except pursued by embarrassment
-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 10:33 PM
Subject: Re: Poetry and spiritualisation
There's spirituality and spirituality. I don't go for the
luxuriating-in-the-divine-plenitude stuff, particularly, because it
strikes me as offering a kind of false consolation (or "cheap grace",
to borrow a phrase). But you can have my George Herbert when you pry
it out of my cold, dead fingertips.
Anything remotely New Age makes me barf. Andrew Duncan has a good line
in a piece on Gavin Selerie:
"Clearly, if the author is associating with people who believe in
fortune telling, it would be rather rude of him to disbelieve in this
and cognate brands of addle-pated nonsense. Hence use of the
irrational is a kind of stalking-horse. If you don't trust the
testimony of the people with you, you are authoritarian and
centralising in mentality. It's the kind of attitude test by which
that kind of person decided whether you were acceptable as a
companion."
There is simply no point at all in arguing with such people, since the
more carefully you refine your argument, and the more forcefully you
press it, the more of an utter bastard they think you are just for
thinking and talking in what they perceive to be an inhumanly cold and
unyieldingly vindictive fashion. Even attempting to deflect the claims
pressed upon one ("Swallow this. It's good for you") with what one
hopes are urbane and witty deflationary gestures is likely to lead to
sour looks and accusations of harbouring a sarcastic and disrespectful
attitude.
So there is a certain "spirituality" in poetry, also, which is really
there to keep the disputatious at bay, to create a sort of safe space
within the poem for cozy addle-patedness. It's a warding charm against
the always potentially divisive exercise of intellect, and where you
see that charm being brandished it's a pretty sure bet that some
species of complaisant anti-intellectualism is not far behind.
Dominic
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