Dear Philip,
Why did I ask? Certainly not to criticise, this time or any. There is so
much unnecessary infighting.
I was struck by "wildly experimental", rather than "experimental"; and,
trying to work out what that might be, and thought of the Shelley character
in Thomas Love Peacock (title eludes me - I am distracted by other things
this morning)... But then one would go ahead anyway, even if the audience
did think the devil was being raised; & there might well be an ulterior
intention to the act of experimentation
I didn't know if you were speaking of personal experimentation or
confirmatory experimentation, whether it was play-experimentation or
exploratory experimentation... If "experimental" was being used to indicate
a particular style rather than an experimental approach
I was struck by the idea that there is a level of language which is
undeliverable at readings... ? Of what kind might the level be? In what
sense can something linguistic be undeliverable?
I couldn't see why your text couldn't be articulated. There might be trouble
or difficulty with lexical interpretation of parts or of the whole; but that
didn't seem to warrant the term "wildly experimental"; and it would be a
worry for the audience rather than the reader / performer
The only experiment involved I could see would be the one of reading it,
finding how to read it, observing audience reaction, evaluating the
experience, and that applies to all texts; yet your posting suggested that
the wild experimentation preceded these events to such an extent that *they
might never take place
I couldn't identify the practical question about delivering at readings
experimental poetry you think should be read from the page; though I can see
that "wild" might attach to such an experiment, leaving clapping with one
hand for the tyro natural philosophers in the audience.
Your answer to my request to know what the experiment was - that it's likely
in the linguistic construction of the speaker's persona - seems to answer
the question I asked; but then the poetry becomes experimental at the moment
of performance realisation rather than at the time of being put on the page
and doesn't seem wild.
Unless, of course, by "speaker" you mean the voice of the poem; but, if the
persona has been constructed, surely it can be articulated - unless the
experiment had failed; but that is a qualification made after you have
identified the nature of the experiment. If the linguistic construction of
the speaker's persona is in the act speaking the poem as writer on the page,
then I do not see why you call it wildly experimental: isn't that, or
something very like it, what one does in making a poem?
So I didn't know what you were asking us. Still don't
all the best
Lawrence
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