"These are not people sitting down to write a poem as
an intellectual
exercise."
Isn't every poem an intellectual exercise? After all,
you write poetry with your brain, not your liver or
kidneys :)
Seriuosly, the question of the meaning of
'intellectual' in this debate needs to be answered.
"`I am of the race that sang under torture' to
translate Rimbaud.
This is where PLath comes from. As did Catullis and
Sorley Maclean."
The young Rimbaud spent half his life in libraries. He
wrote a poem complaining about the service there, that
he couldn't get all the books he wanted...when his
mama tried to get him to help out with a bit of work
on the farm, he refused and shut himself up in a room
to write A Season In Hell...as soon as he took up
practical matters he gave up poetry...even when he did
zany wild stuff like take hashish (horrible bloody
stuff, if y'ask me) he planned it all out in advance
and intellectualised it half to death afterwards...and
wasn't Plath a star student at various American unis,
winning prizes for shapely academic essays?
Scott Hamilton
Subject: (Whilst drinking my coffee)
From: "William Herbert" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
X-Unsub: To leave, send text 'leave poetryetc' to
[log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Dear Douglas,
What's the distinction here?
Best,
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas Clark <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: In some agreement but not with Mairead
> And while I am waiting for the kettle to boil for my
coffee I would
> add that I think WAllace Stevens and Elizabeth
Bishop belong more to
> the intellectuals than to the poets, although they
were poets on
> occasion. The same could be said of Sidney Graham.
`I am of the race that sang under torture' to
translate Rimbaud.
This is where PLath comes from. As did Catullis and
Sorley Maclean.
These are not people sitting down to write a poem as
an intellectual
exercise.
=====
"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how
could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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