<snip>
I know what you're saying is the conventional wisdom and it sounds very
sophisticated but finally I think it's nonsense. Let's say there are two
poems, and criticizing them you say that despite their different styles,
personae, etc., they're "essentially" about the same thing. Or even that
they both belong to the "school of quietude," or exemplify a given ideology.
[FP]
<snip>
What distinguishes an apple from a pear? Is it form or content?
<snip>
It seems to me that your "instruction manual" analogy argues for my
position, not yours. The "right way of operating the machine" exists
independently of the style of the set of manuals; a good style corresponds
to that right way. [FP]
<snip>
But what if there's no machine? And isn't that the point, that machines are
implied (Dominic's 'different model') and not just described by manuals? A
poem is just as ontically and mereologically _there_ as, say, a paper bag or
a group of playing cards. However, we then add something extra. We attribute
to it an ontology, a commentary on its own being, as part of our being
readers, through the ontological commitments we read into it and through the
use we make of cues within the poem. That's the implied machine.
<snip>
Content is that context upon which perspectives are altered by the
appearance of a poem. [FP]
<snip>
If *content* is to mean anything it's got to be _in_ the poem in some sense.
You can't put Grice in a bottle.
CW
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'What's the point of having a language that everybody knows?'
(Gypsy inhabitant of Barbaraville)
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