of the possibilities of the medium itself. This can be done in many different ways & any history of American painting of the last century that doesn’t put Warhol on the same plane ultimately with Pollock isn’t credible, I would think, just as one that tried to place Rothko or Rauschenberg on that same plateau would not be credible. If you look at poetry dispassionately, it becomes very clear who moved the art forward, or at least in a new direction, over time. This is not necessarily “progress,” in the modernist sense of that term, but it is always movement, evolution.
3. What is the relationship between poetry and truth? Is there such a thing as poetic truth?
A poet who directly understands & confronts his or her medium has an opportunity to address questions such as truth. One who uses language instrumentally, as a second-order mechanism to get at some “truths” that lie elsewhere is not only a bad writer, but a dishonest one.
4. How does poetry relate to the human condition?
Each of the major arts corresponds to one of our basic media, literally our senses. Poetry – the art of language – literally is the only one that rises out of a media uniquely possessed by the human species. Other species have sight & sound & respond to mass & texture. But unless you think that the whales are chatting down there in that human cesspool we have made of the oceans, only humans truly have language.
5. Is there (or can there be) a meaningful philosophy of poetry?
This is a trick question, sort of a linguistic Moebius strip. Poetry is the active side of the coin of which philosophy is the opposing face.
6. Does the fundamental nature of poetry change over time?
Only slightly. The last “fundamental” change came with the emergence of the book in the 1500s. At the same time, poetry is – and should always be – as sensitive to the cultural and social environment as any art form. The idea of writing poetry in the same forms as were used in the 1890s is exactly the same as the idea of writing music in the same forms & arrangements as were used in the 1890s.
7. Is there one "poetry" or are there "poetries"?
It depends on how you define it. If you mean poetry literally, as the art of language, then even the novel is a (degraded) part of poetry. But if you try mapping this art against the complex topology of social & linguistic groups that are forever in contention in the world, you will never stop counting poetries.
8. What makes a genuinely great poem?
This is the second question all over again, asked in functional terms. But the answer is the same – any poem that expands our experience of & insight into the medium of poetry qualifies.
9. What is the relationship between tradition and innovation in poetry?
Change in poetry really is how we sense the friction of social contexts against the medium of language. A poem must make itself new every day. Poets who write as if this were still the 1950s are the equivalent of lounge singers belting out the hits of Johnny Ray or Nat King Cole. Poets who write as if this were still the 1850s are simply pathological.
10. Is a particular poetic method (e.g. the "lyricist," "formalist," "free verse," "experimental," or any other approach) preferable?
No. Any method that enables a poet to confront and expand their relationship to the medium is adequate, and that can be understood in more than one way.
11. Are there deep associations between poetics and politics? Please give some evidence.
I think most poets would love it if this were true, but the history of literature suggests that the medium is amoral. It’s what poets do with it that matters.
12. What fundamental misconceptions about poetry annoy you most, and how would you correct or refute them?
Most of the questions in this survey would qualify, as they attempt to connect poetry up to a discourse of “timeless truths,” “essentials,” “fundamentals” and “greatness” that was laughable when Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D. & Marianne Moore were still students in
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#12 equals funny.
#5 strikes me as true.
#9 makes me wish I had time to revisit "Tradition and Individual Talent" this morning in order to drum up a better counter argument for you.
#11 requires some elaboration before I can be sure I disagree with you.
-jeremy
#5 strikes me as true.
#9 makes me wish I had time to revisit "Tradition and Individual Talent" this morning in order to drum up a better counter argument for you.
#11 requires some elaboration before I can be sure I disagree with you.
-jeremy
Ron:
Re: #5: You didn't answer the question. Philosophy and poetry are different, but the question is can we have a philosophy OF poetry? That's what you seem to be about doing in your website.
You're being partly evasive on #7: Then, you're saying poetry is everything.
#11: Hooray! Now you're on the right track!
Re: #12: Answer: More interesting responses!
Re: #5: You didn't answer the question. Philosophy and poetry are different, but the question is can we have a philosophy OF poetry? That's what you seem to be about doing in your website.
You're being partly evasive on #7: Then, you're saying poetry is everything.
#11: Hooray! Now you're on the right track!
Re: #12: Answer: More interesting responses!
# posted by 
: May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Nice one Ron.
Re#3:
I suspect the "truths that lie elsewhere" (outside the realms of language) get thru somehow. The essence of a poem has little to do with the words (language) used & everything to do with the raw naked honesty of the poet wrestling his medium.
Reminds me of a friend's response to a poem of mine "I like it a lot but I'd have used different words". Sounds preposterous but after a few days I got what she meant. There's always something under the language (independent of the language?) that the reader connects to: humanity?
I often have the sneaking suspicion that my engagement with the language is my controlled folly - it's simply what I need to do to get my energy out there.
IrishGit
Re#3:
I suspect the "truths that lie elsewhere" (outside the realms of language) get thru somehow. The essence of a poem has little to do with the words (language) used & everything to do with the raw naked honesty of the poet wrestling his medium.
Reminds me of a friend's response to a poem of mine "I like it a lot but I'd have used different words". Sounds preposterous but after a few days I got what she meant. There's always something under the language (independent of the language?) that the reader connects to: humanity?
I often have the sneaking suspicion that my engagement with the language is my controlled folly - it's simply what I need to do to get my energy out there.
IrishGit
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
What is poetry? What is life? What is that floating in my coffee? Important questions all. And perhaps equally unanswerable.
Interesting that you say the novel is a degraded form of poetry. As someone who writes fiction heavily influenced by poetry, I would of course hesitate to say it is "degraded". Indeed, many stories are poor or dull in their purely poetic aspect, but what is interesting to me is the case of authors like Joyce, a rather bland poet when he wrote in verse, yet supremely poetic when he wrote his novels--and pushed the form to new boundaries.
Is it the narrative that degrades or at least adulterates the poetry of a novel, or simply the fact that good, exciting, artistic writing is generally not expected of fiction, even most of the "cutting edge" stuff? Is a narrative poem equally degraded? Just curious how you (and others) think about this.
Is it the narrative that degrades or at least adulterates the poetry of a novel, or simply the fact that good, exciting, artistic writing is generally not expected of fiction, even most of the "cutting edge" stuff? Is a narrative poem equally degraded? Just curious how you (and others) think about this.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
I really enjoyed reading your comments to these questions. Definitely gives me something to mull over today.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Wait: if the novel is a degraded form of poetry; and if a great poem is any creation in language that extends our idea of what's possible in language; and if it's pathological to write the same way folks wrote in 1850 . . .
Then I'd say by this very argument, the emergence of the novel in the late 17th century pretty much sublated poetry. The novel is the only truly "modern" form, the only literary form to respond immediately to the demands and forces of modernity. Since then, poetry has at best become more "novelish" (as Bakhtin argued many years ago). Nearly every innovation in poetry over the last 100 years has come from the novel. Chekhov was a master of parataxis long before it became a sign of hip priests and poetry shakers.
Then I'd say by this very argument, the emergence of the novel in the late 17th century pretty much sublated poetry. The novel is the only truly "modern" form, the only literary form to respond immediately to the demands and forces of modernity. Since then, poetry has at best become more "novelish" (as Bakhtin argued many years ago). Nearly every innovation in poetry over the last 100 years has come from the novel. Chekhov was a master of parataxis long before it became a sign of hip priests and poetry shakers.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Hypothetical: What if I wrote a poem with the same sentiment, and not necessarily form, as a female poet in the 1850s in order to oppose certain masculine ideals of the individual, the ego, the genuis and its accompanying lack of community, cooperation, collaboration. I don't know what this poem would look like (although I can surely find some 20th C examples that are similar). Yet, the question is: Would *I* be pathological? (see #9).
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Hmmm...
When the intelligence is applied this glaringly it tends to be repulsive & doesn't go far in changing hearts & minds.
When questions are answered this smugly & harshly then I feel the void that's left.
I'm with Irishgit on this one.
Language is still only a medium, & a poem is still only a vessel.
If the poet has the heart then she'll fill it with love.
If she doesn't THEN she's a bad poet.
When the intelligence is applied this glaringly it tends to be repulsive & doesn't go far in changing hearts & minds.
When questions are answered this smugly & harshly then I feel the void that's left.
I'm with Irishgit on this one.
Language is still only a medium, & a poem is still only a vessel.
If the poet has the heart then she'll fill it with love.
If she doesn't THEN she's a bad poet.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Having received these questions myself, and been given to understand by the editors of Fulcrum that they are to appear in print, alongside responses by a number of poets, in the forthcoming issue of Fulcrum (#4), I am appalled and shocked by the presumption and disregard for rights which are displayed by your posting them here. Surely you will heat up the debate over these questions, but not at the sad expense of setting a very poor example of uncondonably licentious behavior, injurious to writers everywhere.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Wow Ron. I'm full of admiration that you managed to contain your irritation and answer such questions. You've the patience of Job. Or nothing better to do.
Have you retired yet?
Have you retired yet?
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
I notice from Lisa Jarnot's blog that she is in London and has just visited Karl Marx's grave.
Now there's a woman with heart.
Now there's a woman with heart.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
I like the moebius strip (5) though I don't understand the way you mix that metaphor with a coin. Are you saying that the question is like a moebius strip while the facts (about philosophy and poetry) are like a coin?
I'm generally with you on dismissing these sorts of questions, especially when put to poets in a poetry forum. But think of the layman, or even the philosopher, for a moment. When Wittgenstein says that "philosophy ought really to be composed as poetry", we are entitled to ask, OK, what then is poetry? In what sense should this other form of writing be like it?
And here your answers are just a bit too, as you say, broad. I think of Pound's comparison in the ABC.
"A canzone is a composition of words set to music,"
is one sort of thing you might say, and
"a great poet is everywhere present, and nowhere visible as a distinct excitement," is another
He said both were no doubt true but he preferred the first as a starting point.
I've been toying with the idea that poetry is to the emotion what philosophy is to concept. So instead of your broad "art in the medium of language" definition (which philosophy also qualifies under) we would have "the art of presenting emotion in language".
After that I think your definition of greatness is exactly right. After all, a great poem would then improve our emotional apparatus (making us better able to express our desires--expanding that region of understanding).
The "essentialism" of this sort of statement can be tempered by (a) appealing to Dante's definition of a canzone above, (b) insisting on it only as a place to begin, and (c) not being an essentialist about emotions (which whales and dogs may also have, if you like that sort of thing).
I'm generally with you on dismissing these sorts of questions, especially when put to poets in a poetry forum. But think of the layman, or even the philosopher, for a moment. When Wittgenstein says that "philosophy ought really to be composed as poetry", we are entitled to ask, OK, what then is poetry? In what sense should this other form of writing be like it?
And here your answers are just a bit too, as you say, broad. I think of Pound's comparison in the ABC.
"A canzone is a composition of words set to music,"
is one sort of thing you might say, and
"a great poet is everywhere present, and nowhere visible as a distinct excitement," is another
He said both were no doubt true but he preferred the first as a starting point.
I've been toying with the idea that poetry is to the emotion what philosophy is to concept. So instead of your broad "art in the medium of language" definition (which philosophy also qualifies under) we would have "the art of presenting emotion in language".
After that I think your definition of greatness is exactly right. After all, a great poem would then improve our emotional apparatus (making us better able to express our desires--expanding that region of understanding).
The "essentialism" of this sort of statement can be tempered by (a) appealing to Dante's definition of a canzone above, (b) insisting on it only as a place to begin, and (c) not being an essentialist about emotions (which whales and dogs may also have, if you like that sort of thing).
Ron --
You should come up with your own set of questions and let it loose as a web-meme. I'd be curious to see what you came up with.
-- Simon
You should come up with your own set of questions and let it loose as a web-meme. I'd be curious to see what you came up with.
-- Simon
Well Matt Merlino, I'm not sure you've really read wot Ron wrote.
OK so Ron don't like novels.
He don't like skulpture either ("Sculpture is what you bump into when you step back to look at a painting" - Barny Newman).
But Ron does say "One who uses language instrumentally, as a second-order mechanism to get at some “truths” that lie elsewhere is not only a bad writer, but a dishonest one."
Which seems pretty water tight to me.
Chekhov may have been using modernist devices but only to better communicate what he was trying to say.
We need to get away from the notion of communication, or the limited view that communication is the transfer of information from A to B.
Poetry is not about communication.
It is about celebration & communion.
A joining and a becoming.
OK so Ron don't like novels.
He don't like skulpture either ("Sculpture is what you bump into when you step back to look at a painting" - Barny Newman).
But Ron does say "One who uses language instrumentally, as a second-order mechanism to get at some “truths” that lie elsewhere is not only a bad writer, but a dishonest one."
Which seems pretty water tight to me.
Chekhov may have been using modernist devices but only to better communicate what he was trying to say.
We need to get away from the notion of communication, or the limited view that communication is the transfer of information from A to B.
Poetry is not about communication.
It is about celebration & communion.
A joining and a becoming.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
First, let me duck to avoid the bile spouting so freely above...
Now then. If I understand correctly, you believe that true greatness expands the medium itself, rather than using acknowledge forms or tools to "do great things". So a poem could have wide impact and appeal without greatness.
Is there an equivalent from another world that you would say similarly "expanded possibilities"? Thelonious Monk's spareness and suspended 4ths? The split-fingered fastball? The backward storytelling of Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along?
Now then. If I understand correctly, you believe that true greatness expands the medium itself, rather than using acknowledge forms or tools to "do great things". So a poem could have wide impact and appeal without greatness.
Is there an equivalent from another world that you would say similarly "expanded possibilities"? Thelonious Monk's spareness and suspended 4ths? The split-fingered fastball? The backward storytelling of Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along?
Who is this thomas baseball guy?
"After all, a great poem would then improve our emotional apparatus (making us better able to express our desires--expanding that region of understanding)."
I don't want a poem to make me better able to express my desires, I want it to make me a better person.
Wiser & less selfish.
So Ron, maybe there can be progress after all.
"After all, a great poem would then improve our emotional apparatus (making us better able to express our desires--expanding that region of understanding)."
I don't want a poem to make me better able to express my desires, I want it to make me a better person.
Wiser & less selfish.
So Ron, maybe there can be progress after all.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Oh, the questions themselves are not an attempt to "connect poetry up to a discourse of “timeless truths,” “essentials,” “fundamentals” and “greatness”s." The assumption that this is, in fact, the dark materials of which these questions are fashioned is as dated as the "dark" speculations of a fop flaneuring about the boulevard in 1880's Paris. The boredom of absinthe and certain wants and dismissals. They are just questions and quite capable of eliciting sets of usual responses such as yours decrying those possiblities.
Really, the opposition imagined is anachronistic -- thank God -- for otherwise we haven't moved on even a little bit.
Just as an aside -- the remark about poets writing as if it were the fifties and so like lounge singers doing greatest hits from that era actually assumes that there is no fundamental strangness to poetry really: just a variety of stylings completely subsumed by the when that, I guess, always contains the why and what. Usually this is associated with a wanting to reduce strong poets (Get away Harold Bloom!) so that one may move on and feel good about it.
It's much more productive of good poetry to actually encounter what one assumes one has improved on or moved away from and let it stand apart and make demands on you. Not the happiest of ways to be, of course, since the usual cant seems so thin.
Really, the opposition imagined is anachronistic -- thank God -- for otherwise we haven't moved on even a little bit.
Just as an aside -- the remark about poets writing as if it were the fifties and so like lounge singers doing greatest hits from that era actually assumes that there is no fundamental strangness to poetry really: just a variety of stylings completely subsumed by the when that, I guess, always contains the why and what. Usually this is associated with a wanting to reduce strong poets (Get away Harold Bloom!) so that one may move on and feel good about it.
It's much more productive of good poetry to actually encounter what one assumes one has improved on or moved away from and let it stand apart and make demands on you. Not the happiest of ways to be, of course, since the usual cant seems so thin.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Anonymous of 12:09 PM
Why, oh why have people like you not the guts to sign your crap. It appears to me that Ron did what could be expected of him when he began the post by stating where the questions came from. As for the rights issue, only those who see an opportunity to get stinking rich could have a serious interest in maintaining the copyright laws as they stand. There is nowhere near enough money involved in poetry to warrant such a stance. (Metallica may gain enough from it so they don't have to worry about making fools of themselves). The only real injury that can be done to a writer, not counting bodily harm, is blocking access to his/her works.
Why, oh why have people like you not the guts to sign your crap. It appears to me that Ron did what could be expected of him when he began the post by stating where the questions came from. As for the rights issue, only those who see an opportunity to get stinking rich could have a serious interest in maintaining the copyright laws as they stand. There is nowhere near enough money involved in poetry to warrant such a stance. (Metallica may gain enough from it so they don't have to worry about making fools of themselves). The only real injury that can be done to a writer, not counting bodily harm, is blocking access to his/her works.
So you think it's okay to publish someone's writing without their permission. Good for you. Why you imagine money would be the only issue involved is beyond me. I didn't sign my posting because who I am is utterly irrelevant to the issue.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
I have to say, after reading your blog off and on for a while, that you've certainly got balls. You say what you think and no cow-towing along the way. As for the interview, I resonated with some of your answers, others not. Which ones are unimportant.
Are your opinions this set in everyday life? Not a criticism of who you are. Just curious.
Are your opinions this set in everyday life? Not a criticism of who you are. Just curious.
Common decency is one thing, asking permission, stating sources, that kind of thing, even paying for the work if possible, we all need to support ourselves. It is quite a long way from there to upholding disfunctional copyright laws.
As for anonymity, I find debating with someone who can't even give a name closely resembles talking to a wall.
As for anonymity, I find debating with someone who can't even give a name closely resembles talking to a wall.
Some of the anonymouses I recognize. As for the rest, we all have our reasons on unreasons for doing what we do. For my part, I lump them all together into a mythological many headed almost famous sentient being who I imagine as sitting in a lawn chair by the pool giving an interview to E! and talking to me in asides.
I'm talking about common decency--asking permission. You say one thing, then say another. Your own emotional reactions to anonymity are as utterly irrelevant to this "debate" as who I may happen to be.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Please note the "It is quite a long way from there to..."
And Ron, I too would like to see how you would make these questions interesting.
And Ron, I too would like to see how you would make these questions interesting.
Anon at noon:
The opposition between instrumental and non-instrumental approaches to language has been debunked and discredited as a heuristic by linguists, literary critics, and writers in general. At best, we could say these are two ways of examining language (i.e., the communication model and the self-referential or formalist model), but no piece of language qua language is either fully instrumental or fully removed from communication.
As far as Chekhov goes, he didn't "use" modernist techniques; he invented them. Nor can you reduce his use of parataxis to "better communication." The elipses of his late fiction (the anthology favorite, "The Lady With the Pet Dog" is a perfect example) make it impossible to find any communicable "message" behind the narrative. On one level, Chekhov's late fiction is about narrative itself: the limitations of realism, the fact that scientific objectivity pushed to its limits becomes pluralist subjectivity, etc. To oppose Chekhov to, say, Ron by saying Chekhov's fiction is an inter-office memo is intellectually dishonest.
At the same time, to say that Ron's poetry or other experimental verse has no "message," that it's in no ways instrumental is also dishonest. Behind all contemporary poetry are assumptions about cultural capital, ideas about how language works, ideas about white masculinity especially, etc. And form itself has a content: not expressive, but at least symptomatic. As Jameson might ask: what social contradictions are temporarily held together by the New Sentence? From the hip, I'd argue that avant poetry today, in its rejection of persona, unified voice, and lyrical situations, is trying to bridge the contradiction of the social totality. Avant forms at once show the impossibility of achieving a totalizing view of the social world at the same time that they simulate the social totality by tossing together various voices, dictions, allusions, social scenes, etc.
Literary form doesn't *ever* communicate like a memo, whether its Robert Lowell or Susan Howe we're talking about. As Suzanne Langer wrote, form is a map of feelings, not an expression of them. I'd add "thought" as well: artistic form *always* communicates a model of the mind at work.
Anon at noon wrote, "Poetry is not about communication. It is about celebration & communion. A joining and a becoming."
Tell that to Amiri Baraka, or Claude McKay, or Pound's fascist cantos, or Eliot's doomsday poems. No celebratin' or communionin' happnin' there.
The opposition between instrumental and non-instrumental approaches to language has been debunked and discredited as a heuristic by linguists, literary critics, and writers in general. At best, we could say these are two ways of examining language (i.e., the communication model and the self-referential or formalist model), but no piece of language qua language is either fully instrumental or fully removed from communication.
As far as Chekhov goes, he didn't "use" modernist techniques; he invented them. Nor can you reduce his use of parataxis to "better communication." The elipses of his late fiction (the anthology favorite, "The Lady With the Pet Dog" is a perfect example) make it impossible to find any communicable "message" behind the narrative. On one level, Chekhov's late fiction is about narrative itself: the limitations of realism, the fact that scientific objectivity pushed to its limits becomes pluralist subjectivity, etc. To oppose Chekhov to, say, Ron by saying Chekhov's fiction is an inter-office memo is intellectually dishonest.
At the same time, to say that Ron's poetry or other experimental verse has no "message," that it's in no ways instrumental is also dishonest. Behind all contemporary poetry are assumptions about cultural capital, ideas about how language works, ideas about white masculinity especially, etc. And form itself has a content: not expressive, but at least symptomatic. As Jameson might ask: what social contradictions are temporarily held together by the New Sentence? From the hip, I'd argue that avant poetry today, in its rejection of persona, unified voice, and lyrical situations, is trying to bridge the contradiction of the social totality. Avant forms at once show the impossibility of achieving a totalizing view of the social world at the same time that they simulate the social totality by tossing together various voices, dictions, allusions, social scenes, etc.
Literary form doesn't *ever* communicate like a memo, whether its Robert Lowell or Susan Howe we're talking about. As Suzanne Langer wrote, form is a map of feelings, not an expression of them. I'd add "thought" as well: artistic form *always* communicates a model of the mind at work.
Anon at noon wrote, "Poetry is not about communication. It is about celebration & communion. A joining and a becoming."
Tell that to Amiri Baraka, or Claude McKay, or Pound's fascist cantos, or Eliot's doomsday poems. No celebratin' or communionin' happnin' there.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Dig the essentialisms in a post chastising essentialist questions:
1. Matt Merlino beats me to the punch on this point, but it's worth reinforcing: the opposition of poetic to instrumental language in the answer to #3 simply repeats the Russian Formalist's apophatic error (criticized by Bakhtin/Medvedev, pp. 86-98 or so in my paperback).
2. "But unless you think that the whales are chatting down there in that human cesspool we have made of the oceans, only humans truly have language." Ron Silliman is in good company to say so, but he is dead wrong on this point and needlessly trivializes the alternative.
Kevin
1. Matt Merlino beats me to the punch on this point, but it's worth reinforcing: the opposition of poetic to instrumental language in the answer to #3 simply repeats the Russian Formalist's apophatic error (criticized by Bakhtin/Medvedev, pp. 86-98 or so in my paperback).
2. "But unless you think that the whales are chatting down there in that human cesspool we have made of the oceans, only humans truly have language." Ron Silliman is in good company to say so, but he is dead wrong on this point and needlessly trivializes the alternative.
Kevin
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
Those pics somebody posted a link to reminds me of a surprising few lines from Tjanting, which I read last night.
--MH
--MH
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
I agree about the anonymity. Assuming something worthwhile is said, how might it be investigated or otherwise referenced if nobody knows who said it?
--MH
--MH
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
What damn difference does it make who said it? All that matters is what was said. You people are silly. What the heck do you need to investigate? My background? Your arguments are flimsy emanations of your own need to be tied to an identity, rather than ideas. Knowing my "name" would shed no light on anything other than your own subjectivity. You are like sheep, with no appreciation for the subtleties of what a real identity is. For a literary artist, those words which he or she chooses to make public.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
I'm King! King of the world! Of ideas! The anonymous philosopher King!
Call me.
Call me.
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
PUNY MORTALS! What right have any of you to question the ineffable, indefatigable, untranslatable isomorphisms of my being?!
# posted by : May 20, 2005
: May 20, 2005
It is amusing to dismiss these questions as uninteresting. After all they are the sorts of questions that that strange fellow Wordsworth attempts to answer and that fellow Eliot and then again and again all those literary critics of note whose books are here on my shelf. Afer all -- the questions don't constrain this or that answer.
And I'd mention that calling anything a degraded form of something else -- the novel as degraded form of poetry revels in just the sort of essentialist gab and preoccupations that seem to be what is uninteresting.
What would it take to make your answers interesting? Forgoing easy dichtomies is a good start.
Or for an example not responding to a question on politics with the non sequitur that poetry is amoral. So is politics many a time if history can be believed. You assume that the question implies that the questioner assumes that poetry stands against politics -- the question only asks if there are deep associations.
Killing off poets might be one relationship between politics and poetry. Poetery killing off politics might be another.
And what can you mean that it is what poets do with it(poetry I guess) that matters? How can a medium exist as amoral when the only instances we have of it in the world is when it is used? Again, you are postulating something that exists apart from any wordly use -- an eternal realm of poesy (this time amoral) that is somehow not implicated in "essentialism."
And I'd mention that calling anything a degraded form of something else -- the novel as degraded form of poetry revels in just the sort of essentialist gab and preoccupations that seem to be what is uninteresting.
What would it take to make your answers interesting? Forgoing easy dichtomies is a good start.
Or for an example not responding to a question on politics with the non sequitur that poetry is amoral. So is politics many a time if history can be believed. You assume that the question implies that the questioner assumes that poetry stands against politics -- the question only asks if there are deep associations.
Killing off poets might be one relationship between politics and poetry. Poetery killing off politics might be another.
And what can you mean that it is what poets do with it(poetry I guess) that matters? How can a medium exist as amoral when the only instances we have of it in the world is when it is used? Again, you are postulating something that exists apart from any wordly use -- an eternal realm of poesy (this time amoral) that is somehow not implicated in "essentialism."
The difference is that I can answer you directly. Even if you give yourself a number, I can say, #34, you are wrong. Terribly wrong. And the reason why is...
Stop hiding. What difference does it make? If it makes no difference, then it shouldn't bother you to have an identity. If it makes a difference, well then the original issue stands.
Don't be soft. Have a name.
Stop hiding. What difference does it make? If it makes no difference, then it shouldn't bother you to have an identity. If it makes a difference, well then the original issue stands.
Don't be soft. Have a name.
Coerced into temporarily accepting terms like "great" and "important", you've proposed an identification between the "great" and the academically significant - that's where I'd focus my uneasiness. Obviously the discourse of essentialism must take most of the blame here
You make it sound as if it's so easy to identify a poem that advances the art technically, but as I'd wholly applaud you also say that there are many poetries, thus presumably many importances that different audiences might register. Identification of the relevant medium that is being stretched - that seems to me something to which only relativistic answers can be supplied. The underlying analogy that I believe you're tending to make between the activity of poets and the advancement of science (not to mention a biological idea of evolution) bristles with problems, some of them apparent, some perhaps experienced only as tensions - I can't sleep easily in this bed.
Former ages would have been no less upfront about associating "greatness" with a kind of superhuman task in verse, for example some form of giving expression to nationhood or reconciling man to God. It's clear to us now that these definitions express all-too-obvious historical preconceptions about what is important; my suggestion is that your phrase "expands our understanding of the possibilities of the medium itself" has the same background, and the word "itself" has a kind of kind of clinching intention; like when competing children say "same to you ten thousand times .. a million times .." until eventually someone tries to cap it with "INFINITY times!!" Behind this use of "itself" lies a sense of the hierarchy of academic disciplines: from the bottom, engineers, scientists in the field, theoretical science, philosophy of science, philosophy of philosophies... metaphysics, metapoetry..
But one cannot really "cap" history, and engagement with mediums, concern with linguistic potential etc, though they might sound timelessly relevant are in fact politically and culturally limited conceptions with no particular privilege other than that it's what we happen to be saying at the moment.
You make it sound as if it's so easy to identify a poem that advances the art technically, but as I'd wholly applaud you also say that there are many poetries, thus presumably many importances that different audiences might register. Identification of the relevant medium that is being stretched - that seems to me something to which only relativistic answers can be supplied. The underlying analogy that I believe you're tending to make between the activity of poets and the advancement of science (not to mention a biological idea of evolution) bristles with problems, some of them apparent, some perhaps experienced only as tensions - I can't sleep easily in this bed.
Former ages would have been no less upfront about associating "greatness" with a kind of superhuman task in verse, for example some form of giving expression to nationhood or reconciling man to God. It's clear to us now that these definitions express all-too-obvious historical preconceptions about what is important; my suggestion is that your phrase "expands our understanding of the possibilities of the medium itself" has the same background, and the word "itself" has a kind of kind of clinching intention; like when competing children say "same to you ten thousand times .. a million times .." until eventually someone tries to cap it with "INFINITY times!!" Behind this use of "itself" lies a sense of the hierarchy of academic disciplines: from the bottom, engineers, scientists in the field, theoretical science, philosophy of science, philosophy of philosophies... metaphysics, metapoetry..
But one cannot really "cap" history, and engagement with mediums, concern with linguistic potential etc, though they might sound timelessly relevant are in fact politically and culturally limited conceptions with no particular privilege other than that it's what we happen to be saying at the moment.
One can be more retro still:
http://graywyvern.blogspot.com/2004_03_07_graywyvern_archive.html#107910876728837070
m.
http://graywyvern.blogspot.com/2004_03_07_graywyvern_archive.html#107910876728837070
m.
Poetry is "stylized expression through language." Whereas, prose is merely "functional expression through language."
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