Dear Peter, Ian and all
This is the first time for ages I've been so outside a conference but feel,
as a bystander, so informed. Keep hold of all your doubts!
As a much lapsed revolutionary socialist, the whole point is that theory is
forged out of practice; that theory, given history, is a store cupboard for
the present and future - never as religion, never as 'the model' but as a
resource to work with like clay - not a laboratory of expectations - because
today's clay is tomorrow's resource. Or have they already taken clay's DNA?
If there is ever a DNA of poetry count me out of the human race. Or is
someone working on a humour gene to tick-box-and-bottle all in place? Ah,
yes, all is in place...
George Bush says it's impossible to make sense of the carnage at Virginia
Tech University. Guns? Alienation? DNA?
Rupert X
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Riley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 11:49 PM
Subject: Re: Poetry & Public Language
> Ian/ I love this confusion. Don't let anyone take it from you! It's the
> most valuable thing. Carry on doubting and being torn two ways, there's
> no
> other outlook. Continue to admire these experts for all the meticulous
> investigation they undertake, and all the vast networks of implicit
> connectivity/ theoretical Babel they build up, and all the midnight oil
> they
> burn, and continue to doubt whether any of it has anything to do with
> poetry whatsoever. And continue not to know whether a poetry of multiple
> or
> clustered implication is the result of a wisdom which prefers to conceal
> itself, or a charlatanry which develops certain techniques. And don't ask
> me
> what the answer is.
> Peter
|