"If a poet has something besides themselves and their gift to share with us
. . ."
Yes, agree. And also with the poem as revealing the "fullness of the world,"
in Stephen's phrase. But I think, too, that that not using the first person
is just as often a stance, a position, a pose, as the worst falsely
"sincere" lyric. If you want to avoid what I would rather call
sentimentality, you are going to have to do more than abandon the first
person pronoun. (By 'you' I don't mean anyone it particular, here or
elsewhere.)
jd
On 6/6/07, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> "leave the poet out of it"
>
> is just how I feel. misuse of "I" always ends up lauding the 'POET'
> instead of lauding the topics & subjects of the poetry. focus should
> seldom be on the speaker (very few exceptions where subject matter
> demands/allows a presumptuous "I"), & always dipping in & out of the
> general, the point. this 'dipping' is what, to me, makes poetry alive:
> not the presence of a Virgil-like guide in some mythic world. we're
> all guides in the same 'mythic' world.
>
> that covers misuse; using "I" subtly & WITHOUT PRESUMPTION can go a
> long way to making the speaker not seem alien or separate from the
> scene(s) of a poem, but seem to melt into the scene. as long as it's
> kept in mind that the "I" is not an important person, not a remarkable
> person, not a special person, it's the WORDS that can then go on being
> important, & remarkable, & special.
>
> KS
>
> On 06/06/07, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > > Why are you afraid of sincerity?
> > Joe, I believe what I both believe and proposed was quite sincere. I was
> > putting down 'evangelical' sincerity, which I find self serving and
> > personally offensive. (I am sure you know 'the type.')
> >
> > >Doesn't dissolving the I into the eye
> > > indicate an abdication of responsibility?
> > I find the opposite. What unfolds - in its largeness - increases the
> ability
> > to respond more fully, less selfishly or egocentrically among others
> > (whether persons or whatever moves in the material world). I don't claim
> to
> > be personally totally on target all the time in this endeavor - however
> it
> > has become at the heart of much of my practice - whether writing poems
> or
> > not.
> > >If Wordsworth's lyric I can be
> > > read as the voice of a little god creating worlds in high Romantic
> fashion,
> > > isn't the absence of the I in certain current period styles make an
> implicit
> > > claim about the superiority of the poet's consciousness?
> > Frankly, I hear a 'superior' tone in this dismissal. But, as you do, I
> would
> > dismiss this concept, too. I would just say "consciousness" and leave
> "the
> > poet" out of it. In my experience - writing and/or teaching - the poem
> is a
> > form or formulation of consciousness which is too often screwed up by
> the
> > self-imposing and inflated intervention of an "I" .
> > That does not mean that such poems of 'consciousness' (the Lyric Eye)
> are
> > not full of spine, moral intervention, etc. or even their opposites.
> >
> > Per other parts of this discussion on "who" is inside this structure
> called
> > a poem, I recently wrote (not in poem), "Don't confuse the poet with the
> > poem, or you will lose them both." They are often quite different, as I
> > suspect most of us know.
> >
> > Stephen V
> > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> >
> >
> >
> > > amount to about the same thing as Wordsworth's project? (Which I
> honor, by
> > > the way.)
> > >
> > > jd
> > >
> > > On 6/5/07, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> It's been about 20 months of Sundays since "I" used an "I" in a poem.
> > >> "I" find, like the way when a tree falls in a forest to breaks up and
> rot;
> > >> the trunk and branches provide so much more in the way of services to
> the
> > >> creatures flora, fauna and creatures in the surrounding grove (nest
> > >> matter,
> > >> sites for ferns to grow, fertility to the soil, etc.) It's a kind of
> > >> vitality that becomes available with an ego's death (bye-bye "I") and
> the
> > >> emergence of multiple beings/identities, etc. Then the "I" is
> replaced
> > >> with the participation of a lyric "eye" (which includes the other
> senses
> > >> as
> > >> well - sound, smell, etc.) to take in the Whole, while feasting on
> any
> > >> number of kinds of parts, drawing them in, as if a magnet, into
> multiple
> > >> possibilities, ordering and reordering, occasionally coming across
> the
> > >> page
> > >> in the form of a poem, photograph, song or work of visual art.
> > >>
> > >> Yes, a la Wilde or Croggon, sometimes an evangelical "sincerity"
> throws
> > >> the
> > >> whole process out of joint.
> > >>
> > >> Stephen V
> > >> Walking Theory (Junction Press).
> > >> For more, including electornic ordering information, go to:
> > >> www.junctionpress.com
> > >>
> > >> At long last is Walking Theory, Stephen Vincentıs observant,
> large-hearted
> > >> poems bundled into book form, engaging architecture, people on the
> move,
> > >> the
> > >> seasons and other transience, the talk that binds the day:
> > >>
> > >> Goodbye, rhetoric, the desperate,
> > >> what can the poem do, walking, step-by-step:
> > >> witness, suffer, hope.
> > >>
> > >> Urbane and companionable, rare virtues flaunted here, curbside
> delight.
> > >>
> > >> Bill Berkson
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>> Didn't Wilde say that sincerity was the death of art?
> > >>>
> > >>> If he didn't, I did.
> > >>>
> > >>> xA
> > >>>
> > >>> On 6/6/07, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>> too MUCH of a truth, that's probably what gets me sometimes.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> KS
> > >>>>
> > >>>> On 05/06/07, Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >>>>> (Can't keep out of this any longer!)
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> An 'I' has its uses, like any other technique.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> I can't see that the gender of the poet makes much difference.
> > >>>>> The lyric 'I' itself may or may not have a gender or be perceived
> > >>>>> by the reader as having one.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Is it a fiction? For me, when I use it,
> > >>>>> it is *at the same time* a fiction and a deep truth.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Janet
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>> I'd agree wholly with you here, Alison, but was only making the
> point
> > >>>>>> that for me, the 'I' tends to be a problem, & perhaps I would
> add, it
> > >>>>>> can be a problem by now, in what are more trad lyrics, to white
> male
> > >>>>>> poets in the West anyway. I am not really all that interested in
> > >> those
> > >>>>>> USAmerican poets remembering nostalgically their youth, etc.
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> On the other hand, Robert Creeley (& he's not the only one) found
> an
> > >>>>>> 'I' that was amazingly complicated in some of the ways you
> mention.
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> And, yes, it is a fiction, but then how the maker makes it work
> as
> > >> one
> > >>>>>> is the question, isn't it....
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> -------------------------------------------------------
> > >>>>> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
> > >>>>> Poems at Proximity: www dot proximity dot webhop dot net
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Our humanity is diminished when we have no mission
> > >>>>> bigger than ourselves.
> > >>>>> Bono
> > >>>>> -------------------------------------------------------
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> >
>
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
|
