Print

Print
Hi, Jamie,

My druthers for (an) art form extraordinaire would be theatre, and one of my reasons is that potentially it can embrace most other art forms (let me not have to count the ways); but, then, I'm a playwright . . . so...

Further, if I had to narrow the art forms to the two we're chattering about --  and had to rank them -- 'twould be tough to oust a favoured symphonic piece (but I'd do it) for a favoured poem -- the poem which, I strongly insist, is not only 1) where 'silent' music resides, but 2) where the head as well as the heart move and change.  There, done and dusted....for that little test. 

IF a magnificent symphonic piece were wed to a Mary Sidney-poetry bit, well, then, made and saved in heaven.  Odds of that happening?  Nearly impossible.  OK, impossible.  But we (can) all enjoy the 'half-haps' and 'less than half-haps' of infinite choices available to us. 

BTW, poetry/music short-shot merges would qualify as mind-and-heart-benders for me, as well.  I'd love, for example, to hear a sung and/or instrument-accompanied piece of these two lines from poet Peter Sirr ("Desire"):  "On an endless, meandering train,/ the soul puts down its books, fluent again."

Judy warmed up with new respect for poets and songwriter/"musicianers" (as bluesman Cadillac Baby, from Chicago, used to call them)




On 23 October 2016 at 03:35, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Judy, 
  A smile of recognition, however fugitive, has to be better than a declaration of war.
Though I began it with the lame goose of 'literature' I've been trying quite hard to free the thing from the tedious 'tortures of terminology' in which I have little interest. My reference to the spoken as opposed to the sung, though not in the least original, still seems to me workable as a 'clear basis' to consider the whole issue.
Jamie


On 23 Oct 2016, at 01:34, Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jamie, you say: 

"(T)he discussion was not really about whether literature can include song but rather about how it includes song . . ."

I gave that bit an instant smile of recognition and relief, though, naturally, I may choose to deny those responses in an hour or two.

Yet it remains a knotty super-complex issue, even given your 'limit' of "how" versus "whether".  I've come to hate and love the damned fascinating issue, but have yet to hear in these discussions anything that sets a clear analytical basis for arguing -- only endless tortures of terminology (each word defined by each writer and unagreed-upon by others).  Believe me, if I could frame the argument more understandably at this point, I'd do it -- and actually did (somewhat unsuccessfully) with a revered friend. 

Ah well, argument's fun, I suppose, if it's impossible to tell who's winning -- or rather why some folks think they are. 

Best,  Judy

On 23 October 2016 at 00:46, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Ok Peter, perhaps it has gone on too long but the discussion was not really about whether literature can include song but rather about how it includes song, which is a topic you yourself have written on at some length in your review of Denise Riley. So I don't quite understand this declaration of war.
Yours pacifically,
Jamie


> On 22 Oct 2016, at 23:16, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I'm with you, Peter.
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Oct 22, 2016 6:13 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]C.UK
>> Subject: a bit much
>>
>> Getting back from a fine concert of Indian music on the chitravina in
>> Bradford at 11:00 pm and finding no less than twenty-four e-mails have
>> arrived, all from the same four people in pursuit of arguments which
>> are of no interest to me and aren't getting anywhere anyway -- is a
>> bit much.
>>
>> I declare war on these discussions.
>>
>> Of course literature includes song, how could it possibly not?
>>
>>
>> PR