Matthew writes:
>> It's not quite as neat as that, I think. _The Nightfishing_ is a
>> philosophical poem in the sense that it shows an obsession with
> Heraclitean
>> flux:
>>
>> I bent to the lamp. I cupped
>> My hand to the glass chimney.
>> Yet it was a stranger's breath
>> From out of my mouth that
>> Shed the light.
Robin writes:
>
> Matthew is correct, and I was (more than perhaps) being a little glib
> here -- but I do think there is more of a foregrounding of philosophical
> issues (and different ones -- primarily language?) in MML and IITP.
>
> But I don't know the earlier Graham as well as I should. Not so much that I
> shouldn't talk, as that I was hoping that, as happened with Matthew, someone
> would say something more pertinent than I could.
>
> But I +would+ be interested in Candice's take on the later Graham, given the
> language dimension. Grammersow and all.
Hmm. L=A=N=G-Pig?
One thing that this thread's spun out is the many different senses in which
"philosophical poem" is used or understood, from the narrow but intense
engagement with a single philosopher--WS w/Heraclitus, Jor.G with Nietzsche,
especially, in her early work; then widening her interests and engagements
with philosophies (of science, e.g.) as well as philosophers over the years,
producing "The Guardian Angel of the Swarm" (her lyrico-philosophical
response to Deleuze's engagement with Descartes) in _The Errancy_ (I haven't
read _Swarm_ yet)--to the sort of long, slow, expansive meditations on ideas
that once defined the philosophical poem against the lyric and now would
seem to be in some poets a function of maturity (if Robin's right about the
progression). Then there are the "profoundly lyrical" (and relatively brief,
highly intense) Prynne poems Alison's pointed to and the sort of intensely
philosophical lyric by Jorie Graham that I take "The Surface" to represent.
Does that cover the base or have I missed some other senses of
"philosophical" poetry that have emerged, or should? (Besides "bombastic," I
mean, although that could well designate some largeness or loftiness of tone
or perspective that's not necessarily all bad.) The issue of intellectuality
seems a necessary condition but not one to be conflated with
intelligence--and certainly not at the expense of the lyric, any more than
the conventional imagism or intense feeling associated with lyric poems
should or would be denied those we call philosophical--right?
As for Robin's question about my take on WS, I wish I knew his work better
and more of it too, but I have just come across a selection of poems from
_Malcolm Mooney's Land_, so will go off and read those now.
More anon,
Candice
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