I've retitled this just because it's a general point:
Lawrence writes:
>though I often feel that something quite different is called for, in all
sorts of circumstances, as if there's a lot of space one could go into if we
could just see the way; & I have in a poem an image of a pin man on a page
imagining a room in which that page is turned trying to see out into the
room
In the circumstance of poetry, if the pin man cannot see out into the room,
his not seeing out makes us aware of not seeing out of our room, but also
that the poem cannot see out however it turns? I think of Denise Riley's
"Outside from the start".
The "just seeing the way" seems similar to what Ron Silliman writes on his
blog about asking the question: What is poetry missing? And that this is how
innovation begins, or how a poet finds / realises that there is - a space
to be cleared for them to get on with their work.
Also, at the end of the wonderful film "A one and a two" dir by Edward Wang,
a chronicle of a family, the little son - who, throughout, has not spoken
much but has been seen inventing water-bombs in the bath and similar,
suddenly does speak at his grandmother's funeral, and says, "and i want to
find out new things." That this is continuing, by finding new problems.
To be vital is to be problematic?
Edmund
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