Jim: Astonishingly you seem to be unaware that I'm criticizing what I take to be a dishonest use of language, not a range of artistic production. Being challenged can make one afraid, I guess.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Jim Andrews <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 23, 2011 2:19 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Better Books, for those who can recall...
>
>I am less interested in arguing these matters than I once was.
>
>I remember being upset by new literary things that seemed offensive or
>puerile to me. I just didn't understand them. We are afraid of what we do
>not understand. It's instinctive, apparently. Get over it.
>
>ja
>http://vispo.com
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2011 10:54 PM
>Subject: Re: Better Books, for those who can recall...
>
>
>> Thanks for the ad hominem, though it misses the mark.
>>
>> I recently had the experience of asking the propagator of a --poetics (I'm
>> not going to reveal who, it's beside the point) to explain what he meant
>> by the term, as in practice it didn't seem to be anything novel except in
>> the trendy naming. He told me to read his complete works, so I asked for a
>> layman's abstract. It was too complicated to summarize, I was told. Wow.
>> One could work up an abstract for the theory of relativity in a
>> paragraph--not, obviously, the math, I'm really talking about an abstract
>> for the non-specialist. In fact he had answered my question. It's not a
>> matter of needing an umbrella but of shredding the meaning of the word.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>>From: Jim Andrews <[log in to unmask]>
>>>Sent: Oct 23, 2011 1:38 AM
>>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>>Subject: Re: Better Books, for those who can recall...
>>>
>>>> So materialist in this sense can mean two not necessarily connected
>>>> things,
>>>
>>>Yes, at least two not necessarily connected things.
>>>
>>>> something like meaning nothing other than a marker in the game of
>>>> academic
>>>> reputations.
>>>
>>>No, not necessarily.
>>>
>>>> The bigger problem with the term, however, may be "poetics," which seems
>>>> increasingly to be attached to almost anything and descriptive of almost
>>>> nothing.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not complaining about the practices grouped by one or another under
>>>> this or that rubric (hell, in this case I participate in a lot of them),
>>>> but about the violence done to the language in the quest for status.
>>>
>>>Well, I guess the further it gets away from what we recognize, the more
>>>likely we are to say such things. Poetry is shifting toward being like
>>>other
>>>types of art, such as 'visual art', where what passes for visual art is
>>>sufficiently diverse that there can indeed be widely divergent methods and
>>>approaches within it to sufficiently wide an umbrella of issues that the
>>>term 'poetics' is useful to group them together.
>>>
>>>ja
>>>http://vispo.com
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