Something like Creeley's "form is never more than an extension of content"?
At 11:04 AM 4/8/2009, you wrote:
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Douglas Barbour"
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>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:49 AM
>Subject: Re: Dead ends
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>
>>Possibly not, Fred, but without such 'stylistic experimentation'
>>I'm not sure anything else can happen in the art, either.
>>Admittedly, I've just reread Susan Sontag's essay, 'On Style,' so
>>that, along with my own biases when writing, may be leading me on right now.
>>
>>But take those two poems you just posted; we can certainly
>>discuss what they say, but I admit my admiration for your work has
>>to do with a 'style' of discourse within them that creates a tone
>>for whatever we mean by their 'content' that in fact is the core of it.
>>
>>It's complex too, not a simple tune, & I see your poems, the way
>>they move through their paces, as constructing that
>>emotional/moral/ etc complexity....
>>
>>Doug
>>On 6-Apr-09, at 3:21 PM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
>
>I read Sontag's essay so long ago I've forgotten it, so I doubt if
>what I have to say connects. But let's view "style" as a conscious
>aspect of the artistic mind, "content" as its unconscious. All I've
>said is that stylistic play makes no difference - suggests no new
>experiences - unless tensions within the realm of content allow it
>do so. Those tensions can be (and, *pace Alison Croggon, should be)
>increased by thinking that prioritizes content. When I write I try
>to take a new view or sounding of reality (which contains me,
>politics, history, and nature, all in one mass). The new perspective
>suggests a form, and an application (hopefully an extension) of my
>usual style, adequate to that perspective. I thereby consciously
>mimic what history did, so to speak, unconsciously, when it decided
>that the style of the 1890s couldn't express the reality of the
>1920s. People like Raworth, MacLow, Watten and Silliman, as I see
>it, confuse the paint job and tail fins of the car with its motor.
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