> I wasn't speaking of 'inspiration,' no more than I think Alison has been (I
> am not sure of Kona's comments in that way). So that I think the various
> forms of what Perloff neatly called 'Radical Artifice' would include the
> kind of listening I speak of as much as various forms of 'given' free
> writing. And I'm not at all sure that we should even introduce notions of
> 'truth' into this; leave that for the philosophers...? Honesty on the other
> hand....
>
> Douglas Barbour
Douglas,
I don't think I'm in disagreement with either you or Allison. I was
originally commenting in counterpoint to Kona's post.
I didn't wish to misrepresent or to devalue what Kona believes in
as a writer, but I was expressing my view that "listening," whether
one is speaking of a psychic (inner) listening or in the sense of
physical hearing (outer: a dripping tap or a leaf scuttling over pavement),
would not necessarily produce a better, deeper, truer, more honest
poem than a poem created "crassly" from a less mysterious source.
And that once produced, the made poem should be viewed
on its own terms and weighed as successful or a failure without
the taint of prejudice toward the poem that has sprung, Athena-like,
fully formed from one's head over the poem constructed
from that ultimate artifice: an exercise. (The former is, of course,
a gift one should be duly thankful for. These two being examples
of two ends of a creative spectrum; most poems are amalgams of
several creative modes of making.)
As I said, I wasn't trying to introduce the knotty topic of
autobiographical truth. Yet inevitably when delving into issues
of poetry making some verging on or merging with
philosophy may occur.
Finnegan
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