Keston Sutherland wrote:
>Why on earth should anyone be writing poetry about the
>contentious epsitemology of signification, when millions
>are dying in Africa because of intellectual property laws?
>The question is of course blind by choice. But you see
>what I mean.
I hope I don't know what you mean Keston. In the forthcoming poetry you
speak what role or voice are these dying millions to be given? Surely
they're not just being used as a lever for your theory of poetry?
Keston also wrote
>I think that people should write the kind of poetry which encourages
>or even stipulates this solidarity of reception. My own future
>poetry, unless I change my view radically, shall be an effort to achieve
>this.
This notion of solidarity sounds a little too much like monotony at
present. There's more to harmony than unison. What's there to talk about
after the film if everyone sees the same everything in the same way. I'm
thinking too of the remark by Stephen Jay Gould in _Eight Little Piggies_:
"All field naturalists know and respect the phenomenon of 'search image' …
in short you see what you are trained to view – and observation of
different sorts of objects often requires a conscious shift of focus, not a
total and indiscriminate expansion in the hopes of seeing everything … The
world is too crowded with wonders for simultaneous perception of all; we
learn our fruitful selectivities." P293
I am arguing for diversity, in response as well as in composition. Partly
because I don't see how it can be avoided. And language poetry does not
seem to me to exclude social responsiveness. One of my first reactions on
encountering it was that 'things don't have to be a certain way'. Having
grown up in a society aggressively seeking to stabilise its notion of
identity no matter how much hypocrisy that entailed, LP appeared to me
profoundly connected with changing things, whether within one's own cranial
ridge or further afield. And I resent the assumption that anything that is
not solemn is necessarily frivolous to the point of endangering the ship.
(Before anyone starts beating their chest I'm not saying that anyone
actually said that. But it feels like they did.) On the other hand, I look
forward to seeing K's future poetry.
At this stage I don't know what we're talking about. But whatever it is, it
was worth is for this, from Peter Riley:
>What was demanded of that poetry (valorization of experience for
>instance) was no more than what anyone's quest is across the most fruitful
>zones of understanding: that percepts be gathered and elevated out of
>isolation by formal pressures which speak them into histories and
>structures of the most important kind. Like what Blake did with lyrical
>forms before he went round the twist. Fixing recognisable image/percept
>nodes into a largeness contained in the modestly of mortal passage.
>Recognition, language related to the common mode, even typicality, is an
>essential demand, which might nevertheless encourage the greatest
>imaginative possibilities.
If that doesn't get the juices flowing, I don't know what will.
best wishes
Randolph Healy
Visit the Sound Eye website at:
http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm
or find more Irish writing at:
http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr7/contents.html
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