> Hi Jim
>
> I'm catching up on things on the list, I seem to have this thing
> called a life in between writing posts, but, yes:
>
> >i don't see anything in your list that would turf out godel, turing, or
> chomsky actually, david. even turing 'raged against the machine': the
> machine that prosecuted him for being homosexual.<
>
> I agree with raging against the machine. My point is that, though
> writings, expressions, articulations might have a quality that one
> can term 'poetic' it does not mean that they are poems or the
> work of poets. It's a difficult subject to map: let's talk about the
> Duchamp 'Fountain'. It was presented, in 1917, in a particular
> context, that of the elitist and snobbery bound and money based high
> culture of the visual arts. It was great, but something that
> could only be done once. The result has been endless imitations that
> are no more than empty gestures, what you end up with is BritArt,
> personified so brilliantly by the slaughterhouse businessman
> Damien Hirst, who I suppose has made a new connection between the
> laws of perspective and formaldehyde, and our magnificent
> inarticulate , know what I mean, Tracy Emin, like, you too can be
> stupid and successful and pretend you know nothing about Saatchi,
> the Spice Girl of modern art. Now applying this kind of stuff to
> as impoverished and sidelined an art as poetry is rather like
> setting out to mug a beggar, the cultural space for poetry is as
> thin as a shadow, and what little it does have is DESIRED by the
> horrible generation of arts administrators, I nearly spelt
> administraitors, that we have spawned. I still shiver with horror at the
> memory the other year of sitting with a local arts admin person
> in a pub and having to tell her what the BIG WORDS meant in a
> document. But she was only an MA. What we have in this country is
> Idiot Culture. I agree with you about extending the notion of
> poetry, but remember that old saw: don't throw out the baby along
> with the bathwater.
>
> All the Best
>
> Dave
Hi Dave,
Well, Duchamp is considered the grandad of conceptual art, isn't he. Freeing
visual art from physical form. Art as idea. Of course even this is open to
open to exploitation, as anything is. People were tired of more paintings,
more of the same. Tired of art that could no longer be deeply expressive.
Types of language wear out, don't they. Same with visual art. Sometimes the
thing needs blasting to reach areas that aren't crusted over with cliche.
The cultural space for language is a bit different from the cultural space
for poetry, isn't it. Why? It's all poetry's territory. Poets may claim
every last serif of it for the republic of letters. Stick a flag in it,
somebody, please.
ja
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