Well, fine, & if it works for you, Fred. I tend to live by Samuel R
Delany's comment many years ago:
'Put in opposition to 'style,' there is no such thing as 'content'.'
Which does not in any way deny the importance of that latter....
Doug
On 8-Apr-09, at 9:04 AM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]
> >
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:49 AM
> Subject: Re: Dead ends
>
>
>> 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.
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce
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