Dear Randolph,
Well, I have to say that, while I understand Peter's intent,
and Alison's sense of his poem as parodic of certain attitudes
toward asylum seekers in Australia, and Dominic's post too,
that I basically agree with you and your original feeling about
this deliberately 'bad' poetry. And I don't know, I think the claim that it was to be morally or ethically 'bad' in addition to formally, linguistically, etc, bad makes it not more understandable, but less.
Here, there are these wonderful rugs that woven by Navajos, usually in various geometric patterns, though the repertoire
has expanded somewhat, partly just in response to the tourist market. But traditionally, a Navajo weaver would always make a small deliberate mistake in a rug, no matter how beautiful or perfectly woven it was. The idea being that to attempt to make a perfect thing was to disturb in some way the order of things, a kind of pride or presumption perhaps, though it wouldn't have been put that way, but more in the sense of disturbing the "beauty way," the balance of the order of the universe.
However, to make a deliberately bad poem seems to me to be of the opposite order, to deliberately write a bad poem implies perhaps that otherwise one would not write one, and so implicitly in that is perhaps the pride or presumption that Navajo example eschews. So perhaps the assumption that underlies the writing of such a bad poem belies the claim that the ethical or moral 'badness' it expresses is merely parodic of the 'badness' of others.
I don't know, I am just thinking 'aloud', not making some absolute claim. But I think it is very hard to tell that the asylum seekers poem is parodic of attitudes held only by others, and not the writer of the poem, unless one knows the poet and his good intent or reads the poem bracketed by his explanation of that intent.
So anyway, for what this is worth,
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
-------Original Message-------
From: wildhoney <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 05/27/03 12:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: For The Order of The Turkey Quill
>
> Dear Alison, Dominic and Peter,
I'm thinking through your replies. In my initial post I described my
feelings, which I felt, though I do not assert that I was right to feel
them.
Some incoherent responses:
posts here are not just to a petc audience since the archive is open.
While
listmembers will be aware of the context of the turkey quill posts, a
casual
surfer might not.
I wonder if the murder of duchesses is as much a social problem as racist
attacks, verbal or otherwise, on asylum seekers.
Dominic, I wasn't suggesting that my response is the only possible one.
I'm surprised at how sad this thread is making me. Wonder what's going on
there?
best
Randolph
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Howard" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: [POETRYETC] For The Order of The Turkey Quill
> On Mon, 26 May 2003, wildhoney wrote...
>
> >Why would anyone want to pretend
> >to be a rascist?
>
> The brief was to write a "bad" poem, and I decided to take that to mean
> bad in a moral sense, rather than just in a technical or literary one.
> (I admit I pulled my punch here; racism of the type depicted is bad, but
> I can think of worse things.) My intention was to be parodic and
> satirical.
>
> I thought that posting it under the Turkey Quill banner and to a petc
> audience would indicate clearly enough where it was coming from.
>
> In one sense, I don't really understand why the question is being asked.
> Literature (and I realise my piece has little claim to the term) is full
> of nasty characters. Browning, in "My Last Duchess" is pretending to be
> a far nastier character than mine, e.g.
>
> I'm not trying to insist that you should like or approve my post,
> Randolph, but you asked a question, and I'm trying to answer it.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Peter
>
> <a target=_blank
href="http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/">http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/</a>
>
>
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