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Hi Alison,
A balanced and perceptive post as ever. I was going to retreat to ponder on
all this, but this has helped provoke that, so I'll ponder publicly. I think
I do now agree that the pattern or system of the poem is intrinsically part
of its meaning. I remember getting hold of a Penguin edition of Rimbaud, and
finding Oliver Bernard's translations were in prose. It shocked me. But it
still worked as translation. Similarly, when one reads turgid translations
where someone has tried to keep the stanzaic form and even a rhyme scheme,
I'm almost always left bored rigid. And then looking forward to texts on the
web, who's to say that the reader can't display the text in whatever form
they choose. It's not ultimately in the writer's control. For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE rimbaud SYSTEM "rimbaud.dtd">
<rimbaud><stanza><line role="indent4">Elle est retrouvée!</line><line
role="indent4">Quoi? l’éternité.</line><line
role"indent4">C’est la mer mêlée</line><line
role="indent5">Au soleil.</line></stanza></rimbaud>
Is the poetry still in there? Well, I'd say yes. If I write the words out in
a different way the meaning of the poem isn't lost, though the artifice is.
I just can't settle this in my own mind.
Yes about parody too. Yet I can't help thinking that this example shows how
the "meaning" is in many ways independent of the particular form. Wendy Cope
in the UK is very good at showing how a form can merely become a manner. But
her parody of Heaney's manner, for example, still shows the superiority of
his poems. It's not about copying formal innovations or models.
I'm still not comfortable with let's say the loose use of "poetic" to
describe something. As if the term were a definite set of constructs and
values. But I do acknowledge the adjectival sensual and emotive use of the
term. Though if one translates it and says, "it was a normal prose
landscape." One can see the absurdity of such terms of reference. "Honey,
that almond tart was pure algorithm."
I was being unfair to Frost. It's borne out of distrust with a completely
different set of cultural determiners. When someone seeks to reflect and
validate a culture I begin to worry. I worry about this in myself. When I
take satisfaction in my own certainties about our meaninglessness, or our
irrelevance in the "natural order." It can become smug and closed-minded.
Equally, I understand I am at war. War against the humanists, and the
religious apologists. That self-satisfaction has increasingly seemed a
rather despotic emotion, a necessary evil as I find a way to conduct myself
that doesn't make me feel false.
We have to order ourselves in some way and so moral certainty, or let's say
moral provisos, come into play. I always delight in my own corruption,
sitting down with the barbarians. A weak ineffectual man. As I watch the
endless tours of the boy bands and buy the latest brand of facial cleanser
complete with free radicals, or choose the new BMW with the revised front
grille, I know these forms are novelties of regurgitation (sorry to keep
using that word). Nothing new under the sun. It tells me to toe the line,
settle down, recognise that there's no alternative. There's nothing sinister
in my Nikes. Poetry is just the same. As you say, no surprises, we're all
like this Pal. Birth, death and . . . then I wake up in a cold sweat and
stare at the ceiling.
Shock value has become a kind of liberal-humanist release valve. Like
discussing poverty, or the failures of social services, we delight in
controlled horror. Behind the green lens of smart bomb, we are shocked at
our technical brutality. It allows us to return to our jobs and shopping
malls with a better sense of the value of our freedom. But we aren't free.
We're distracted. Horror is the great cultural distraction. I guess from the
Greeks onwards, we remind ourselves of those events waiting at the fringes
of our lives waiting to devour us. We thank the Lord for our ALL NEW 10%
more rigid, aluminium body shell. Moral disquiet is the eroticism of the
middle classes.
As for souls. I haven't got a mortal one either. But spiritual longings and
desires continue to trouble me. I can't find a better way of putting it
either. But I long for a kind of extinction, to be eradicated is totally
beautiful for me. This yearning for "nothing", is a potent force in my
creative make-up, recognising my pointlessness is deeply fulfilling. Nothing
matters. But in my fickleness, I invent purpose.
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