The issue of truth-content and also Peter's objection that the poems
posted do not comminicate the kind or amount of information contained in
the commentaries which followed, seem to me to be essentailly beside the
point. It is not necessary, in order for a political (or any other) kind
of awareness to devolve from a poem, that the readers of this poem feel
confident in describing literally what it is about the poem that caused
this; I would claim that it is preferable, certainly -- but not, in terms
of a pragmatic regard for public attitudes at least -- actually necessary.
The principal affects of a poem are stabilised only within the context of
an auidence, and not 'within' a poem itself; essentially (though I know
this is stretching the point) it doesn't matter whether anything can be
thought to be the literal information of a poem, so long as there is a
power of agreement about its -plausible- information. It is regard for
this fact that has caused some pretty leisurely and spiritless writing
(even hollow perhaps, since this term has come into play), but (Peter)
this state of reality can hardly indict what is nevertheless a fact of
real poetic epistemology (it can only defame it).
k
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