God was a mathematician. When you write poetry you
are playing being god. And you can get quite carried
away and be silly. You need a voice in your ear telling
you that you are mortal and that it is only by the
quality of your language that your words will survive.
And very few words do survive. But mathematics is not
a discourse.
Thanks Gerald too. And I must look in the archives
at this morning's messages which I seem to have
skipped over too quickly.
Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: [log in to unmask]
Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, KENT JOHNSON wrote:
> Doug Clark said,
>
> >This business of writing poetry seems an illusion to me
>
> Hey, Doug-- as to "beautiful minds," that phrase occured to me a
> few times as I read your posts on poetry and linguistics last week.
>
> On the above remark by you, if I may: The business of writing
> poetry seems an illusion to me, too. Henry's post just now about
> poetry's Being possibly *being* the adding of meaning to the
> meaning of meaning is another way, maybe, of saying that poetry
> is an illusion. A beautiful illusion, with terrible ghosts hiding in the
> attic.
>
> A question: Do you think poetry is any more an illusion than
> mathematics?
>
> Kent
>
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