Alan --
what I suppose I must have meant, about Lee Harwood's reading, is: he
seemed to be arguing for a pattern of spontaneous and protracted
reflection, in which the latter mitigates the former but where this
'mitigation' never works both ways -- he told us how, when working as a
museum guard and with loads of time on his hands, pacing silently from
room to room, he would ponder a single line for days or hours, really work
it over, give it a lot of time. He then read the poem which these lines
were fitted to; it reflected quite adequately how ponderous he had been,
but seemed to me to have extirpated any probability of sudden
self-dissuasion, sudden proclivity to doubt, sudden irritation with the
choice of words used so far, basically a song for paradigmatic
uninterruption. The steadiness of this regard for the possibilities of
reflective locutions is at heart a mistake, I think, or is NOW at least.
It has -been steadied-.
In short an oppression of the aporetic instinct by the instinct to wait
and see.
I wanted to say that this was procedural, not in order to tarnish
'procedure' as such (a term too monstrously absorptive to attack in
anything but a quibble), but to point out that the spontaneous inclination
which his affection for his subject matter seemed to advertise, had been
spray-canned over in the secure pigment of a level head. Proceeding, as
if the ear whispered to itself, "Proceed". Telling itself what to do.
And all this to say how simple life is, nature is, the earth is, really.
Simplicity is what he picked. I'd say, this is because it's more fun for
him.
Still the earth is a fucking mess.
k
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