> I sniff Kristeva in the background somewhere here, drawing parallels
> between the rhythms of poetic language and the "pulsions" of
> "semiosis". But I have some trouble with what looks to me like the
> mischaracterisation of free verse as either clandestinely
> fixed-metrical or simply un-metrical - of metre as a tennis-net that
> must be either up or down. Celine's prose, a canonical example for
> Kristeva of poetic language, is not written in fixed metre...
Dominic, I think you are on to something. Most of the experimental women
writers with whom I am familiar have been Kristeva readers. (Beverly Dahlen
being a good example, among others, related to and published in the magazine
How(ever). (The title was of the mag was Beverly's and indicates the
intention to take exception to the norm). But there was a deep interest -
in the eighties and nineties - in turning over the grammatical apple cart.
An insistence that proper grammar was used to control and submerge a whole
set of rich - and/or often troubling interior goods. Traditional grammar aka
formal verse were twin forces of repression. For awhile there was a sense
of the new woman poet as a kind of sophisticated brat - poking holes in the
language and hanging up the new laundry (excuse any house wife
association!)on lines that no longer went straight from A to B. Rhythms,
perspectives, etc. all thrown into an aggressive sense of askew.
Something here as lineage, I suspect, also relates to the disruptive
energies of Dada and Surrealism, as well as Kristeva, among others.
Stephen V
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