At a certain point in my writing Creeley's 'form is never more than an
extension of content" became very important and began to make sense in
a practical way. It is helpful - very helpful. And yes, there is
certainly a division between those of us for whom it is helpful and
those who find it unhelpful.
I remember years ago - before I ever looked at Creeley closely - I had
some notion in my head that content always possessed form, even though
such form might be fluid, but that form did not possess content, not
in the conceptual sense at least - a kind of common sense view I
suppose. I changed my mind though, not through any theory, not even
Creeley's, but through writing, especially writing long poems. I found
that form possessed content. It is the nature of this 'content' that
fascinated me and keeps me writing.
Tim Allen
On 8 Apr 2009, at 17:17, Mark Weiss wrote:
> I think you misunderstand Creeley. He's precisely denying a division
> between form and content. I'd suggest you also look at his poem The
> Finger, in his book Pieces. Or Numbers, in the same book.
>
> Mark
>
> At 11:43 AM 4/8/2009, you wrote:
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]
>> >
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 11:26 AM
>> Subject: Re: Dead ends
>>
>>
>>> Something like Creeley's "form is never more than an extension of
>>> content"?
>>
>>
>> Yes, exactly. I have great respect for Creilly. His basic subject-
>> matter is his loves and his own moment-by-moment sensual
>> experiences, and he found a style that truthfully reflected them,
>> and thereby also showed something of the conditions in which his
>> love and sensuality occurred. (In the abstract, his range of
>> subject-matter is comparable to, say, Robert Graves's.)
>>
>> I know that all my talk of "reflection" and "adequation," my
>> insistence on a style/content distinction, makes any good
>> poststructuralist's teeth hurt. But it will be interesting to see
>> how popular Derrida et al. will remain under conditions of economic
>> hardship.
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