Wha?
I am finding the various discussions of the task of poetry w/r/t: emotion... interesting, and very thought-provoking, but...
The things that are apparently cliches of and assumptions about poetry and its relation to the rest of literature, to language, to author and audience are just not assumptions that I had made, I guess. Didn't read the right (same) things, or didn't draw the right (same) conclusions about them? But I know that if I tried to answer the big poetry question, "emotion" and "passion" would appear very infrequently -- not at all? -- in my response. Is this non-standard? Is it obvious to the rest of the world that a poem is a way of notating or transforming or focusing an emotion? Why is it not obvious to me?
I think that often a poem works when it shows how it doesn't work. This is similar to what I think about language in general, though, and so is not really a surprise. It's the containing of something not containable that often makes a poem effective. The precision and contained-ness of a poem around the imprecision and un-contain-ability of content (emotion, narrative, tension, conflict, image) is the usefulness of the poem. An acknowledgement: I, the poem, am this and am more than this and this is more than I.
Well, that makes me sound like a big space cadet.
The poem is a necessary acknowledgement made out of language that experience is greater than language and that language is the stuff of experience.
The world is composed of the sign; the world is limited by the sign; the sign cannot contain or depict the world.
Stuff, stuff, sign, sign. Hm.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Something else about the sometimes harsh way I deal with reality by beating it to subjugation. Same as the old times, but different. I will take what you are going to do and do it to myself because nothing is more important to me than choice. I absorb change as fast as possible to avoid surprise. Adapt adapt! This had something to do with poetry before. Oops. Revisit!
The things that are apparently cliches of and assumptions about poetry and its relation to the rest of literature, to language, to author and audience are just not assumptions that I had made, I guess. Didn't read the right (same) things, or didn't draw the right (same) conclusions about them? But I know that if I tried to answer the big poetry question, "emotion" and "passion" would appear very infrequently -- not at all? -- in my response. Is this non-standard? Is it obvious to the rest of the world that a poem is a way of notating or transforming or focusing an emotion? Why is it not obvious to me?
I think that often a poem works when it shows how it doesn't work. This is similar to what I think about language in general, though, and so is not really a surprise. It's the containing of something not containable that often makes a poem effective. The precision and contained-ness of a poem around the imprecision and un-contain-ability of content (emotion, narrative, tension, conflict, image) is the usefulness of the poem. An acknowledgement: I, the poem, am this and am more than this and this is more than I.
Well, that makes me sound like a big space cadet.
The poem is a necessary acknowledgement made out of language that experience is greater than language and that language is the stuff of experience.
The world is composed of the sign; the world is limited by the sign; the sign cannot contain or depict the world.
Stuff, stuff, sign, sign. Hm.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Something else about the sometimes harsh way I deal with reality by beating it to subjugation. Same as the old times, but different. I will take what you are going to do and do it to myself because nothing is more important to me than choice. I absorb change as fast as possible to avoid surprise. Adapt adapt! This had something to do with poetry before. Oops. Revisit!
posted by stower at 12:56 PM
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