Hi Marcus,
Not wanting to repeat what's in another post (just posted) I can't see a 
smooth flow between art & artifice and then "artificial" - the last word 
carries too many other connotations (at least for me) in todays world...
But hey, I’m fascinated by how you write about what you call “blurt” comedy 
-- and that's got me thinking about "blurt" art and that's got me thinking 
about blurt poems! It’s made me think of people at readings whose poems 
“gush” (a kind of politer form of blurting?) and some that “seep…” (I was at 
an interesting reading last night...)

I guess I’ll be spending the rest of the day thinking of similar ejaculatory 
words to describe particular poets I’ve read, or heard… Ooops! Weren’t the 
Cavalier poets said to write “ejaculatory poems”?  (Snigger, snigger.)

I guess poetry is both form and content – so “blurt” means “no form, just 
content” – I like the way you’ve said it!

Bob

Who doesn’t really want to get into working out what’s good poetry and bad 
poetry… and who thinks that when a comedian says "This is a true story..." 
he is (hopefully) being in soime way ironic...





>From: Marcus Bales <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Is art artificial (not just Marcus)
>Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 15:30:58 GMT
>
> > 1.      The words “art” “artifice” and “artificial” may share the
> > same root but they’re different words, at least they are in my 
>dictionaries!
> > They’re each words that have been coined to be used in different 
>word-games,
> > games which have subtle differences in rules. ... the differences soon 
>become
> > the topic of discussion and disagreement.<
>
>Just so -- as they have here.
>
>My point remains that poetry is art, artifice, AND artificial, and must be,
>even though they are three different words. The very fact that someone 
>calls an
>utterance or a presentation "poetry" demands a very different sort of 
>attention
>from the reader that calling it "journalism" or "journal-entry" or just
>plain "prose" would demand -- and no one who purports to write poetry can 
>get
>away from or around this fundamental fact.
>
>Further, what sounds "natural" in one decade sounds "dated" in another. 
>There
>is no poetry I know of that sounds "natural" in all times and in all 
>places.
>It's hard work, difficult artifice, artful, and profoundly artificial, to 
>make
>a poem sound "natural", and all that work, artifice, and art is for naught 
>as
>the language changes and dates our utterances. You can't get around that,
>either; it's the nature (ho ho) of language, and it's "natural" to change
>language to sound "natural" to the newer ear, which makes the prior 
>utterance
>sound, well, "artificial".
>
>It's preposterous to plead plaintively that the "natural" language, the un-
>artful, the un-artificed, the un-artificial, that any speaker employs, by
>virtue of its being natural, is art. If that's art in language, then what's 
>not
>art in language?
>
> >(It’s mixing things up, for instance, to say someone who’s a canny artist 
>in
> > more than one genre is therefore “artful”! The words processed from the
> > historic-root word “art” aren’t always interchangeable because they 
>bring
> > their independent histories with them). I think that’s what’s happened 
>here.<
>
>Part of the joy of being an educated person, part of the joy of language 
>games,
>part of the joy of poetry, is mixing up and unmixing such usages in order 
>to
>offer and receive a sense of the complexity of the issues at hand. To 
>plead, on
>the other hand, for absolute naturalness, unartful in the sense of being
>without art, natural in the sense of being without artfulness; for the use 
>of
>the word "artificial" to mean always and only "bad", allows for no sense of 
>or
>use of the notion of "artificial" to be the useful other side of the 
>"natural"
>coin. It pleads for the naturalness of "human nature", as if such vicious
>brutality as that illustrated by uncivilized "human nature" were a virtue.
>
>I pointed out several times that uses of the words "artificial" to mean 
>"bad"
>and of "natural" to mean "good", were limiting -- that poetry must be
>artificial before it can be natural or it's not poetry at all, it's merely
>blurt. I react to the notion of "blurt is art" in the same way I react to 
>those
>so-called comedians who start their bits with "True story ...": I say "How
>about you tell us something *you made up* that's *funny*, instead?"
>
>How about telling me something you've artfully and artificially *made up*
>that's illustrates or illuminates something significant, or important, or 
>both,
>about our shared human condition, instead of something you "just blurt 
>out"?
>
>Marcus

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