Waah!
Claire, I think your words about Alison's
'frangibility' and 'passing as a poet' are a bit out of order. When I used the
word I was thinking of my own vulneralbilities, not co-opting another person's.
It's not up to me to categorise another.
As for Sharon Olds, I think her stuff's
crap.
And as for communities, if only we had them. Go
down to the geriatric homes (privately nursed) and try telling them about
'community'.
While readings are 'difficult', if you do them,
yeah they work at times, but jeez do they take it out of ya.
It is not so much a matter of a poet's presence in
the world as of any human being's, which is always slightly
questionable.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 11:45
PM
Subject: Re: Levinas's door/
collaboration/ ideology
Dave
I fel she's quite frangible enough to
pass as a poet. Talking of
frangibility, that seems to me just the quality
that poets I like have when
they are 'being present' at readings - if I am
correct in glossing frangible
as a mixture of fragility and
tangibility.
Les Murray, for example, has it almost excessively - so
tangible, so fragile.
John Ashbery pushes fragility. UA Fanthorpe,
interestingly, pushes
tangibility especially because she uses an extra
physical presence (another
reader alongside to vary the 'social' voice who
comes across, however, as
fragilely not UAF).
Am I also correct in
interpreting fragile as including vulnerability? And
tangibility as
including conviction? In which case, Sharon Olds gets my
vote
as the poet in whose physical reading presence I - I as the community -
am
provided with the most opportunity to be made frangible myself.
If you
see what I mean.
Best
Claire
In a message dated
07/06/01 23:21:01 GMT Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
I am so impressed that you have this wonderful poet in your
community, my
own observations have been along the lines that poets are
rather fragile on
social awareness, altho' possibly wanting secretly to
save the world, as it
were, and I'd say with some certainty that my own
sense of peopledom
presence is a rather frangible one, and not backed up
with a confidence in
dealing with 'issues'.
Nor ever a
likelihood of being a 'literature officer'.
Best