Thanks to Mark for the post on Winnicott. Poem as holding object?
I'd be keen to hear you talk more about that aspect of societal
transmissional space in respect of poetics. Technicians of the
Imagination perhaps? Holding objects in relation to 'canon'?
Suddenly from having been relatively quiet I find myself posting too much,
and so this might the last for a while unless specifically required. But
you're right Keston, I do agree with you, it's a discussion worth having
and I'm hoping that others will now chime in.
I do feel uncomfortable being positioned, albeit self-inflicted, as an
apologist for Bruce Andrews full stop. Bruce and myself got close enough to
almost fall out over my liking for rhythm. But that's by the by. I didn't
set out to diss Bruce. To be honest I had to scour about quite a bit to
find extracts from his work that might be a rejoinder or addendum to
arguments you were wielding. Often he makes very interesting moves and then
processes everything else around them into a less than satisfying residue
(for this reader, who has become more picky over time). One of the
accusations that his work suffered from is of becoming a processesor.
Moreover his processes began to generate a 'voice' that spoke of little
more (after some substantial periods of production) than bags of tricks and
in time the bags became so mixed that the tricks palled - arguably (but
this might be a pit many fall into). There are however I'm told major works
in the pipeline, such as his translation of Dante that might well provoke a
severe reassessment, by even his fiercest detractors. I don't know.
It is my sense that Bruce wanted readers to writhe under his trangressive
phraseologies, syntactical bombs and subject raids. It was deliberately not
politically correct, and somewhat challenging to liberal instincts -
teased them and pushed them, even bullied them. In that sense it has often
struck me as a poetics driven by moral outrage. But its effect, over time
and with hindsight is to achieve a measure of desensitization. It is in
this respect, a model for such tropes and practices that i find still
interesting and useful. It is bold enough to act as such. Why does that
happen? If indeed it does.
I like the suggestion that 'Tizzy Boost' (for one example) is complicit
with and contemporaneous with Strategic Defence Initiatives, even partially
responsible for them. I also like the idea of giving that book to
Afrikaaner farmers on the Western Cape, although I'm not sure what your
suggestion is getting at in that specific instance; it would certainly make
me feel that everything I'd been fighting for was in vain. However, I can
think of few poetry books they might take succour from (you have me
completely unattached to knowledge of that situation other than news
flashes). How much better might any book of contemporary poetry published
outside the Western Cape fare? Is Moxley any the less bound to SDI, or
myself (I mean to level the same accusation at myself not to tie Moxley to
me or to you, or to Andrea or to whomever, surely every writer under
western capital is implicatable)? Perhaps that's your point. In which case
I'd say that sometimes, only sometimes, perspectives from 'elsewhere' are
instrumental in understanding one's own mire. It is hard to know how
something will read in an other context with any certainty. But I would
agree that appropriate and inappropriate contextualisations are key.
In this respect the issue of colonisation of space with intent seems pertinent.
There are gender issues floating herein of course.
That's perhaps where carnival can be a twist of lime. A following post, the
last perhaps for a while until other pipe up
love and love
cris
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