Tim wrote:
>Because how can we separate what we
>are reading with our vision - however constructed - of its author.
Me, I don't have trouble, but it's no doubt a result of a chaotic bad
habits from childhood. That is, I'd read poems and remember them, but
forget entirely or not notice in the first place who the author was. I'm
not saying it's in any way a superior way to think of poems, just that I
did think of them as just that, artefacts of words in which the maker's
thumbprint was not primarily relevant; and as I've got older, and become
more organised, there is still a whiff of that in my reading. Poetry for
me always aspires to a condition of anonymity.
And to be less personal: I have always felt very hostile to the kind of
biographical readings of works which is currently prevalent, because for
it to be properly illuminating it requires a degree of subtlety and an
acknowledgement of elisions and distortions, a _tact_, which often
doesn't happen, and it encourages a kind of enclosure of possibilities in
psychological expectations. And, as you say, it also becomes a hallmark
of authenticity, which can't but be misleading. We're all authentic
persons, aren't we?
I often wish I had the guts and flair to lie magnificently whenever I am
asked about myself. But alas, I can only lie in the most mundane ways.
Best
Alison
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