cris wrote:
>what about sonic and phonographic forms of inscription? What abou forms of
>indirect testimony (recordings of 'live' writing)?
Recordings of "live" writings seem to suggest that the writing was
written down in the first place. But I don't know if those forms of
recording really are "oral", as such - I would have thought one of the
defining aspects of orality is the necessity of human presence. I mean,
much as I am deeply pleasured by Basil Bunting's reading of Briggflats,
say, or Randolph Healy and Maurice Scully's cd Mouthpuller, I would
hesitate to call it "oral culture", depending as it does so heavily from
literate culture as much as oral traditions. But perhaps I was talking
about a more anthropological meaning of the word, ie pre-literate
cultures. And, I underline, in no sense making a hierachy of the oral
and written word.
I was really quibbling (and it was a quibble) with the statement about
poems "written to be read", which seems a little ambiguous, and reminded
me of something said by a prominent academic to a friend of mine about
John Ashbery's long poem Flow Chart - that it was a poem written in order
not to be read. It's an odd statement about any poem, quite apart from
the fact that the poem is suspiciously, almost compulsively, readable ...
(She checked it out with the Great Man himself, and he was somewhat
puzzled - "I always _hope_ that someone will read my poetry," he told
her).
Cheers
Alison
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