I'm glad to hear that, Mairead. But that quote did make me come out
in goosebumps. Maybe it's some deep psychic problem I have with
mothers.
Btw, I was very fascinated by yours and Gabe's interview. I didn't
know Gabe was such an Action Man (black belts and training vicious
dogs, gracious!) I always knew you were an Action Woman, and that's
why I named the heroine in my fantasy novel after YOU!
Cheers
A
>He's a very generous man. He came to Purdue to do the interview with Dan
>Morris that's in The Long Schoolroom (transcribed by yours truly). He
>met each of the creative writing students individually, for a
>consultation. Later, when I waswriting my dissertation in absentia from
>Purdue, I adopted him as my adviser (he's at Johns Hopkins). He's a very
>rare bird, incredibly knowledgeable, intuitive, and funny.
>Mairead
>
>
>On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
>
>> Alison, yes the word is "demonized." Oh, Grossman's
>> poetics. He is a bit creepy, the only time I heard him
>> read, he appeared in something of the guise of an
>> undertaker and read this poem about a funeral. He has
>> a great booming voice that launches the poem out with
>> the same vigor that some kids throw their boats into
>> the pond, and then he laughed too maniacally for most
>> when he got to the part about the undertakers. But he
>> has been a sort of agitator, as when he appeared at a
>> certain wellknown writing program as a guest lecturer
>> and announced that they were all writing as if
>> modernism had never occurred. So one must take him
>> into account when talking of the anxieties of American
>> poetry.
>>
>> Rebecca
>>
>> http://www.thedrunkenboat.com
>> --- Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> > At 12:46 PM -0800 20/2/02, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
>> > >The
>> > >prolongation and, as it were, consummation of her
>> > will
>> > >toward a golden world is as veracious an account as
>> > I
>> > can give of my motive to art. . .
>> >
>> > >Yes, I have insisted...on the notion that it is
>> > >_precisely_ her speech. . . I feel about poetry
>> > that
>> > >it is a demonized activity, that it is not. . . the
>> > >speech of a mortal or merely singular person.
>> > Poetry
>> > >in _my_ view has its power because it is the speech
>> > >not of an individual but of another who is more
>> > than
>> > >and different from the individual."
>> >
>> > Rebecca, I find this quotation totally bizarre and a
>> > little creepy -
>> > I guess he means "daemonic" rather than "demonized"?
>> > (I doubt
>> > poetry's important enough to be "demonized".) It
>> > has elements of
>> > Psycho about it.
>> >
>> > I find Lorca's idea of the duende useful when I want
>> > to think in
>> > impersonal terms or want to find a way to describe
>> > that sense that
>> > writing poetry goes beyond the conscious quotidian
>> > self - but from my
>> > recollection Lorca describes duende, which is
>> > certainly daemonic
>> > given that the duende are originally a kind of
>> > malign pixy, is an
>> > expression of the destructiveness of creativity -
>> > that is, an
>> > abstraction of an inner process, rather than an
>> > appeal to a kind of -
>> > exterior immortality??? Thinking of Shakespeare's
>> > Sonnets, where
>> > there are many appeals to immortality, the
>> > immortality exists only in
>> > the language, where the beloved and the lover's love
>> > are preserved
>> > forever despite the acknowledged corruption and
>> > mortality of the
>> > flesh - but it's an "individual" speaking, however
>> > fictional, and
>> > most clearly a fleshly individual.
>> >
>> > Hmmm.
>> >
>> > I'll have a coffee now to dispel the creeps.
>> >
>> > Best
>> >
>> > Alison
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> >
>> > Alison Croggon
>> >
>> > Home page
>> > http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>> >
>> > Masthead online
>> > http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>>
>>
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--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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