For %$#&'s sake Christopher give it a rest.
> To which I'd add that poetry doesn't (always, or necessarily) _contain_
meaning. As I think you've also been implying.<
No I haven't. I posted a poem the other day, I take it you didn't read it.
>('David leaves [poetry] entirely
undefined. Nor does he characterise cultural transmission; merely property
and theft [..] Why not, instead of *poems*, an improvement on the mousetrap
or some newly branded beans?') I've been suggesting that poetry _eludes_ the
(rather easy) substitutions you've been making: intellectual property (in
the first case) and some sort of cognitive tool (in the second).<
As I haven't tried to define poetry it's unsurprising that I've left it
undefined. As for the mousetraps and baked beans, they sound like a
collaboration between Agatha Christie and a soupless Andy Warhol. I'm sure
you know perfectly well what I meant by the hypothetical Sheila Ramsbottom
and I think your persistent sniping at this matter is deliberately intended
to provoke, rather than allow any interplay of ideas and discussion. I
haven't substituted the notion of 'some sort of cognitive tool' for poetry
as I haven't defined in detail what I'm thinking of in the context of poetic
language and modalities of intelligence, as I said, this is not the space
for such an exposition, so will you PLEASE stop putting words in my mouth.
Thank you and Finis.
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: authorships (2)
Dave:
<snip>
'More comprehensively' sounds very like a single axis measurement of
quality. Is a spanner a more comprehensive tool than a screwdriver, for
example? What about a fishtank, which isn't a tool in the first place? I
think the axes are many. So to speak. [CW}
This is interesting in the analogies it uses as I would argue that
instrumentality in the sense of being a product of tool-making, manipulative
intelligence is precisely what poetry is not an example of. {DB}
<snip>
Both in the excerpt above ('What about a fishtank, which isn't a tool in the
first place') and in previous posts ('David leaves [poetry] entirely
undefined. Nor does he characterise cultural transmission; merely property
and theft [..] Why not, instead of *poems*, an improvement on the mousetrap
or some newly branded beans?') I've been suggesting that poetry _eludes_ the
(rather easy) substitutions you've been making: intellectual property (in
the first case) and some sort of cognitive tool (in the second).
To which I'd add that poetry doesn't (always, or necessarily) _contain_
meaning. As I think you've also been implying.
And at that point I shall stop.
CW
