It's _self-overcoming_ that Nietzshe espoused. Sorry,
_overcome_ by the presence of this philosopher.

Candice 



--- MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Joe, your comments on "overcoming" remind me of
> Nietzshe (sp?). Is he a major influence on you?
> 
> Candice
> 
> 
> 
> --- joe green <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > "This is excellently put.  The solution, in
> > political poetry, is
> > Brechtian "alienation": objectivity, or what
> appears
> > to
> > be objectivity, where the reader expects pathos."
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Or pathos where the reader expects alienation and
> > the usual effects.
> > 
> > The point is that a good poem is what remains
> after
> > encountering or 
> > ignoring or transcending all systems that exist to
> > prevent its existence. 
> >  As Eliot said, the poem is judged by every other
> > poem out there.
> >  It can be a unique instance only because it
> > encounters the uniqueness 
> > of everything else.  That also means it can, more
> or
> > less do exactly what 
> > another good poem does and in the same way if it
> is
> > true that it can do
> >  so because the other poems exist in the same mode
> > of overcoming – that 
> > those instances have not been exhausted.  At a
> > certain point a “sentimental” 
> > poem can be a real poem – overcoming ironies and
> so
> > on – but only if all 
> > that resists it is somehow overcome.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > The poetry of sincerity is exhausted just because
> > its opposite is never 
> > really encountered.  The poetry of alienation has
> > more going for it
> >  since alienation implies something that is seen
> as
> > necessary to
> >  overcome.  And there are emotions that are not
> > banal – grief.  
> > But how to overcome just the usual utterance?  
> > Poetry that doesn’t want to encounter emotion and
> > instead 
> > to claim that it exists in some abstract
> mode--such
> > as
> >  LangPo does—and still wants to make a pretension
> to
> > significance 
> > and meaning utterly baffles me.  Why should I care
> > when I could 
> > be reading King Lear?  
> > 
> > I love Ulysses and Finnegans Wake just because the
> > more 
> > I read and discover the more I see to discover. 
> >  I’m delighted with a “difficult” text but only if
> > there is something there
> >  – not banal utterance tricked up a la mode.  
> > 
> > I love scholarship and have spent many days
> > bellycrawling 
> > through libraries to, for example, discover if
> > Shakespeare
> >  could have known what was meant by a “Republic”
> in
> > the
> >  sense it was understood just 100 years later etc
> > etc but nothing 
> > is more pointless than the classification and
> > placing
> >  of poets in schools.  Wordsworth, for example, a
> > poet sincere. 
> >  Matt Arnold reading him for beauty and rest.  
> > 
> > 
> > But you read his great poems and discover that
> >  a central trope is nothingness, desolation,
> > impossibility of knowing, 
> > vacancy etc coupled with the great insistence that
> > all of this can
> >  be overcome. This insistence continually
> betrayed. 
> >  No closure.  Not conscious irony but a real poet
> > encountering 
> > the opposite of what he wants to mean and even
> doing
> > so never really 
> > seeing that in his own poems.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Look at the Ascent of the Alps..Book 6 of the
> > Prelude.
> > 
> >  Wordsworth anticipates ascending to the top. 
> >  Ah, that’s where the Sublime is!.
> >  And …then:
> >      
> >   
> > "That from the torrent's further brink held forth
> > Conspicuous invitation to ascend
> > A lofty mountain. After brief delay
> > Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,
> > And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears
> > Intruded, for we failed to overtake
> > Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,
> > While every moment added doubt to doubt,
> > A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned
> > That to the spot which had perplexed us first  
> > Wemust descend, and there should find the road,
> > Which in the stony channel of the stream
> > Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;
> > And, that our future course, all plain to sight,
> > Was downwards, with the current of that stream.
> > Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,
> > For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,
> > We questioned him again, and yet again;
> > But every word that from the peasant's lips
> > Came in reply, translated by our feelings,  
> > Ended in this,--'that we had crossed the Alps'.
> > 
> >  
> >   Ha!  So what do you do?  He never noticed that
> he
> > was at the top—missed the Sublime.  Admits this….
> >    
> >   And then this attempt at recovery!
> >    
> >    
> >   
> > Imagination--here the Power so called
> > Through sad incompetence of human speech,
> > That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss
> > Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,
> > At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
> > Halted without an effort to break through;
> > But to my conscious soul I now can say--
> > "I recognise thy glory:" in such strength
> >  Of usurpation, when the light of sense …         
>  
> >         
> >                
> > Lost, lonely, abyss, usurpation all words that
> again
> > and again betray what he wants to assert.
> >  
> > Then he descends and makes another recovery:
> >    
> >   
> > The melancholy slackening that ensued
> > Upon those tidings by the peasant given
> > Was soon dislodged. Downwards we hurried fast,
> > And, with the half-shaped road which we had
> missed,
> > Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road
> > Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,
> > And with them did we journey several hours
> > At a slow pace. The immeasurable height
> > Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
> > The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
> > And in the narrow rent at every turn
> > Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
> > The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
> > The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
> > Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
> > As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
> > And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
> > The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
> > Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light--
> > Were all like workings of one mind, the features
> > Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
> > Characters of the great Apocalypse,
> > The types and symbols of Eternity,
> > Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.
> >          Whoa!  He really needed that!  And on and
> > on – revisions of the revisions…always wanting
> that
> > Eternity…language always undercutting it… but
> > something new emerges.
> >    
> >   The Right Stuff.
> >   
> >  
> > 
> 
=== message truncated ===



       
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