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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