How curious - in my gmail browser, the related ads automated links for this
thread include:
Aikido :Fear No Man
Rip Apart Any Aikido Master Secrets They Don't Want You To Know
How strange these algorithms are.
Caleb
On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 2:54 PM, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]
> wrote:
> I think what Graves' was (unconsciously or not) restating is the old
> distinction between country understanding and town intelligence. It's not
> heard of so much in Britain these days as the cultural relationship between
> urbs and its farmlands has altered so much: in Hardy's youth there still
> was
> a distinctive rural peasantry and an oral tradition of ballad singing, not
> something you're likely to find in the dormitory villages of today.
> You will still see something of a distinctive rural ( and troubled by city
> slickers) in poets from some countries - Les Murray springs to mind, I
> don't
> mean to say Murray is a Bumpkin, he's a very sophisticated man, but there's
> a real distinction between him and, say, a Charles Bernstein.
>
> 2009/6/23 Angel <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > I wish my last name was swords...
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >
> > On Jun 22, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Desmond Swords <[log in to unmask]>
> > 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."
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> "Nothing can be done in the face
> of ordinary unhappiness" - PP
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
|