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----- Original Message ----- From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:49 AM Subject: Re: Dead ends > Possibly not, Fred, but without such 'stylistic experimentation' I'm not > sure anything else can happen in the art, either. Admittedly, I've just > reread Susan Sontag's essay, 'On Style,' so that, along with my own > biases when writing, may be leading me on right now. > > But take those two poems you just posted; we can certainly discuss what > they say, but I admit my admiration for your work has to do with a > 'style' of discourse within them that creates a tone for whatever we mean > by their 'content' that in fact is the core of it. > > It's complex too, not a simple tune, & I see your poems, the way they > move through their paces, as constructing that emotional/moral/ etc > complexity.... > > Doug > On 6-Apr-09, at 3:21 PM, Frederick Pollack wrote: > I read Sontag's essay so long ago I've forgotten it, so I doubt if what I have to say connects. But let's view "style" as a conscious aspect of the artistic mind, "content" as its unconscious. All I've said is that stylistic play makes no difference - suggests no new experiences - unless tensions within the realm of content allow it do so. Those tensions can be (and, *pace Alison Croggon, should be) increased by thinking that prioritizes content. When I write I try to take a new view or sounding of reality (which contains me, politics, history, and nature, all in one mass). The new perspective suggests a form, and an application (hopefully an extension) of my usual style, adequate to that perspective. I thereby consciously mimic what history did, so to speak, unconsciously, when it decided that the style of the 1890s couldn't express the reality of the 1920s. People like Raworth, MacLow, Watten and Silliman, as I see it, confuse the paint job and tail fins of the car with its motor.