On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:38:07 +0100 (BST), Peter wrote:
> A poem is a subtler thing and we can't
>necessarily read back its messages to the intentions of its maker, we can't
>be so categorical as it what it's for. Like most art-objects it is a
>product of uncertain function. This means that claims, as well as
>intentions, on the part of producers have very little weight. The effect
>claimed at point A might bear no useful relationship to the results found
>in the text at point B, 50 yards away.
- Peter I agree with everything you say, whatever one does, even if
one thinks it's purely a process, one ends up with a product of some
kind, even if it's defined over (a great deal of) time and is all
raggety at the edges. And what you say above seems to me to
acknowledge too that there _is_ a process going on which is
noteworthy, i.e., the transmission process, the jump of the spark to
greater or lesser extent. That's the fun of it, yes? Getting the spark
to jump, and I call it process, you call it product, let's call the
whole thing off.
What's evident to me in a very wide range of "recent" work, though, is
a readiness to at least _acknowledge_ the methodologies, the processes
at work, and that strikes me as good, democratic, interactive, kind to
readers, a healthy move away from the pure like-it-or-lump-it
product-only utterances being doled out from sermonizers politicians
and even the career journalist poets you refer to.
So some products are unfinished, rough at the edges (you cite Maximus,
Gunslinger, but really there are too many to list). They fascinate me,
like architecture you can walk round and see all the developmental
stages of. I can go to them and wander round in them and see the
workings, the - uh - processes, and yes, they move me, regularly. Is
this kinky, do I have to stop at once or I'll go blind? I hope not,
for it's exactly the fun I get as a reader from interacting with such
a wide range of texts, recent and indeed ancient. We're curious,
interpretive beings, yes? Readers. I'm not going to come out of a text
and say, hmm, that was really - ah - FINISHED, y'know, I'm going to
come out saying, it showed me this, I found myself thinking that, one
thing led to another, I liked the bit where it did t'other. In my
experience I can as well do that with process-emphatic works with
their ragged bits showing as with smoothed-down products, but in
practice I think it's usually a mix of both process and product -
which is roughly what you said, yes? Or so it seems to me.
R
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