Yes.
When teaching I used to suggest to students that they put
sincere and sincerity
on one side, and try
convincing and see how that worked.
In living and in reading we are always suspicious
and what gets past our bulltshit filter is convincing,
after repeated testing,
and makes our trusted social world and self and culture.
I think…
Max
Before postmodernism set in, there was a good little book by Lionel Trilling, called
Sincerity and Authenticity,
and I see Louis Menand brings it into a more recent discussion, glimpsable via google.
On Mar 16, 2015, at 8:51, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Can't let this pass. 'Slippery fish' sincerity certainly is, especially when used in the same sentence with 'true facts'.
>
> I wanted to come in on this when Bill said that thing about a word must never precede an idea, something which is not just problematic but probably impossible- but I never because it gets into that tricky realm of whether ideas are always made of words and if not what? pictures, feelings etc - but then when pictures or feelings get transferred into ideas don't words get involved? - don't go there, it's a swamp. So I didn't. I know that if I sat around waiting for an 'idea' before writing a poem I might have written about 20 poems in my life instead of 2000 etc - mind you, they might be 20 very long poems.
>
> Seriously though, sincerity is a real sod to talk about in relation to poetry. The multiplicity of voices and tricks of utterance that are involved in poetry (never mind the variety of functions that poetry can perform) make the normal meaning of sincerity meaningless, and that includes the kind of sincerity that Andrew seems to be referring to.
>
> Sincerity in poetry is something else, something that has nothing to do with 'true facts', whatever they are.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim A.
>
> On 16 Mar 2015, at 05:06, Andrew Burke wrote:
>
>> Oh what a slippery fish sincerity is when speaking of creativity. For my
>> practice, the 'true facts' are my basic sincerity, as I see them or
>> remember them, written in plain language
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