-----Original Message-----
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Oct 8, 2003 9:32 AM
Perhaps words, written one after the other, merely present an
illusion of linear time, like time itself? In any case, one of my
many failings, I can't but think of time as a human centred
invention: without meaning (which is also a human invention) unless
marked by the narrative of a life. Sometimes poetry seems to me to
be an insight through those markers to an eternal, the present in all
its plenitudes, past and future all together.
Yes, I think so, that "words, written one after the other, merely
present an illusion of linear time" because they cannot but
help but be read sequentially, if not chronologically, and then
these other words, in English anyway (as well as other languages,
but not all), bring even more of the narrative framework with them,
and it does seem to me too to be a kind of invention, or illusion.
And that's why I think that smell and taste are so evocative of
memory, because the past is entirely present in the smell of
paint or madelines, the narrative or illusion of linear time doesn't
really exist in the body but in language's construction of memory
or narrative or fiction. The body is always in the present tense,
and poetry is perhaps, as you say, in the eternal tense, being
as it is of the body but disembodied into language.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
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