This is a fascinating thread, Doug (Barbour that is, whom I am addressing)
I'm pondering matters here: as a profoundly stupid person myself I have
problems with literary theory. It is not that I am hostile to theory, in a
sub-Romantic sense, but that almost all I ever encounter as 'theory' doesn't
seem to contain any (theories that is). My thick skull understands theory in
the scientific sense, as being propoundings of demonstrable and falsifiable
hypotheses, and I don't seem to see any such in what pours out of academe.
All I see seem to be language games, played out in pursuit of career points.
Muller's point, and what Alison has said in support of it, seem to relate
poetry back to experiential reality, to the dark actualities we live in,
rather than neat little concepts like a certain song's little boxes all the
same. Somewhere in my mind an old name is floating: it's Erasmus, of all
people.
I can just see him now: standing In Praise of Folly.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 3:26 PM
Subject: Re: Back on Planet Earth
> Balance, of some sort, is of the essence, perhaps, like trying to balance
> on a beam, perhaps while slightly high?
>
> I was taking David's 'stupid' as more metaphor than description, as it
> seems Alison was doing too. Certainly, I find the poets I admire most have
> pretty damn fine intellects, but they also make me feel. I think of
Phyllis
> Webb, in one direction, of (say) Tom Raworth (some would choose Prynne) in
> another, of bpNichol in another, of Lisa Robertson & many others. Making
me
> feel & think, offering me energy to connect.
>
> Certainly dumb poems don't do anything for me...
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Beauty
> is to lay hold of Love
> is the leave
> to
> Charles Olson
>
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