Perhaps, my enthusiasm for the idea does a disservice to it. All I can
say is that people can adapt it to their own approach to reading
poetry/songs/film etc. I don’t want to make a rule about it. It’s just
that sometimes you have to overstate a case before it sinks in, and
maybe that’s what I have been doing unintentionally.
On Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:45:05 +0000, Sean Bonney
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Hi Jeff / yeh, I agree. I don't think such readings are limited to poetry,
>either. Over the last few days I've been fascinated by film-maker Harry
>Smith's reading of Brecht's Mahagonny, where he draws out all kinds of
>cabbalistic meanings based on the structure of the play: meanings
that make
>complete sense, but are probably very far from Brecht's own
intentions. Or,
>first time I read Capital, I found it almost impossible to understand,
>because I don't really get economics. So I read it as a huge
experimental
>zombie novel, which worked.
>
>My problem with your insistence on 'free associative' readings in
poetry,
>then, isn't because I think its particularly outlandish, but because it
>seems that for you the ease with which such readings are available is
your
>only criteria for defining a poem. Thats just as reductive as those
people
>who, staggeringly, still think a poem has to "rhyme". I think its very
>dangerous to glibly say things aren't poems, just because you don't
like them.
>
>Sean
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