On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Ernest Slyman wrote:
> typographical nonconformity;
> distortions of syntax; unusual punctuation; new words; and a liberal use of
> jazz rhythms, elements of popular culture, and slang.
- gosh, Ernest, you've got a point - I can't think of a poet from Chaucer
to Champion to whom these concerns - in some mix or other - DON'T apply -
but I'd missed the inevitable conclusion - that they're ALL IN THE SAME
SCHOOL with the hidden agenda of stampeding language towards its
inevitable destruction in farce, death by laughing. You're right, we must
nudge them to that more loftier level p.d.q. and no messing...
- and then I notice all your references to spoof, and send-up, and wonder:
who's spoofin' who...
- or could it be that these unnamed New Disintegrationalists actually do
make sense, but not in the way which we expect them to? Because if we're
really facing "language's collapse or society's collapse", then someone's
got to be back in the laboratory working on a fix, yes? And, because it's
unfamiliar and we're fallible, we might not recognise it at first, or
we might mistake it for another problem of collapse...
- like you I'm wary of the idea of literary (or indeed any other)
progress: what appeals is precisely that sense of shared work over time.
But, that doesn't mean we don't need to develop new ways of working!
That's part of the business of keeping the ability to respond which is, if
you like, the "responsibility that falls to poetry in general".
RC
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