I'm hearing echoes here of : "People don't write poems -- the language
does," that was one of the extensions of the Death of the Author business,
and I feel the same sort of generalised irritation that I have to that --
edge and boundary cases elevated, illicit extensions from the obvious. (In
this instance, conflating serendipity with randomness. Even if the later is
valid as a conscious mode of production, it's not the same as the former.)
Lack of an historical context (where I'm reminded of a peculiarly silly
argument that the structure of Astrophel and Stella was based on a game of
bowls). And the way in which absolute randomness approximates to absolute
determination, that again manifested in numerical analyses of Renaissance
poetry.
I want to grumpily say, "Phooey!", but I suppose I should read the essay in
question first. Though I dunno that anyone has said anything to make me
feel I have to, given that the Birk's characterisation of it hasn't (for me)
been adequately challenged.
Why keep a Birk and bite yourself?
A Random Rodent
(I was going to go on to say, because I feel that somewhere in the
background of this hovers the Ghost of Ferdinand de Saussure, that why does
no one ever give Saussure credit for what he actually did, and focus instead
on the weirder misinterpretations and extensions of his work performed by
the post-structuralists? Over two thousand years the Nominalist/Realist
debate had been babbling away without any resolution, and then in 1905, one
chapter in The _Course_ drives a stake through its heart -- we're all
Nominalists today (at least when it comes to linguistics -- except perhaps
Bob, and even he shows signs of wavering).
Unless, of course, I've got the terms completely reversed, which is entirely
possible. (I have the same problem when it comes to assigning the correct
term in the difference between quantitative and qualitative metres.)
What it is, even leaving aside the almost certainly entire irrelevance of de
Saussure to the original issue, is that I'm much more confused than I
thought I was, and given that I already knew I was more than a little
stumble-brained in this area ...
OK, right, I know I shouldn't have started to try to say this in the first
place.
Please pretend I didn't.
R.)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Side" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: Bruce Andrews interview at The Argotist Online
Bob, my responses:
"Why can't mechanisms be of interest, and susceptible to all kinds of
interpretations."
Perhaps because they produce a formal static that inhibits translatability.
"As I jabber, I find I feel that the subject is too complex for anything
less than a very long, terms-defined, essay."
Would you write one for the Argotist?
"When I compose, I feel my brain randomly tosses elements for use on the
page and I choose among them--on the basis usually of how much they do for
me, because I can only know that--but believing other human beings, or some
other human beings, will have the same kind of brain and background as I and
get similar pleasure from them. In a sense, the only reader/viewer I care
about is me; in another, I want everyone to be able to experience my work
pleasurably."
I see your point, that you have to interest yourself when you write. I
agree, but I want the reader to have a unique exegetical experience also. I
want a poem to produce a simultaneous performance of itself in the reader,
so that there is overload and surplus of potential meanings.
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