Dear All,
Apologies. I replied to Tim's interesting post and then hit the wrong
button, sending complete nonsense instead of the message I had
composed. I don't know what happened. Please forgive.
Mairead
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:12:16 -0500, mairead byrne
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> If you lived in America you wouldn't talk like that Tim. The price of
> poetry has gone through the roof here. Since the war began in Iraq
> things have really got rough; not only has the United States for a
> long time simply been slurping supplies as if there were no tomorrow
> but now that tomorrow is actually here there is no regulation,
> rationing, or even common sense. It looks like this government is
> prepared to drain poetry to the very last drop with no real thought as
> to how to replace it. Right now we still have enough for daily needs
> -- but at what a cost. I had a vat in my back yard for a long time,
> for a completely rainy day, but it was stolen last March. We didn't
> call it anything, on purpose. But it still went.
> Mairead
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 05:35:13 EST, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > An amusing list Rupert, but behind it I detect a common conceptual notion.
> > This notion is that there is this thing called poetry that is, as it were,
> > bound up with the human but only in the sense that it is the human that can
> > disclose it, give it shape. In other words it is the idea that independent
> > of history and usage 'poetry' still has an existence; therefore any usage of
> > the term in relation to questions of definition is, theoretically, a
> > speculation on the degree of agreement between the usage and the 'essence'.
> > I expect there is a philosophical term for it.
> >
> > I find that this kind of thinking about such things as poetry, art, or
> > whatever, is very often done by people who probably would not agree with the
> > idea that poetry had some kind of independent essence, so why do they talk
> > as if it did? If someone does actually believe that, because it fits the
> > metaphysics that stems from their theism or because they recognise poetry as
> > being a spiritual power within their mystical system, then OK , but I don't
> > think that is what we have here.
> >
> > My idea of 'poetry' is simply descriptive, so the question of 'what is
> > poetry?' or 'what is a poet?' is lightweight. From my point of view Jackson
> > MacLow was a poet because much of what he did looked and sounded and behaved
> > quite similarly to other things that i had witnessed being called 'poetry'.
> > But this doesn't automatically confer any mark of quality - there are loads
> > of things commonly called 'poetry' which have little or no quality. What
> > something is called is not what counts, or shouldn't.
> >
> > Tim A.
> >
> >
>
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