Doug
I love 'play with language'. What I'm resistant to is its valorization, its
fetishising. I get an awful sense of emptiness from that.
I dunno if I'm making much sense here, what I'm probably trying to get at is
that I have a morally centered imagination, so there has to be a sense of
seriousness to things for me, even if they're profoundly comic.
Hope this shabby statement communicates something.
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: Back on Planet Earth
> Okay David
> >
> >I'm pondering matters here: as a profoundly stupid person myself I have
> >problems with literary theory. It is not that I am hostile to theory, in
a
> >sub-Romantic sense, but that almost all I ever encounter as 'theory'
doesn't
> >seem to contain any (theories that is). My thick skull understands theory
in
> >the scientific sense, as being propoundings of demonstrable and
falsifiable
> >hypotheses, and I don't seem to see any such in what pours out of
academe.
> >All I see seem to be language games, played out in pursuit of career
points.
>
> It's true, a lot of theory seems to be way up there in Cloud Cuckoo Land,
> ie, it's philosophy in one of its many guizes.
>
> But I'm not sure how many ways there are to get at, to, through, with
> 'experiential reality.' However, I am damn sure that for poets it involves
> language, & that probably means what are often derided as 'language
games,'
> certainly involves play with language, & for me, involves an attitude
> toward language of cooperation, collusion, collaboration, as assumption
> that language will lead me on to meanings I might never have found if all
i
> did was 'report' on what I already thought was my experience (how little
we
> 'know').
>
> And some theory is aware of this, or maybe iot's just some poetics is...
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Beauty
> is to lay hold of Love
> is the leave
> to
> Charles Olson
>
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