Dave
Yes, I'd go along with a lot of what you say. Not a couple of your
points. Curiously I suspect that writing poetry may be more socially
connected than writing novels - which is a lonely and desperate
business, like a marathon run. There is (or can be) the connection
between the poet, her/his uttering the poem and an audience; also the
possibility of an integration between writing and the world around at
the time (thinking "Lunch Poems"). I'd say it's more the sheer focus on
the language itself, the intensity of awareness that's the difference.
Spirits rather than weak beer.
But it is perhaps, yes, like trainspotting with language as focus - I've
been led to believe that the real thing, the arcanum, about
trainspotting is not just ticking off the numbers, but working out the
working schedules, the patterns behind the appearances of the locos.
Apply that to words - why is the word "clarity" coming up yet again in
this poem? Who or what's scheduling the words' appearances?
Yes, that "mostly I'd say we are our stories, narratives, confabulations
even. These happen within, and without the self"
I'm not so sure about the web of language - there's a comforting
concreteness there one could trust in. So I don't. I think it's more
like some moving wave of complexity tying the physicality of words and
language with the range of possible responses - shifting, elusive,
contradictory, following the non-linear patterns of fluid mechanics. The
negative aspects that I think we both are aware of as possibilities
within the writing of poetry being like eddies and vortices, or sudden
changes of depth.
I do like Heraclitus' river as fundamental metaphor for most things.
Perhaps learning to swim would be a good idea.
best wishes
Peter Philpott
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