Hi Lawrence - Billy,
I realise this is a wobbling conflation of backchannel and list correspondence.
And oh welk (welk?well) yes. I agree that i'm leaping at hares and
splitting junipers. I also didn't intend to wash away Billy's point about
the pleasures of the bibliophile in which i too indulge. Althpough
sometimes i feel as if i'm performing in too lacklustre a manner as a
reader.
But i'm not sure that I feel performance needs an immediate audience of
present witnesses to be *a performance*. OK, i'll admit i don't think
that's necessary. So the issue of public and private doesn't cut it for me.
I guess I might begin to find a point of balance with you (not that i'm
having a big row or anything - this is for fun i hope) on the idea of
intention. At what point and with what intent does a poem cross a boundary
between under the bed and not to be seen by anyone and made for one or more
others to engage with? And at what points does the writer cross the
boundary and become the reader witnessing their own *performances*? There's
a welter of chronic ifs and buts in hock here. But the obsessively
cloistered act can be a most moving performance with far-reaching
consequences as Emily Dickinson's work might yet prove.
The reason why i for one keep niggling away at this splitting hairline is
because of the arguments about 'authenticity' and the romantic presence of
the author that cry in its wake and drive what seem to me to be
dysfunctional rifts between those who (i'm over characterising) tout for
the autonomous poem object and those who shake a so-called 'live' leg.
There seems to me to be more than a simple issue of presences and absences
here - the implied voices, the mind's ears, the liminal bodies, the
intent and its frustrations and constraints and so forth. IF and i
understand it's a big if that is difficult for some to swallow, the act of
writing as well as that of reading might be accepted as being acts of
performance, then these vapid distinction could begin to be waved on their
way as they pass over our generous shoulders into the mists of
misconception.
i've just wandered into a room and caught myself misreading pork pies as
dark skies
love and love
cris
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