Hi Peter
yes, quite true, I did take a 'spin' on the 'malign forces' jocularity. It
is interesting to ponder paranoia and poetry, my take on it would be that
partly the amount of psychological investment poetry can take is so
disproportionate to its socialised recognition that it is likely to result
in distorted mental states. Poetry too is obsessional, although it could be
said so is train-spotting (!), or chess, or a thousand and one other things.
One of the things I tentatively suggest is that the problem that poetry has
is the semantic nature of its one material: words. It could be immediately
retorted: ah, what about the novel or the theatre? but both art-forms seem
to me to be much more socialised than poetry, theatre, as well as involving
other resources than words alone, is strongly collaborative, while the novel
is par excellence an art-form focused on being a socialised product, even if
the reading of novels nowadays, unlike say in Victorian Britain, is a
tendency towards the solitary. While I would not dismiss poetry that is
collaborative or open-ended I would say that it is fairly accurate
observation to make that poetry generally tends not to be.
I like your description of poetry as an absurd and excessive
self-projection, there's certainly truth in that. I'm interested in your
phrase about my remarks about:
>Your description of the poem coming from the I Ching and the state its
writing has produced in you, I would personally relate to another way of
attempting to describe poetry - as a more dangerous game in which the
self is risked in the attempt.<
Yup, I can see that. And in that, perhaps, one confronts what reflexive
consciousness is, what makes it. Or what makes the self-awareness that maybe
at times we can convey to thers. And the answer seems to be largely: words.
It is not to say there is no awareness without speech, nor recognition of
otherness in the world, but mostly I'd say we are our stories, narratives,
confabulations even. These happen within, and without the self, but at all
times within the web of language, that entity that is both private and
public, that is always of the now, yet stretches back to the immemorial,
that casual, scrappy thing of half-formed thoughts, unfinished phrases,
broken conversations, that yet also aspires to the gravity of the written,
those words chiselled in stone, that carries with it all the charge of power
structures from ages of generations.
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Philpott" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: "attracting attention" (was Re: Great Works website)
Dave
I think you took my rather banal jocularity on the problems of running a
website, and made a very personal but interesting observation on the
negative forces that can be invoked in being a poet.
"I don't know what it is I'm dealing with, and it seems to be coming
from all sides, and the worst thing one can do in such a situation is to
attract attention to oneself"
There has been recent discussion on the list which has involved poetry
as prayer (a profound and rewarding comparison). There is a fascinating
activity occurring in association with the list which involves poetry as
a collaborative open-ended game (also a profound and rewarding
comparison).
Your description of the poem coming from the I Ching and the state its
writing has produced in you, I would personally relate to another way of
attempting to describe poetry - as a more dangerous game in which the
self is risked in the attempt. I think the comparisons here, which
interest me greatly at present, are of poetry as an absurd & excessive
self-projection (like magic - possibly the only people more self-
obsessed & ridiculous than poets are [would-be?] dabblers in magic) and
leading despite all reason to a kind of power - and also of poetry as an
actual possession by language & otherness, by something needing voicing
which is not a component of the self and is potentially disruptive and
dangerous. I find "paranoia" (apart from being an arguably very rational
response to life in early 2004) alarmingly close to poetry.
Websites are rational but too bloody complicated. One can't really have
anything but trivial emotions over them.
Poetry is at times pain and fear and trembling. (And ... also)
best wishes
Peter Philpott
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