Yes, I agree, L.
And what I got, finally reading it, was the slip from one phrase to another moving the thing along, trippingly (as in everyone was nearly or actually tripping)...& the hurting that ensues...
Doug
On 2013-10-17, at 9:07 AM, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> L thanks will ply? apply old head P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Lawrence Upton
> Sent: 17 October 2013 12:35
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: domestics
>
> Sure, but they are not in the words of Ms Slick the pills that mother gives
> you - though *they do quite a lot
>
> Yr ps question is so broad I'd have to say yes
>
> Unscrew the *doors* themselves from their *jambs* ! is a favourite of mine
>
> But some of friends who are inclined to faith like to judge poetry by what
> it says; and I have an aversion to that. When I first read Whitman, it was
> the prosody that blew me away. I'm really not sure about what he's saying.
> Let the idea that grass could be the long hair of graves show where it could
> lead.
>
> The doctor will see you now, Mr Whitman
>
> Pardon me if I have sd this but I had once the experience of being told by
> one after another that my poetry was really beautiful. I was on cloud 9.
> Maybe 8. But it was just after I'd moved back from Cornwall to London and my
> gig, a long gig, had for various reasons, been a reading of landscape poems,
> as far as I'd got then. I realised after a while, and after hearing and
> overhearing further comments that by and large they knew cornwall to be
> beautiful, even seeing the wreckage of the industrial revolution as
> mysterious blah blah, and took my poetry to be an affirmation and
> endorsement of that. But I was mostly speaking of the destruction of the
> language and culture; the economic vandalism and theft; colonisation etc *as
> *well as the granite landscape. And if they saw that landscape in all
> weathers they might not be so fond of it. (There's a poem by the Swede
> Froding that runs grey grey grey grey grey)
>
> Or there was an audience of believers which was very happy when I praised a
> hymn as poetry, because *they liked what it said, but weren't happy when I
> laid into another for sloppiness, because they liked what that one said too.
> Q & A took us to Auden's Stop all the clocks which they liked and thought
> "strong" without seeming to know what was going on. I referred to the ascent
> of F6 text and they got quite ratty when I suggested that text makes meaning
> and so makes meaning mutable rather than containing it.
>
> The motivational in poetry is of course entirely possible; but it's not
> likely to be anything you could extract, abstract and put on a t shirt.
>
> What is the poet saying? is hardly the first or most important question
>
> L
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 17 October 2013 11:54, Patrick McManus
> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> L-Seems quite a lot of motivational message there P Ps does poetry
>> exclude motivational messages ??P old and puzzled amongst other things
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> On Behalf Of Lawrence Upton
>> Sent: 17 October 2013 11:11
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: domestics
>>
>> Well it's poetry I'm trying to write, not motivational messages. Best
>> L
>>
>>
>> On 16 October 2013 22:47, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Cheery little number, L.
>>>
>>> B
>>>
>>>> On 16 Oct 2013, at 10:33 pm, Lawrence Upton
>>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The hissed rant of victims,
>>>>
>>>> perpetrating audience conflict,
>>>>
>>>> all reconstituted;
>>>>
>>>> high street take out, edited
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> by and for news agencies;
>>>>
>>>> torn stuck apart together;
>>>>
>>>> cosmetically-enhanced patched;
>>>>
>>>> dissected; written; writhing
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> the dead heap, pieces and bits
>>>>
>>>> mixing, voices merging,
>>>>
>>>> dead among living.
>>>>
>>>> Phrases constitute.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The books guide through traps, hurts
>>>>
>>>> that all must negotiate
>>>>
>>>> in violent deception
>>>>
>>>> from birth beyond breath.
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
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Recording Dates
(Rubicon Press)
Art is always the replacing of indifference by attention.
Guy Davenport
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