Yes, Tim, it's ununderstandable, a waste of time, silly, and as yet in any
form unuseful for any of us to engage.  Thanks once again for your clear
sight and cross posting.
Best,

Judy

2009/6/23 Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]>

> Heaven help me but I did read on. What a load of waffle. So craft is
> something innate is it, while technique isn't? Is that your conclusion post
> waffle Mr Swords?
> I can't blame you entirely though because this kind of anxiety over
> something so grey nearly always leads to such silly statements.
> Why does anybody really care about the differences between these two words?
> Seriously! Come on, we're poets, we should know how undependable words can
> be. I really don't care, especially about the word 'craft' - its
> connotations are nearly always negative because of the ideological way the
> concept gets used.
>
> Tim A.
>
>
> On 22 Jun 2009, at 22:08, Desmond Swords wrote:
>
>  WARNING: HIGHLY SPECIOUS NON SCHOLARLY GUFF. DO NOT READ EFF OFF.
>>
>> "Craft is natural capcity, ability and the attention one spends
>> Technique is the way of accomplishing."
>>
>> Plato - Cratylus: 389 - 390.
>>
>> Plato i think nails it, and it is interesting that Graves, for all his
>> resistance to Socrate's pupil, essentially concurs with the above
>> definition.
>>
>> Not on the surface of course - oh no: because his natural propensity for
>> sublimating the obvious into a poetic algebra along the lines of level six
>> anruth dark-speech bearla na filidh whose hidden meanings yield themselves
>> only to the initiate and adept trained in the autochthonous Pelasgian
>> order
>> of secret mystical knowledge he devoted his entire life enquiring into for
>> the purpose of becoming fluent in Hypo-Borean law -- meant Bob's personal
>> (and public) project as a bore who could perfrom in that role perhaps at a
>> greater rate of torque than any of his competitors and rivals, mirrored
>> that
>> of the ancient ollamhs whose chief interest, as Boberto states:
>>
>> "..was the refinement of complex poetic truth to exact statement. S/He
>> knew
>> the history and mythic value of every word s/he used and can have cared
>> little for the ordinary person's appreciation of their work; s/he valued
>> only the judgement of her (or his) colleagues, whom he seldom met without
>> a
>> lively exchange of poetic wit in extempre verse."
>>
>> So we can see here that though the link between Plato and Bob's statements
>> on Craft and Technique may not be immediately grasped by a lay reader -
>> the
>> undertow reveals itself to the higher thinking and intellectually skilled
>> whose a priori rationale and inborn Poetic - is really wanting only to
>> know
>> the bottom-line (poetic) meaning and magical property of every word he
>> deployed in the millions he wrote during a very long life of being hated
>> by
>> those who did not have a continual stream of attractive young people
>> flocking to sit at his feet and imbibe from the living source, such arcana
>> as to be getting on and dropping out with, back in the sixties and
>> seventies
>> when he was at the peak of his power as a mystic nifty dresser looking the
>> part in top hat and cane, locuting in a flawless pukka upper crust brogue,
>> what was what vis a vis craft and technique.
>>
>> Perhaps if he were around today, the first thing Bob would do if he were
>> to
>> come here and show off - would be to give the etymologies of the two
>> words:
>>
>> Craft - from Old English cræft, which means natural ability, skill etc
>>
>> Technique - from teche - art, craft, in the sense of physical technical
>> knowledge and know-how of making stuff.
>>
>> The less gullible amongst you will of course know the quote heading this
>> speculative discourse is ficticious, something the craftsperson in me, the
>> natural wit side, made up as a creative launch pad into discussing the
>> topic
>> in hand.
>>
>> I admit to not possesing any knowledge which seperates the above two
>> words,
>> but after finding a way in, it seems some line of logic from the
>> etymologies
>> suggests Craft is the natural talent we possess, and Technique, something
>> which can be learned by anyone, and a combination of the two is needed to
>> shape something of interest and value to Scholarship generally.
>>
>> Perhaps if Bob were here now he would recount how Plato speaks of τέχνη
>> (techne) in the Republic with two distinct interpretations, when engaging
>> with (fierce-fighter) Thrasymachus, who violently disagrees with the
>> Socratic conclusion of his discussion with Polemarchus about justice and
>> argues that techne existing in a wholly theoretical sense, represented a
>> threat to peace, order and good government - but when deploying the word
>> technê in relation to practical use, in the sense of crafting objects, it
>> was a benefit.
>>
>> So what Bob's saying here mirrors Plato's distinction that theoretical
>> Technique, the waffle at the fruiter end of the po-mo spectrum in which
>> all
>> kinds of crazee specs are conjured into being by eromenos-like groovers
>> the
>> grove being supervised and strategically steered by senior erastae into
>> writing 50,000 word theses on how the theories of the profs three doors up
>> have made amazing epistemological advances in the name of Scholarship --
>> can
>> all be a bit on the airy fairy side. Whilst the Craft, the presupposition
>> of
>> some otherworldly magical doctrine inherent in the unknowable order of
>> unconscious tune watermarking the blueprint of the cosmos - is the gear in
>> the psychological DNA, or not - i think.
>>
>> Craft = innate ability
>>
>> Technique = taught competence
>>
>> Technique is theoretical know-how and the technician assumes that
>> L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems can be constructed by formulae all have access to
>> regardless of natural ability, written like instructions on soup packets,
>> by
>> a variety of methods which (often mistakenly) think they are radical and
>> new, but are really, the staid and boring missiles aimed at rival
>> competing
>> pedagog-targets who are all on three squares, sinecure and pension plan
>> who
>> (often) despise mere the craftspeople for their intellectual fizz and
>> ability to fix text in ways which gets read by a wider non-collegiate
>> audeince of real people who the faux radz then claim are all dumbos for
>> spending on the garret based attic-dwellers havin a larf at Eliot, Pound
>> and
>> whose only God and unrealisable bar and aim to reach, is the later Yeats,
>> ignoring what in a 7C Old Irish text detailing poetic first principles,
>> terms:
>>
>> "The abundence of goading one receives when taking up the bardic craft."
>>
>