So. . . what do you think?
I think, yes, but of course, prose fiction & printed books, hey, they can
change your life, they have changed your life, indeed, indubitably.
but I also think yes, what is poetry then? whence this impulse toward a
more immediate, intense verbal music? actually I think singing is innate &
poetry comes from music & song & returns to it.
writing is a distillation or reification or preservative of some kind of
immediate presence & gesture, right? or perhaps not. . . perhaps writing
is writing. . . writing is only itself, something unique rather than a
deflection of something else. . .
perhaps poetry has attempted to assimilate "writing" in this distilled
sense. . . but can it do so & yet retain its roots in archaic performance &
song? poetry as composed & recited with the voice?
how does that line go from "Leaves of Grass" - "this is no book, but a
man". . . something like that
and I think there is an agon taking place between the witnessing presence
of the poet ("sons of harmony", Pushkin called them) & the cast-off mirror
of the text, of literature. . .
Henry
At 12:00 PM 6/7/02 -0700, you wrote:
>6/7/02
>
>Dear Henry,
>
>Oh. OK.
>
>M. F. McAuliffe
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