>I completely agree with you Jim. Now I'm going to watch Anderson
> Cooper's latest Poem on CNN, which is also a poem. Anderson's canned
> script--jokes and jollies--is writing too and is embraced (and enhanced)
> by the flat screen, which makes it all the more what I say it is. We
> thoroughly agree, Jim, and so will the French. Jess
Well here's how I see the matter you bring up, Jesse. 'Poetry' is changing
into something that has more of the sort of breadth of reference as 'visual
art'. Rather than having the same sort of range as a term like 'prose'.
Poetry has expanded far beyond the confines of the poetry/prose binary.
Whereas 'prose' hasn't.
Now, we are indeed allowed to call any damn thing we want art without anyone
calling the police. Cuz those who don't care about art also don't care about
what gets called art. And those who do care about art understand that the
interesting part is not when you call it art. Cuz any fool can call anything
art. The interesting part is why they call it art. And who agrees with them.
And who doesn't. And why. In other words, the more interesting things are
the poetics associated with the art or writing or poetry, and its position
in the clans and nations of art, writing, and poetry.
So, although, as you say, anybody can call anything art or writing or
poetry, that's not the interesting part. Cuz it doesn't tell us much of
anything, never mind anything of interest.
There's a funny sort of proposition in formal logic called an undecidable
proposition. They're a little bit exotic cuz they were only discovered in
the thirties. By Kurt Godel. In his famous 'incompleteness theorems'. An
undecidable proposition is one which is definitely not false. An undecidable
proposition is true. But it is *unprovably true*. This is a bit different
from what we normally think of as an 'axiom' in that, normally, we are free
to assume either the axiom or some form of the axiom's negation. When an
axiom has this property, it's called 'independent'. We can think of
undecidable propositions as axiomatic, but they are not independent. Cuz
they can't be construed as false. They're for sure true. But unprovably
true.
The proposition that 'X is art' is sort of like an undecidable proposition.
Cuz when people attempt to show that X is not art, they just sound like they
need to relax and remove the carrot. In other words, 'X is art' is not
false. It's true. But it's unprovably true. The significance of the idea
that 'X is art' is only seen in what follows from its introduction into the
conversation.
ja
http://vispo.com/aleph
http://vispo.com/dbcinema
http://vispo.com
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