Henry,
Well put.
But just +when+ did "aesthetic" become a prohibited category? It was still
around in the sixties, when Beardsley was writing _Aesthetics_, but then ...
The ideologues took over from the poets in the critical field.
> There are so many levels & degrees of focus to these issues of form. It's
> clear that when New Formalists OR avant-gardist postmoderns are attacking
> "mainstream free verse", they are talking about the particularly
> ingratiating, technically adept & powerful brand of formica being
> produced for the last 25 years in the US, and NOT to the free verse
> produced in Europe for the last 100 yrs.
Yes, but (if my limited encounters are anything to go by) it not just a
lamentable ignorance of the range of non-metrical forms, but also an
incredibly constricted universe in the range of traditional metrical forms
as well. how can they breathe?
(And as an aside, I think the term "free verse" has more to answer for as a
blanket avoiding of questions than even "avant guard".)
> Toward the end of the century it seems that the attention was so
> focused on ideological issues & theoretical notions of language
> & the status of knowledge, that form as a specifically aesthetic
> phenomenon was no longer recognized. Postmodern experimentalists,
> mainstream free-versers, new formalists occupy completely separate
> compartments, speaking different languages.
Too true, too bloody true ...
> I think it's
> a mistake always to think of experiment as a "movement" or a
> program: I think real inventiveness stems mostly from a sense
> of lack, need, frustration, insufficiency - a need to "formulate"
> experience with new kinds of metaphorical shorthand.
Yes.
> (My complaint can be summarized as this: the contemporary avant-garde
> dilutes or avoids the aesthetic dimension, while the New Formalists
> miss the irreplaceable function of INVENTION in their trumpet-calls
> for a "return".)
Again, yes.
Sorry, mostly an "I agree with Henry" post, this.
Robin
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