but doesn't the heading of
>this thread (and the mis-spelling which occurred in that presentation)
>rather alter this context? We are about trying to get things right,
>no? I speak as one who mis-spelled Niedecker's name on one of my
>publications... Guiltily,
>
>Wretched Cable
I agree, Ric, but it's not just names. To spell someone's name right is no
more than a politeness, at one time (and before electronic communication)
not thought necessary. There is among poets a precious attitude to the
word, and the letter, which makes them dote on a particular detail of
formulation which to other people makes little or no difference. One
version of poetry as "spell" is to insist on microscopic detail on the
basis of theoretical notions of subsumed transfer which seem to me highly
dubious. Or by solipsistic contemplation arrive at distorted versions of
language which don't mean beyond your own psyche.
And it crosses over into people's lives. A certain poet, known to both of
us, once spent half an hour arguing with a Scandinavian passport control
officer, in a language he didn't speak very well, and holding up an
enormous queue of people wanting to get off a ferry, because he insisted
that the name of his profession was not "writer" but "author". To people
at large it makes no difference, what you call it, but he'd developed a
mystique around these words,
which is what I'm talking about, mystiques. I can think of some
"linguistically innovative" poets, good poets too, could be, whose work is
just about entirely mystique.
But is it necessary? Is it a definitive factor of the whole mind-set which
makes you want to be a poet, to view words in this way which to normal
people is just silly? That's what I don't know.
Still waiting for the Dickinsonian Manuscript bombs.
/PR
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