I see your point George, and it's interesting. There _is_ a difference, the
poetic of the dialogic form itself, which might be what makes me flinch back
from the poetry in ways I simply don't from the plays. Because the poem is
not a text in various voices (to take these two examples - of course there
are monologues as well) and is not a text designed to have a fuller
embodiment in the voices and beings of actors, the space of a stage, &c, it
has to create all of its reality, all of its silences, all of its dynamic,
in the language on the page. And there is more to do...
The "radical uselessness" of course can equally apply to the plays, and to
how all art is deadened by an instrumental attitude towards it - if it is
art, it is always in excess of such desires. Maybe my problem in the poems
is to do with that very lack of excess, whereas something in the form of the
plays permits (for me) that quality to exist there.
All the best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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