Heh. You might well be interested in that poem/essay of mine On Lyric,
Chris - (published in Attempts At Being a couple of years ago)

The first eight bits follow, which strike me as pertinent to some of
what you're saying here: (pasting it in so I hope the lineation is
ok).

xA



Must I not begin to trust somewhere?

Wittgenstein, On Certainty

In the end, only love matters.

Picasso



1


The poet asserts



2


a poet has no responsibility to what has already been said because
what the poet says has not been said before

the poet says what has never been said because no moment is time is
the same as any other moment in time

the eternal is the present

and so the present moves beyond particularity

the poem is made of language which is made of the human past of
individual and collective memory

nevertheless to ask whether a poem is universal is to ask the wrong question

a poem can either enter another present which differs from the present
in which it is written or it cannot

a poem may be able to inhabit the present of a single individual at
one time but not at another or may not enter the present of an
individual at any time or may enter at any time

when it enters another present the poem is transformed because no
moment in time is the same as any other moment in time

a poem is eternal only in this sense and only in its ceaseless transformation

it is particular to any of the presents involved and in the
complexities of the particularities of the presents is not susceptible
to the conceptual reductiveness of laws

to ask of a poem that it obey a law is to desire that its freedom is
circumscribed

it is to ask it not to be a poem



3


a poem is not a mirror but a breath in the world the world is inhaled
translated and exhaled

a poem is not a representation but a mimicry of relationships in the world

it is in motion as a gesture is

lyric is not a category but a dimension of a poem

lyric might be thought of as the field of force of a poem

the conditions of its occurrence are potentially infinite

the freedom of the present of a poem is inverse to the extent to which
the lyric dimension is eschewed



4


lyric is the desire towards the invisibility of the self

the dilemma of encountering lyric is to accept invisibility without shame

the dispossessed, the marginalised and the powerless are invisible

to be invisible is to be without purchase

the self the facets of which are fixed by the shifting gaze of others
is endangered

it is necessary to protect our visibility in order to have a self with
which to move through the world

in being that self we are not free we are constrained by the gaze of others

if we escape the gaze of others we can permit more fully the potential
of what is constrained by the creation of a self

what is most constrained is the world we understand by feeling

the desire for invisibility is a desire towards the truth of feeling

invisibility is a gamble on the hope of true habitation in the world



5


touch is the seed of feeling

the sense of touch is the root sense by which we know ourselves in the world

the light which touches our retina invokes sight the soundwaves moving
through air touch the instruments of our ears the molecules of matter
touch us into taste and smell

touch is the first thing we know and the last thing we know

it is the beginning and end of aesthetic and the beginning and end of
our humanity

the poet is blind not in order to see but to feel

lyric is the poetry of touch

the vibrations of sound on the organs of the ear translate the
imagined distance of worded image into the intimacy of touch

we respond to those vibrations even in the imaginary silence of reading

when we are touched by lyric we wake to the intolerable beauty of our world




6


lyric is a metaphor for feeling

the truth of lyric is particular to each poem and resides in the
accuracy of its relationship to feeling

this truth may only be evaluated in the present in which lyric is encountered

it impossible to predict or control

feeling is our vibrational responses to our relatednesses to our world

it is as incorrigible as pain and encompasses the totality of our
responses moment to moment

it is the consequence of the corporeality of each of us and as complex
and mortal as our corporeality

a poem seeks to inhabit our corporeality but knows it cannot express it



7


lyric is indefensible

it neither seeks nor answers an argument but exists in the
vibrationary exchange of feeling

the incorrigibility of feeling within lyric breathes unease into all totalities

even if all a person’s thoughts were legible to another that other
would still not understand the felt world of that person

the felt world of that person is secret

lyric does not disclose its secret its secret is enclosed and retreats
as lyric is interrogated

it exists as a resonance which may resonate in the present in which it
is read or heard

a poem may not be paraphrased or explained it may only be read again

it is the dimension of lyric which cannot be paraphrased

its meanings reside acutely in the relationships of the parts of lyric
each to each other

lyric is the same question as “I am”

lyric is neither rational nor irrational as the rational has no
ability to explain the incorrigibility of feeling

feeling is not irrational although its consequences are sometimes
expressed in irrationalities

it has this in common with reason: that reason is forever without ground




-- 
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