Fred, I think you're right that the lack of affect masks fear and hatred.
I've certainly felt the affectless resentment for art, especially when I was
younger, mostly from my family. I suppose I generalize from that experience.
I like your notion of writing against that resentment, writing as insult,
even, dare we say, as a form of personal resistance.
jd
On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Joseph Duemer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Ed, ouch! I guess the internet is a "literary catheter" & you're right I
> don't really believe internet publication is "real" publication (I know, I
> know), but yeah the cure is to keep on writing & writing to think. I hardly
> know what I think until I have written it & the poem, lyric or narrative,
> for me, is a mode of thought. I think that's what it's good for, to sort of
> go back to Stephen'[s original question. The structures & constructions
> required to make a poem offer a resistance to the chaos of sense impressions
> / impingements involved in living. The poem is how we map where & what we
> are. OK, I get that much. Why, then, should any kind of publication be
> required? (I think I have something like an answer to this question, but am
> curious what others will say.)
>
> jd
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 2:46 PM, edward mycue <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> joseph, the "condition" (of not having recent poems accepted) may have
>> much to do with the changeover from the exclusively written publication
>> sources to the broader internet (which we "accept" but really don't believe
>> in as much as even publication of very small press magazine publication
>> issues that were likened often to kleenex--used and discarded--). ARE YOU
>> SURE IT'S RUST? says the little cockroach on the keyboard when my genie from
>> between my ears suggested pensively that i'd slowed as i maundred dawdling
>> abt what to do fustigating my failing self-regard in great danger of
>> becoming annihilating narcissism and blaming it on age-deprived oils of
>> youth.
>>
>> of course i counter: just press on regardless!
>> but does work truthfully? my inner george carlin parries & thrusts.
>>
>> i think it's physical: think of bladder infection when you have a
>> bladderful. forcing is not the answer here. you need the literary
>> equivalent of a catheter perhaps. (what would that be?)
>>
>> keep writing?! yes! (but keep at near remove a device to relieve
>> remembering the lawrence fixel comparison of poets' having the imaginary
>> carrot and imaginary stick vs. the real carrot and stick that writers of
>> plays, screenplays, & other narratives have.)
>>
>> edward mycue
>>
>>
>>
>> --- On Sat, 6/28/08, Joseph Duemer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> From: Joseph Duemer <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: The lyric poem - what be its current fate?
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Saturday, June 28, 2008, 6:11 AM
>>
>> *Stephen writes:* "Without this surrounding labor of critical community,
>> so
>> many often extraordinarily fine lyric poems - let alone larger forms. -
>> end
>> up fleeting around, or become paralysed in a kind of statuary limbo. They
>> may vibrantly appear in a small publication, then disappear as readily.
>> For
>> the poet it takes a fierce stubbornness to put up with can appear as an
>> almost instant annihilation or a perennial sense of being 'not quite dead
>> on
>> arrival'."
>>
>> This has certainly been my recent experience, both as reader and writer.
>> Poets have almost always worked the liminal edges of American culture, but
>> the edges seem to have become cliffs in recent decades, with poets & poems
>> dropping out sight leaving hardly a trace -- not even a fading cartoon
>> scream followed by a thud & a puff of dust. That would be something, at
>> least. Stephen is right, I think, to note the effect of recent American
>> politics on all kind of cultural habits, the trend starts before Bush's
>> completely demoralizing presidency. The country seems mostly dead to me,
>> without affect, lost in a vaguely buzzing media haze in which the idea of
>> a
>> lyric poem has no place.
>>
>> Speaking for myself, I've come to think of the poems I'm writing now as
>> posthumous works. After a career of moderate success getting my stuff
>> published, nobody will take what I'm writing now. Maybe I've just
>> become a
>> terrible writer after turning 55, or maybe my moment has simply passed. In
>> any case, I figure I'll keep at it until I hit 60 in three years and
>> unless
>> something changes in the reception of my work, I'll turn my full attention
>> to gardening and cooking and leave poetry to others.
>>
>> jd
>>
>> --
>> Joseph Duemer
>> Professor of Humanities
>> Clarkson University
>> Weblog: sharpsand.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Joseph Duemer
> Professor of Humanities
> Clarkson University
> Weblog: sharpsand.net
>
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
Weblog: sharpsand.net
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