Marcus Bales:
> Your, and Alison's, and Mark Weiss's claim about poetry at
> least (and perhaps art in general) seems to be that there is no skill
> required, no craft needed, and no hierarchy wanted. Everyone's poems
> are just as valuable as everyone else's, if I understand what you and
> she seem to be claiming.

On 14 Jun 2003 at 1:52, Mark Weiss wrote:
> Marcus: No one in this discussion ever said anything remotely like this.

Well, then, clearly I don't understand what you all seem to be
claiming, do I? I'm trying to come to an understanding of what you
do, in fact, claim without contradiction.

I understand, I think, that the goal of claiming that it's the
process not the product and that the reader is irrelevant is to
eliminate any possibility of hierarchy, to eliminate any possibility
of making judgments about poetry.

I don't understand, though, how if the poet is writing for the
experience of the process, for the enjoyment of the process, AND
expresses complete disregard for what any reader may think of the
product of that process, there can be any claim to skill or craft in
producing that product.

It seems to me that if the theory of poetry, or the poetics, in
question is that there can be no hierarchical judgments about quality
of the product, that the process for the poet is the only reason to
write poetry, that the reader is irrelevant, then I don't see where
there can be any skill or craft involved at all. Any claim to skill
and craft would have to contradict the other premises, it seems to
me. I don't see how you can have it both ways -- for if there is
skill and craft then there has to be a way to make hierarchical
judgments about quality or claims to skill and craft are nonsense.
Equally, any claims to skill and craft would contradict the notion
that the process is all, for the moment there is judgment about skill
and craft there is of necessity the matter of judging the product
(however ephemeral it might be, say of dance, for example). Equally
still, any claims to skill and craft would also contradict the notion
that the reader is irrelevant, because without a reader there can be
no judgments: even the poet him- or herself has to be a reader of his
or her own work, and without the poet-as-reader making value
judgments about the quality of the work there can be no claim to
skill or craft.

So claims to skill or craft necessarily, it seems to me, contradict
the claims that the poems are purely procedural enjoyments for the
poet, that there can be no hierarchical judgments made about quality,
and that the reader is irrelevant. I can't see any way to make
reasonable claims for skill or craft without abandoning the notions
that poems are purely procedural enjoyments for the poet, that there
can be no hierarchical judgments, and that the reader is irrelevant.

But it seems to me that so long as it is maintained that there can be
no hierarchical judgments and that poems are purely procedural
enjoyments for the poet, and that the reader is irrelevant that that
is the same as claiming that there is neither skill nor craft
required in writing poems, because skill and craft are necessarily
excluded by the premises of the poetics.









Marcus Bales

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