----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 5:32 AM
Subject: Re: strong language and other words
> Pope did that too ...
And it's fine
It's not speech, it's not a puzzle, not a newsstory
I was thinking about this sort of issue at dawn - but it was cold and I went
back to bed - and thinking what a red herring accessibility is
(Brief jump - Todd I am taking seriously what I understand of your position
and thinking how to explain why I am opposed to it, which is btw nothing to
do with being against song (quite tghe opposite) or popularity)
and also I was thinking about raw experience. I don't deny the intensity of
your experiences, Todd; but what about people who find themselves under
fire. Think of all the places - ulster, bosnia, chechnia, so much of
africa...
There's a sneer of Coleridge in Biographia where as I remember he takes
Wordsworth's criteria for poetry and asks why then there is not a poet at
the top of every mountain... Bit vague on the details and the borrowers have
my biographia; but something of the principle is there
Ive heard a few bombs go off, but am glad to say I have not been nearer. I
imagine it outdoes any venue-engineered mixture of breakages and bodily
fluids
Intense experience often leaves the experiencers silent. I knew a chap who'd
been concentrationed in the second world war. If asked about that, he stared
into space... further inquiries brought a shake of the head... push him
further and he cried
I don't see a 1:1 relationship between experience and writing. DHLawrence
was mentioned; and I remember reading an account of how he engaged a past
girlfriend in discussion of their friendship and so procured substantial
parts for his text of the Miriam-Paul relationship in Sons and Lovers. She
apparently was miffed. But then there's no 1:1 between decency and writing
ability
Experience doesn't lead diredctly to poetry and poetry does not communicate
the experience
& altered states... we all (?) know the stunning insights to be experienced
under our preferred substance only to find it banal when returning to
default setting
telling it how it is in the sense of communicating subjective experience is
not really what poetry's about
but poetry does help cut through incommunicability of our subjective
experience, and the inadequacy of our daily language
L
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