> But as a final thought: Frost's dictum is in essence a capitalist
> regurgitation is it not? it's about confining us to the endless
> novelty of regurgitation and the "safety" in recognition. We glimpse
> ourselves and rest assured in the knowledge that cliche is an odd
> kind of stability.
No it isn't, no it doesn't, no we don't. Frost's statement that
"poetry isn't trying to tell you something you didn't already know but
is trying to give you 'the shock of recognition'" is in the tradition of
a humanistic psychology running from Plato to Freud which holds that
meaning as opposed to fact is the experience of an immortal soul (mind,
unconscious) which ultimately is the same for all of us. The truth is
within us, when we learn something it's because we remember it, an
illiterate slave-boy knows the Pythagorean theorem but has just
forgotten it, the task of turning Id into Ego is reclamation.
> I don't think form communicates, does it? If so what does rondeau
> mean?
Take a rondeau and say as nearly as possible the same thing in prose.
The difference is the meaning of the form.
> But one doesn't hear a form.
On the contrary, one can only perceive poetic form aurally.
====
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his
limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry
reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power
corrupts, poetry cleanses.
-- John F. Kennedy
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