I have always been thrilled by the way in which the musicality
of a poem could arise from
what I called "fidelity to experience," but it took me some time
to realize what the mechanics
of such precision were as they related to this matter of pitch
pattern. The point is that, just as
vowels and consonants affect the music of poetry not by mere euphony
but by expressive,
significant interrelationship, so the nuances of meaning apprehended
in variations of pitch
create significant, expressive melody, not just a pretty "tune"
in the close tone range of speech.
One of the ways in which many poets reveal their lack of awareness
about the function of
the line-break is the way in which they will begin a line with
the word "it," for instance, even
when it is clear from the context that they don't want the extra
emphasis--relating to both
rhythm and pitch--this gives it. Thus, if one writes,
http://www.ualr.edu/rmburns/RB/levline.htmlHe did not know
it, but at his very moment
his house was burning,
> to what is authenticity committed, save itselfEasier to say about other people.Cheers,LukeOn 21 May 2018 at 15:10, Jamie McKendrick <00001ae26018af73-dmarc-[log in to unmask] > wrote:This deals with the whole matter eloquently and almost conclusively. The ‘almost’ is to register, as Drew’s post also suggests, that we do detect the fake or the false in poems (especially in those that make claims to ‘authenticity’). In other words we may doubt poems that presume to articulate a ‘truth’ while valuing those that go in search of it.Jamie
(i still need to remember what Trilling’s argument was...)I've only been following the question of authenticity at a distance, but I have been enjoying the sound of Lionel Trilling spinning in his resting place.
The very idea of authenticity seems inauthentic to me, a kind of substitute for some ideology of integrity that struggles to offer anything more concrete than truth to experience or truth to given prejudices, almost a substitute for something resembling existential good faith, where faith is the clear signal that a kind of theological commitment is in play. And yet to what is authenticity committed, save itself? Authentic racists cannot be faulted on grounds of their authenticity. I fear my prejudice against authenticity was confirmed by T.W. Adorno's Jargon of Authenticity, which is one of Adorno's least convincing and most polemically self-defeating books, but which nevertheless attempts to deflate the bubble of authenticity as it was purveyed in the Heideggerian diaspora.
I would venture that any poet who claims or proclaims authenticity can only be doing so ironically, and that anything resembling true authenticity in a poem would more likely be evinced by studied artifice and witty dissembling than by anything resembling plain, naked or homespun truths. Which is not to say that there aren't remarkable poetic exponents of the artifice of raw truth.
Drew
On 21/05/2018 13:01, Luke wrote:
I wonder if any poets / authors fail to be authentic or inauthentic, or succeed at being neither, etc.. There's the suggestion, above: could the term be out of use for those reasons, it not being a universal thing?Luke
On 21 May 2018 at 01:12, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> those paths Tim
Well, something happened, and we don't know what, and that's OK too.
Thanks,Luke
On 20 May 2018 at 09:18, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I prefer to avoid those paths Tim :)
On Sat, 19 May 2018 1:39 pm Tim Allen, <0000002899e7d020-dmarc-reques[log in to unmask] > wrote:
No worries Dave - anyone who is happily busy is a wonderful being - as long as they are not a psychopath of course.
Cheers
Tim
On 19 May 2018, at 12:25, David Bircumshaw wrote:
Tim
No ideas but in fiction in fact?
Sorry for my tardiness too, and brevity, but I've been very happily busy lately.
dave