----- Original Message -----
From: erminia <[log in to unmask]>
To: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>; <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 8:47 PM
Subject: Re: Whereabouts
> > What's wrong with polarising? It's a very useful way of reaching what's
> > going on without having to be encumbered by the mitigations of society.
> .............
> > But I didn't polarise the whereabouters, they polarised themselves.
> >
> > /PR
> >
>
>
> The contributions and discussion around the theme of "Whereabouts" is
> entering the knitted fabric
> of ideological contraposition, which is becoming radical,
> made of an almost total unwillingness to consent with all - or almost
all -
> the other listees
> and with all - or almost all - their varied polarized accounts.
>
> It has been said that a few listees consider unacceptable the presence of
> the self-referentiality
> in some "Whereabouts": that shouldn't be a problem: in general, poets
find
> intolerable the presence,
> in poems they might like, of the autobiographical traces left by the
> individuality
> who happens to be the author of that piece of writing.
> (Matter of fact, the audience, - il volgo - the non-poets, would less
> probably nourish such strong feelings
> against authorship: they are most often prepared to meekly acknowledge the
> authority of the man or woman who wrote that poems and even admire him,
> often
> creating incomprehensible mythologies.
>
> The more one is himself a poet, the more one tends to deprive great
poetics
> of the body odors of their authors (one knows the feeling which makes one
> think: Hummm, I wished I wrote that!").
> Those who have this kind of inclination, would rather consider the poem a
> sort of spontaneous linguistic creation (spout out from the soil like a
wild
> mushroom in given favorable environmental conditions ...like for
instance,
> the Lake Districts, which is, in a way, a vulgarized version of the
> wordsworthian/plathian idea of the poet as the medium for the great
"spirit"
> of poetry itself.) than saying "He WAS a genius."
> Or one would rather prefer the author/poet to have already died (and be
> pleasantly posthumous) than admitting , during his lifetime; "You ARE a
> genius."
> But as long this unconscious process is recognized by ones consciousness
and
> handled with care,
> I feel that at the root of this inner distress doesn't lie a defeat .
> (Good Lord, am I so lonely as to spend my entire day by the computer
screen,
> trying to get some human contacts?.)
>
> (Hi, Alison. I am well. I hope the same for you..)
>
> Erminia
As they say, Erminia, for poets who have drawn their last caesura, 'death's
a career move'.
Cracker-barrel philosophy: people are so knotted round the root mammal of
acceptance/rejection, that they need others so much they hate them for it.
david
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