Some posts ago, I was asked to stop playing the fool and give explanation to
my
ideas on poetry. I was on holiday in Montecarlo and able to access Poetryetc
only in Internet Cafes. I am doing it know and defend my position, which has
been attached from various sides.
I still feel my flanks aching as a boxer fighting on  a ring with three
different competitors.
Anyhow, I was trained as a boxer by my brother, I did judo and karate in  my
childhood, and  therefore I can perfectly cope
with any kind of frontal, lateral and backward assault:

1) Poetic madness: a site such as Poetryetc should not only welcome
discourse about madness in connection to its members' personal history and
experience, or to welcome debates about madness as seen in psychiatric
textbooks.
A site of this kind should  not only favor the members' various literary or
aesthetic
theories on poetry in connection with mental instability,
but appreciate and foster the factual expression that madness might have in
a given
literary environment,
in other words,  it should be mainly interested in the variety of fruits
madness can produce:
among which,  linguistic textual frenzyness and satire.
This is not an apology for my behavior but a description of a tendency.

2) Poetry as the divine inspiration or, the poet as "the possessed".
  I am still expecting poets joining  a list to be aware of the fact that
this
is a site for debate, provocation, confrontation. I do not feel I really
need to
apologise for having
provoked people on line. There was no personal attack involved , but solely
a persona interacting with supposed other identities involved in a social
list of discussion.

The problem of our individual neurosis should not get in the way, when the
major issue here  is whether art itself
is indeed neurosis at its purest form or stage. With this, I am sure that
neurosis could also be
determined by an excess of rational thought, as in our case.

3) Poetry is the work of our IDs , not of our egos. Therefore, it is my
opinion that "personas" can be fully legitimized in getting all the credit
for creativeness.

4) For poetry, as for madness, an intense state of mind (at times, of
consciousness)  is the
essential requisite for invention. If we are to join a poetry list and
dispute about madness, one cannot react as a wounded ego.

Morality and code
conduct should be more important in medical sites where doctors are indeed
discussing "madness" as a disease.
Shouldn't madness, in Poetryetc,  be discussed
as a quality? Cicero said that no one can be a poet "who is not on fire with
passion and without a certain degree of frenzy", even when disturbing and
dangerous.

5) We all admit that satire, of any level and grade, could be regarded as
humanistic in spirit and aim, but Alas maybe mean in tone.  Often satire
poems
and satirists are judged as villainies, the former,  and villains, the
latter,
therefore burned  at the stake by censors in the public square.  But no one
can
deny satire can evoke laughs. Nevertheless, I say, those who are made
objects
of satire cannot always appreciate it. It is human. No one would expect
those who - for a reason or another - are set as targets, to be happy and
lay supine
while being  harassed. A certain degree of reaction is expected and serves
the purpose.

6) Those who play the fool are not necessarily stupid.  More often, they
pretend to be such to compensate the excess of intelligence which might
result as "irritating" . Of course, those who choose to play
this role, do not mind what consequences - in terms of bad fame -  they will
suffer. Evidently they are beyond any need of being approved and enjoy
responses such as rejection and irritation. Therefore, to react by telling a
satirist that he is
being "boring" , is the wrong strategy.

Pseudo Susannina, the Ugly Soliloquer




----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas Clark <[log in to unmask]>
To: Poetryetc <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2000 5:59 PM
Subject: habemus cattus


> Marty, eleven weeks old, slategrey with white chest and paws.
> After four hours hiding away mourning the lossof his mother and
> siblings he is now exploring the house. I can relax once he has
> used the littertray. And I must examine his bottom for proof
> that he is a `he'.
>


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