Yup--one discovers the ground at each step. The poem is the act of
discovery. So, a series of actcidents.
Which leads to:
Immediately after I received your message I received one with the header
"Tons of sportbras now available," which seemed to me a great title or
first line. The entire text was "Need directions or want some more
information about the Muddy Buddy?" Inscrutable as late Celan. Makes my day.
Which leads to:
and sometimes discovery is a momentary confusion of figure and ground, so
that the perceived, separated from context, assumes a new importance. But
humor should never be explained.
Mark
>Mark, the story you tell about Jane Flanders and 'decorative surfaces' is a
>wonderful encapsulation of what continues to frustrate me about much recent
>poetry. And yet I love decorative surfaces. This seems to me to be another
>area where a simultaneous having and eating of the cake might be the
>ultimate target of contemporary writing.
>The point being - I STILL think that what tends to get overlooked in
>discussions _I've_ had in writing program circles is the _grounding_ of
>writing. I'm not saying that it's ever something that could or indeed
>_should_ get established, inasfar as this can be as debilitating as the
>encouragement towards diminished ambition that literary influence in the UK
>seems to have concentrated on for the last 50 years. But an acknowledgement
>of _groundlessness_ is in itself productive, no? that your writing choices
>are thereafter considered as contingent on the other ongoing fluctuations
>and whims you make in your life, ethical, perceptional [is this a word?],
>humorous, POLITICAL (woops), formal... or in your refusal of any or all of
>the above categories. You'd still have to reflect on them, or ignore them
>to an extent not normally permitted by the social inheritance scheme we
>silently and continually acknowledge, which confers unconscious privileging
>of one option whilst seeking to convince us of our freedom of choice. I
>guess having had experience with workshops and writing classes what
>frustrates me is the sense that none of these questions are remotely
>interesting to the prematurely aged watercolourists with whom I've shared
>precious, now irretrievable time. And yet a sense of certain decisions
>having been made re: these very points seems to mark out the poetry I
>_continue_ to read having glance at it. The GROUNDS of persuasion to keep
>reading, as it were and to drive the point home in a shabby Ford Escort,
>maybe one of the old ones with its arse (boot / trunk) sticking out.
>
>Time to sleep.
>
>Best,
>
>Malcolm
>
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