David,
> i notice that a certain kind of poetics is tolerated by our society -
>i.e. one that is adjectival & ultimately meaningless.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'our society' - my impression is that in
society in general all poetry is equally met with the same profound
indifference and is thus all equally tolerated. Or by 'society' do you
mean this particular community of interest?
Here's a quote from Hakim Bey:
"In Persia I saw that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or
sung--for one reason alone--because it works.
A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal
(something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness),
outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing--measurable physical response to
art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era--we
read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas.
In N. India even non-musical recitation provokes noise & motion, each
good couplet applauded, "Wa! Wa!" with elegant hand-jive, tossing of
rupees--whereas we listen to poetry like some SciFi brain in a jar--at
best a wry chuckle or grimace, vestige of simian rictus--the rest of the
body off on some other planet.
In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment,
since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as
theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything
at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without
echoes, without palpable existence--shadow-realm of print, or of
abstract thought--world without risk or eros."
That's from his essay Pornography from the book T.A.Z. The Temprary
Autonomous Zone: Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism, a perennial
source if inspiration and hope for me. The entire book and many other
texts by the wonderful Mr Bey can be found on-line at
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/
All the best,
Nigel
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