Notating

Thinking about Pangrammaticon's latest post (as usual): is poetry a system of notation for emotion in the same way that philosophy is for concept?

I have a few misgivings, but am afraid that by laying them out I will suggest they are objections on behalf of poetry in general, when it is more likely that I am just making massive generalizations about poetry from my own experience. However, since I have nothing else with which to work, I might as well try and dissect my own experience w/r/t emotion & poetry and see where that gets me.

The idea of a "formula of a particular emotion"
- emotion is not an end, but an actor or a force on an actor
- emotion is not delineated or discrete (enough for a poem to notate specifically, at least)

I may also have a problem with the separation of "concept" and "emotion" here...

"Intense concepts make us able to articulate desire; we become capable of saying how we feel."

Intense concepts are articulated through desire; we become capable of letting desire speak.

Desire is a concept, intensified?

"A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of a particular emotion..."

A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events are arranged in relation to emotion.
They take their form and order in part from one emotion, or more than one; however, they also take their form and order from concept and image.

Sublimation.

Desire & emotion are the things on which we have a handle. What comes of them is poetry.
Emotion is a formula for poetry. Technique or craft administered to emotion is a formula for better poetry.

The result of the poem is not necessarily the intensification of emotion. Perhaps the rediscovery of emotion? The opening up of an emotion: if the emotion is the poem's source, then over the course of the poem's writing the emotion expands to image, sound, concept, narrative, event, object, and at the end the emotion is made more... full? Perhaps not intensification so much as a movement toward wholeness? A striving?

This is not thought out well. I think it comes back again to my preoccupation with process and exploration and revelation. Nothing goes in a straight line, not poetry, certainly not emotion. Poetry's system of notation doesn't represent an emotion, it brings to light what was contained in what we thought was an emotion. But was a poem all along?

I have a seed: a feeling, an image, a phrase. Emotion and desire are the forces that come up when I consider the seed, and tease it open, and link it to a greater thing, and move it from itself into a poem. I use what technique I have to focus emotion and desire in relation to the seed, and what I want from it.