Hi Jon
> To argue this would require a very far ranging discussion which
> though worth while doesn't belong on this list. For the present I just
> want to reject the charge of hocus-pocus by saying that there is nothing
> in modern physical or biological science (at least within my
> understanding of them which is that of a typical modern educated person)
> which is at odds with the tradition I described, and that that
> tradition's statement that we all share an immortal soul (or
> unconscious) can be defended from a viewpoint which is entirely
> materialist. For specific arguments, and before judging this tradition
> exhausted, read Norman O. Brown, Weston LaBarre, and David Bakan.
I guess I just don't want to be part of that tradition. I wish, really wish
I had time to read the above, but my family, my job, hell, my writing gets
in the way. I begin to feel like I'm picking a fight from boredom and I'm
honestly not. I just don't buy into immortal souls, predefined patterns of
experience, or, ultimately, the value of regurgitation. I'm not educated so
I can't sympathise with your views, but I don't for a moment doubt their
erudite and humanist thinking is obviously important to you, at least as far
as I know your poems and critical work. This isn't the right place, and
you'd be far better placed than me to have these discussions. I am however
speaking as a poet to a poet. For me the motivations and models are quite
different. I guess we both have to accept that. I'm not against old forms
either. I sounded churlish earlier when I was attempting to horse around.
> It seems to me the exercise is too easy to need doing. Maybe a
> better because more accessible example would be a sonnet: if "Shall I
> compare thee to a summer's day" weren't a sonnet it wouldn't do what it
> does, since what it does is fit thought, sound, and emotional patterns
> to and against the traditional sonnet form. If it was working against
> another form it would obviously be doing something else, and if it were
> working against no form, then it would be doing nothing at all as a
> poem. And to the question "Is that all the poem does, doesn't it have a
> meaning apart from that," the answer is that any meaning it has in the
> sense of "discourse" is a subset of "what it does", and it is the
> latter, not the former, which is the real "meaning".
Not sure about this. If you are saying that the meaning of a poem is
inseparable from its form, I agree. However I wouldn't ever want to say that
a poem meant something only in terms of its form and this would obviously be
untrue.
> I basically didn't mean anything more mysterious than that, though
> few people seem to realize any more how obvious or how important that
Yeah. It is obvious and worth stating. Sorry.
> I usually work out form in my head, and specific words in a
> combination of mentally and on paper.
I can't see it until it's written down. but then I have to hear it to be
convinced.
Very best to you Jon.
Good night
C
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