From: fshck@UMAC on 06/06/2001 11:58 PM OK Kent apologies for being vague and cryptic - an occupational hazard... it's late where I am now... i guess one line of thought i had in mind was that declaring poetry on the world can be a way of evading responsibility... i'm thinking particularly of kristevan ambivalent logic - if i can mean yes and no at the one time then what hope have i got for a consistent position or to have any ethics? (i think this is an issue closely related to the multiple personae problematics you've been thinking through)... novelists and dramatists solve this problem conventionally by resolving but poets and postmodernists of every colour are too clever to be caught that way... now i say this very much as one who wishes to regularly declare poetry on the world - one of the great tribe of presumptuous little so-and-sos who infest lists like this... and i say it seeing the ethics problem not as insurmountable but as a kind of routine dilemma - perhaps not so different from that of the prosecutor told not to lead the witness or the playwright who has to show not tell to me the idea of poeticising institutional structures goes beyond that kind of problematic into theatres of cruelty perhaps i note the terms are aptly starred - but there's somewhere the muzak begins in supermarkets there's the worldwide nausea of christmas i've tried a couple of times on this list to point to pierre bourdieu's idea of art worlds as the economic world reversed: worlds in which popularity means unpopularity and vice versa - a generalised game of loser wins i think he says somewhere ... i think these observations are critical to the persona or the habitus (bourdieu says) of anyone who isn't trying to be andrew lloyd weber (greetings to andy if he's lurking) it's not that the wicked ways of the world are natural or to be accepted it's just that the force of poetry is like the force of a question to me - poetry is from a question to a question - that's where it goes not necessarily oppositional but the kind of world it would run? not tonight josephine if horses were wishes ... if poets were legislators ... shall we ask vaclav havel about this? - he must be the world expert now ... remember when bugs starts climbing up the hole and he seems to be taking forever because little does he know NASA has whacked a great big rocket ship about to blast off on top of the hutch and on his way he says the hole sure is long today - i'll never mix carrot juice and radish juice again - and when he gets to the top of the rocket and unscrews the lid, now well in outer space - he's just saying no wonder i'm so slee...peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! because the minute he's got the lid off he's carried away by a comet or suchlike i'll omit the rest of the story... but that's all i ask of a poem really to give me the wake up call but right now i'm getting sleepy and i am doomed for a certain time to tread where marvin (the martian as well as the android) hold sway with the rest of the legislators i'll skip the angels and ministers of grace for the nonce may the powers of poetry defend us! Christopher Kelen, English Dept, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Macau, Taipa, Macao SAR, CHINA >& the old ways will remain strong, as the audience for authors remains >strong, it seems, as well as for their 'straight,' & traditional >representations of feelings of the self... Yes, Doug. But let's not forget that Poetry, in its institutional expressions, has played a central role in consolidating such ideological expectations. Thus, my question: How can poets begin to effectively *poeticize the institutional structures of ideology*, rather than merely accept them as natural and beyond poetry's aim? (Embedded image moved kent johnson <[log in to unmask]> to file: 06/06/2001 11:14 PM pic20416.pcx) Please respond to Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] cc: (bcc: fshck/UMAC) Subject: Levina's door/ collaboration/ ideology Christopher, Just offering some markedly tentative thoughts and opinions. Don't know why the legislating finger-wag. But thank you for reminding me about reality inside the republic walls. I don't know what you mean by your half-remembered remark on Benjamin and fascism. Could you elaborate? Kent ---------- Christopher Kelen wrote: Kent are you after legislator acknowledgement?? where would that lead ? once inside the walls of the republic please remember that among other things there are to be no sweet sauces, no Athenian confectionary and no Corinthian girlfriends ... didn't walter benjamin have question like this: the aetheticisation of the political v. the politicisation of the aesthetic ... and one was fascism and i can't remember now... _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com