|The poetic is more than the shape?
Well, as I said, it is very hard here to separate the elements, probably
impossible. If we go through and try to identify the poetic elements, then
the shape is one of them. *That is true of all poems, I think, and time and
again no attention is paid to it. *Here great attention is paid to it. Or I
may be missing the meaning of your question.
.
I don't think one idea *including another or an aspect of another makes the
one doing the including "more" than the included. Or, to try it another way,
more in what sense? more of what? The poetic includes the shape, yet they
are separate. Like, um, the Holy Spirit and God.
.
The shape is merely an extension of the
|main trope in the poem, it signals, and that trope is  connected with the
|spiritual message. But I suppose this goes back to that old, old discussion
|about form and content --a dualism that has its critics...
.
Much as some aspects of what I call me would like to have as a
model of a poem a machine made of words with plenty of strong AI as
lubricant, I find that either I cannot accept it or, more likely, that I
don't know enough to know whether I can accept it. It is a machine I don't
know enough about if it is a machine.
.
(It has been my experience that when I know what I am doing to any great
degree, when writing, then I find the writing much harder. I recently
connected this with Colin Simms describing how to catch lizards for study:
and the gist of it is that you mustn't see them before you catch, you have
to
know they are going to be there by habituation; these are my words. Whether
this is relevant to the reading of poems I am not at all clear... and there
may or may not be a "yet" at the end of that.)
.
I am unhappy with the idea of trope *connected to the spiritual
message as a way of describing it, as if we have taken the lid off the
system box of the poem and are seeking the trope controller by following a
pathway. I don't think it's like that.
.
When I picked up on cris cheek's "technicians of the imagination" he
commented on his use of "technician" - I think that was backchannel - and I
had to say that I had no problem with that at all, it was just that I was
interested in his endorsement of imagination as a word but had he any idea
what it is?! But the techne of writing poems is not going to involve
connection as we know it, Stephen. Pity your name's not Jim.
.
I have trouble with "The shape is merely an extension of the main trope in
the poem". Merely?
.
Nor am I sure about "extension"... it's *part of it. Maybe it's another form
of it. Another side of it maybe.
.
Like Jim's account of the frieze...  Very recently I have
been considering making a web version of a visually-oriented poem that I
made for paper and has been published very sympathetically as a booklet in
which I am well pleased; but when I looked at the scanned images on the
screen, it seemed to me that it was wrong. Either it had lost something in
the transfer between media or the hardware of the new medium was inadequate
& I went back and made an entirely different poem. Where before there were
still images indicating movement through time - the original is intended as
a potential score for text-sound composition - now I had animated
word-changes, actually changes that one could see. A different poem? The
same poem? The same poem in another version? I don't know. I don't know yet.
But I think Jim's story is useful. Surely though, if we take that
point, we must also allow the possibility that many would view *all the
aspects of the poem as coherent and the poem to that degree as indivisible..
.
Whether or not such tropes were common place does not actually matter, I
think. Making it new is one approach.
.
|Otherwise you reduce the poem to a word puzzle or shape
.
Not at all. I don't think I can say more than that. I reread your message
and reread it (present tense) but I can't see how you get to that from what
I have said. I don't want to reduce anything. I think the poem is already
reduced as much as it can be by the poet.
.
|the poem would have been read out.
Would it? Serious question. I am not sure about that. Where and when? Poems
were circulated in ms & they were looked at. What we have is a poem which
rewards the hearer and the listener. Reading out does not preclude a poem
being looked at. For instance, at svp readings it's quite common for the
poets reading to have a text in the night's issue of the svp mag and those
who want to follow in their mags while the poet reads. Even if no one ever
read a poem off the page except the poet, I can still see Herbert making
a visual element. It would glorify God. God would see it. & furthermore,
if we know that such visual tropes were commonplace then people *were
looking at them.
.
|Andrews is an effective reader of his
|one column poems --in the latter is it his reading that compensates the
|reader/listener?
.
Compensates them for what? Adds to their pleasure perhaps.
.
|My twin brother who is an Anglican vicar --would certainly argue likewise
|regarding the spiritual element and its connection with the poetic. But I
|suppose religion has nothing to do with a poem like Easter Wings. . .
.
The Anglican church today is a rather different beast to what it was then...
& whatever Herbert's conscious and unconscious intentions the poetic has a
way of following its own course. There are some similarities.
.
I let the religious programmes run on sometimes. (I am a man of many
radios.)
And I am full of (muted) admiration for the way that many can keep getting
new ideas out of the same books of the bible, reworking the same words to
make new sets of words. But there, I think, the similarity stops for me. I
believe nothing. I like the *words in the authorised version; I like the
parables; but I was brought up on some of that. But... but...
.
As a reader *now while I do my best with the religion as I read, it doesn't
speak to me, as a believer, at all and yet I still enjoy the poetry of it;
so
in that way, in response to yours, religion has nothing to do with my
reception of the poem; and, in *my reading of it, I do not bring any
religious belief, as separate from religious knowledge which in my case is
probably relatively high, to it. Nor do I bring respect for religion &
certainly not any sense of "the spiritual", a phrase which I believe (!) I
could hear within an hour if I turned on the radio, and from some one as big
an unbeliever as me. Because I do not want to ditch the *experiences which
are often hoovered up by dominant religions - ah my child you have had a
religious experience, come to us. There are plenty of angels and devils for
us to wrestle with without bringing devils and angels into it.

Lawrence







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