Believe me
Bugsa Bunny is still the sanest man in all Italia.
SKK

At 11:58 PM +0800 06/6/2001, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>From: fshck@UMAC on 06/06/2001 11:58 PM
>
>OK Kent
>apologies for being vague and cryptic - an occupational hazard...
>it's late where I am now...
>
>i guess one line of thought i had in mind was that declaring poetry
>on the world
>can be a way of evading responsibility...
>i'm thinking particularly of kristevan ambivalent logic - if i can
>mean yes and
>no at the one time then what hope have i got for a consistent position or to
>have any ethics? (i think this is an issue closely related to the multiple
>personae problematics you've been thinking through)... novelists and
>dramatists
>solve this problem conventionally by resolving but poets and postmodernists of
>every colour are too clever to be caught that way...
>
>now i say this very much as one who wishes to regularly declare poetry on the
>world - one of the great tribe of presumptuous little so-and-sos who infest
>lists like this...
>
>and i say it seeing the ethics problem not as insurmountable but as a kind of
>routine dilemma - perhaps not so different from that of the
>prosecutor told not
>to lead the witness or the playwright who has to show not tell
>
>to me the idea of poeticising institutional structures goes beyond
>that kind of
>problematic into theatres of cruelty perhaps
>i note the terms are aptly starred -
>but there's somewhere the muzak begins
>in supermarkets there's the worldwide nausea of christmas
>
>i've tried a couple of times on this list to point to pierre
>bourdieu's idea of
>art worlds as the economic world reversed:
>worlds in which popularity means unpopularity and vice versa - a generalised
>game of loser wins i think he says somewhere ... i think these
>observations are
>critical to the persona or the habitus (bourdieu says) of anyone who isn't
>trying to be andrew lloyd weber  (greetings to andy if he's lurking)
>
>it's not that the wicked ways of the world are natural or to be accepted
>
>it's just that the force of poetry is like the force of a question
>to me - poetry is from a question to a question - that's where it goes
>
>not necessarily oppositional but the kind of world it would run?
>not tonight josephine
>
>if horses were wishes ...
>if poets were legislators ...
>shall we ask vaclav havel about this? - he must be the world expert now
>
>... remember when bugs starts climbing up the hole and he seems to be taking
>forever because
>little does he know NASA has whacked a great big rocket ship about
>to blast off
>on top of the hutch and
>on his way he says the hole sure is long today - i'll never mix
>carrot juice and
>radish juice again - and when he gets
>to the top of the rocket and unscrews the lid, now well in outer space - he's
>just saying
>no wonder i'm so slee...peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
>because the minute he's got the lid off he's carried away by a comet
>or suchlike
>
>i'll omit the rest of the story... but that's all i ask of a poem really
>to give me the wake up call
>
>but right now i'm getting sleepy
>and i am doomed for a certain time to tread where marvin (the
>martian as well as
>the android) hold sway with the rest of the legislators
>
>i'll skip the angels and ministers of grace for the nonce
>may the powers of poetry defend us!
>
>
>Christopher Kelen,
>English Dept, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
>University of Macau, Taipa, Macao SAR, CHINA
>
>
>
>>& the old ways will remain strong, as the audience for authors remains
>>strong, it seems, as well as for their 'straight,' & traditional
>>representations of feelings of the self...
>
>Yes, Doug. But let's not forget that Poetry, in its institutional
>expressions, has played a central role in consolidating such ideological
>expectations.
>
>Thus, my question: How can poets begin to effectively *poeticize the
>institutional structures of ideology*, rather than merely accept them as
>natural and beyond poetry's aim?
>
>
>
>
>  (Embedded
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>
>
>
>Please respond to Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry
>       and poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>
>To:   [log in to unmask]
>cc:    (bcc: fshck/UMAC)
>Subject:  Levina's door/ collaboration/ ideology
>
>
>
>
>Christopher,
>
>Just offering some markedly tentative thoughts and opinions. Don't know why
>the legislating finger-wag.
>
>But thank you for reminding me about reality inside the republic walls.
>
>I don't know what you mean by your half-remembered remark on Benjamin and
>fascism. Could you elaborate?
>
>Kent
>----------
>
>Christopher Kelen wrote:
>
>Kent
>           are you after legislator acknowledgement??
>where would that lead ?  once inside the walls of the republic please
>remember
>that among other things there are to be no sweet sauces, no Athenian
>confectionary and no Corinthian girlfriends ...
>
>didn't walter benjamin have question like this: the aetheticisation of the
>political v. the politicisation of the aesthetic ... and one was fascism and
>i
>can't remember now...
>
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