Dear Richard,

Funny thing about "important but pretty self-evident" propositions ... so
few realise how self-evident they are
(and yes, I mean the double meaning).

The machete wielding man in Rwanda who has cut a living baby in half,
self-evidently failed to realise how self-evidently wrong his action would
be. And though, as you so humbly point out, it should have been
self-evident to me, I have had to work out the "everything being political"
aspect of life for myself, over the past 30, or so, years.

During that time, numerous people, many of them artists/poets, have
insisted that my assessment is absurd / ill conceived/ demeaning. Clearly
they have missed the self-evident. I have, in reply, offered my
"focussed?" explanation.
In future, with great relief, I will merely give these numerous people your
e-mail address and you can clear it up once and for all. Perhaps you could
do the same for the man with the machete.

As to the earlier discussion about rhythm, my immediate response on tracing
the thread was to view the debate in terms of *How many angels can do a
buck-and-wing on the head of a pin?*. After all, everything has a rhythm
(which is not to say that everything/ everyone has "rhythm"). The points
are: can I detect it and do I like it when I do?

There are people in poetry who tell us what rhythms we should like. They
give these rhythms names. Trouble is, most people read poetry, other than
end rhyme poetry, as though it was unpunctuated prose, while end rhyme
poetry is read as doggerel. A major problem for the poet, if rhythm is
essential to the "meaning" of your work, is in getting the reader to read
the rhythms you have written.

How important is the rhythm in the first sentence of this piece?
Important to communication / comprehension? An end in itself?
A means to an end?
Which of the last two is poetry while, of course, the sentence is not?
Can rhythm, poetically, suffice?
Which academic will release a treatise on this?
Who will hear the time in his/her expression?
Like soul, can you acquire it? Why, when people talk of poetry as song
do I feel the same irritation as when wine correspondents favour every fruit
except the grape?
Should every babe be carried on a parents back as the parent dances?
How could an audience "getting down" clap on 1 & 3 to James Brown on British
TV?
Was it because the audience was White and it was the Michael Ball Show?
If the rhythm of your mum's digestive system grabs you more than her
heartbeat...
should you forget about being a poet?

So, how many angels *can* do a buck-and-wing on the head of a pin?

Labi

----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Caddel <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: poem: Metridium


> On Wed, 17 Nov 1999 14:30:47 +0900, pain wrote:
>
> >[...] it sways in the cold waters off
> >the coast of the British isles
> >and while in the deep South
> >from the organic debris a reef
> >is born, here it is a constitution
> >that is supposedly organic,
> >and special emphasis, is placed
> >on the individual rock, attached
> >by a pedal disc, it refuses to go
> >to other rocks [...]
>
> While the discussion on this poem has - uh - focussed? on the
> important but pretty self-evident proposition that everything's
> political, I can't help having, hanging in my mind, the earlier
> discussion we were having about rhythm. To me the above snip seems to
> be lined-out prose, deriving no kinetic energy, gaining no extra
> point, force, music or intensity from being thus lined out. Can you
> elaborate, Stephen, and tell me what I'm missing? The comparison in my
> mind - which may not be fair - is with some of MacDiarmid's science
> cut-ups, where the latter seem to be sculpted so's to concentrate the
> drive of the argument, and here I just can't get that. Perhaps it's
> just me.
>
> RC



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