I must check this out! Thanks Mark.
I is dead, the poet said.
/That aint grammatical, Poet.
/(Of course, you do know I am God, and God is dead.)/
/
Dom wrote:
But the point may simply be to
get the view from somewhere else: an immanent perspective can still be
an impersonal one, since not all of the things in the world capable of
having a perspective are persons.
Dom, this can be wild.... I am thinking something along this line about
an immanent I that is no longer human, no longer a three dimensional
character that is a distinct person. A type of irresponsible production
by a dead God and so forth.
Douglas Barbour wrote: It's not so much to get rid of the 'I' as to let
it go free,
Doug, this really does sound like a rather Deleuzian thing to say. (D&G
argue this in the Rhizome Plateau, for example, and perhaps demonstrates
the conventionality of D&G, as well, if you can read through my
flippancy. I do agree.)
Where does this thing come from that says: get rid of the I or don't
use it or using I is bad or whatever? It may have something to do with
the critique of the Subject in recent philosophy (and theory) but it
would be a crude reading which simply claims; don't say I. Lacan's
argument, from memory, that even when not using I, as in so-called
objective language like journalism, there is still an implied I (so long
since I read Lacan.)
Douglas Clarke's post about the ego and needing to get the I and have a
strong ego to write poetry I read as saying very much the same thing. (I
think it was Doug Clarke, in a recent post. I wanted to keep the remark
but can't find it, oh well.) Anyway, rather then giving this ego and I a
Freudian reading in this post, which I felt didn't really work in terms
of Freud's theory of the ego, there is another reading of gathering the
I, making it a strong ego, and letting that go in poetry. In this sense
this ego can be a cracked ego. It becomes too strong and it cracks
itself, so to speak. In this freedom of the crack poetry happens. I may
be giving Doug Clarke's comment a reading which may not be intended and
running away with another reading, but it was a wonderful comment to
make, so I am happy to run away with it.
>
> Douglas Barbour also wrote
> So where is the auto/bio/graphical that is not
> also fictional, that is constructed within the poem?
>
I have just been reading this PhD thesis (Alistair Welchman , Wild above
rule or art, Warwick, 1995) which finds a thought in Milton's Paradise
Lost about the production of matter and the problem of hylomorphism.
There are two things happening, first the epic poem is already
theretical but also the thesis writer runs away with this thought and
puts it inside non-fiction prose, the academic technical language of
philosophy, which is constrained by the rigors of logic such as logical
contradiction and impossibility. A distinction then can be made between
non-fiction prose and poetry where poetry does not know the rules of
logic such as contradiction and impossibility. Does poetry then only
know the possible? Perhaps only in the sense of exhaustion which
leaves only possibility? If poetry does not know the impossible then it
also cannot know the possible, perhaps. Perhaps it only knows what is
unknown? Anyway, to leave the thesis (which goes on to argue for wild
intransitive production after being infected by Milton) it also becomes
obvious that placing prose fiction like short stories and novels with
poetry is a more useful move then the verse/ prose distinction. Then
questions arise as to biography, such as Edmund White's biography of
Genet. Is this a non fiction biography or another Edmund White novel? It
could be read as fiction. Anyway, to get to the point, distinctions
rather then being absolute or set in place, can become mobile and be
made for whatever may be useful. (You make up your own distinction as
you need them.) So confessional can become say dramatic monolog, for
example. Fiction as nomadic. The I word can be given a simliar treatment
so as it no longer refers to the private production that is me and is
always distinctly me. I can become landscape, for example, which may
involve a sort of flattened character, ala JG Ballard. In the
distinctions I may make this would have more to do with poetry then
prose. It is a free I. I can do what I damn well like!
I have just been reading again joanne burns's monolog, real land. An
excerpt follows:
i'm gonna be free, travel round and see real land. not
maps in books, travel round in me own wheels. not gonna have any
boss breathin down me neck all day. think i'll be a semi-trailer
driver. out on the road with me tranny. ridin high in the cabin
wearin what i like.
that i character infected a character some time ago now which I am
writing as third person and as an i character. Enouh anyway, I rave too
long. (The lower case i also interests me, BTW)
best wishes
Chris Jones.
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