> Chris Hamilton-Emery <[log in to unmask]
> I mean, we don't have souls, and certainly not immortal ones: though
> you did make me smile at that thought, and that wonderfully bankrupt
> tradition too. There's so much that's new in the world, we can't be
> constantly be going back over the same ground, though I know you're
> trying too here. Plato didn't know about stem cells, or nuclear
> power, or black holes. If I learn something new I don't personally
> feel I'm remembering it. Though I'm impressed you think you do know
> everything and have merely forgotten.
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.
> Okay, I'd like to go with the flow, let's take four lines, each of a
> regular syllabic pattern, separated by a line space and ending in
> alternating rhymes, and let's follow your argument that this has a
> meaning independent of the words.
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".
> I mean all poetry has a form. it couldn't be written down or
> recited without a form. In that sense though I guess I am in
> agreement here, that one does perceive it this way, after all I
> could hardly argue that I can perceive a formless poem.
I basically didn't mean anything more mysterious than that, though
few people seem to realize any more how obvious or how important that
is.
> Most people work these things out on paper, I'd've thought.
I usually work out form in my head, and specific words in a
combination of mentally and on paper.
====
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his
limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry
reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power
corrupts, poetry cleanses.
-- John F. Kennedy
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