On Wed, 24 Nov 1999 20:36:21 -0000, Labi wrote:
>Dear Richard,
>
>Funny thing about "important but pretty self-evident" propositions ... so
>few realise how self-evident they are
- ok, fair cop, Labi - perhaps I should've put that the other way
about, "self-evident but pretty important". I mean, I genuinely don't
think we need to debate the fact that everything's political
particularly after all this time, as in "we hold these truths to be
self-evident". The machete man in Ruanda who you posit, and his
counterparts all over the world, wouldn't stop to debate it, nor wd he
/ they act differently either side of a debate about it. That's
angels-on-pinheads for you. I'd certainly no intention to demean your
argument, which I respect.
>There are people in poetry who tell us what rhythms we should like. They
>give these rhythms names.
- not me, mate: the thread started with a set of academic definitions
of rhythm, which many of the listmembers (as I recall) sought to link
back to the necessities of poetry as a physical presence - I'm sorry
if this seems like angels-on-pinheads to you; to me it seems one vital
part of the articulation of (amongst other things) your
everything's-political point.
> 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.
- ain't that the truth. One way (only one way) is to read it aloud, to
articulate the rhythm yourself. "Poetry must be read aloud" a great
man once said. Self-evidently. However, I've been reading (my own and
others') poetry meself for some years now, and when I just DON'T get
any sense of what's going on rhythmically in someone's poem, well, I
feel at least justified in asking.
>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?
- love the rant here, the rhetorical questions, and can agree directly
with much of what's proposed (especially your scorn for the sloppy
language of the poetry-as-song merchants) - but no way can I answer
all those questions without descending to angels-on-pins level. This
rhythm thing I'm still trying to work out for myself, for my own
practice, and I rather object to people making generalised global
assumptions about it. It's not academic, it's real and physical,
worked out on the air according to personal neccessity, or it's
nothing. OK, now let's talk about it!
RC
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