I don't have anything to add to Christopher's answer.
And yes, Larissa, please continue with your poems.
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> <snip>
> the 'accusation' that the Wars (any wars) could be forgotten by writers.
> poets write what they know & what they want; my generation, so far removed
> from the horror of daily lack & fear that touched every country in europe,
> is not likely to think about the World Wars in a literary sense [KS]
> <snip>
>
> That begs rather a lot of questions. Writers... do they spring fully formed
> and armed, different and separate, not the crafters of war but the warriors
> of craft as it were, from Zeus's forehead or are they shaped (at least in
> part) by what's in cultural memory? Knowing and wanting ... does anyone
> either know (about) something or want something in that very pure and
> certain way? Can there be, in other words, a subjectivity which is not
> socially produced?
>
> The idea of thinking 'about' war 'in a literary sense' also makes me
> squirm.
> Surely one thinks _out of_ (through being part of) not _about_. Otherwise
> one is excerpting oneself from the world. And there are different sorts of
> forgetting. There's inattention: Can't think about war now ... too busy!
> There is inadvertence: Where's that war gone now? I know I had it when I
> was
> taking the milk out of the fridge. And there is the optimistic forgetting
> of
> attempting to turn the page: We are over all that now... Why can't we just
> move on?
>
> As with other activities, Poetry isn't _obliged_ to 'think about' war as
> some sort of compulsory or special subject. But it does have to count its
> own cost: how it is made small by its incapacities and made larger by what
> it attempts to grasp.
>
> CW
> _______________________________________________
>
> 'Life is too precious to spend it with important people.'
> (Harry Partch)
>
--
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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