I wasn't claiming it was trivial - in fact I said the sociology around
poetry has its own interest - but I was saying that had little to do
with the poetry itself. Although I agree that such things interfere
with the perception of it, as is amply demonstrated by what you're
saying here. If you're questioning the culture industry, why do you
seem to accept its judgments and assertions as pure fact? How much are
the anthology rights for The Waste Land again?
I was talking about Rimbaud, not Shakespeare, although it might be
worth wondering why WS adapts so well to film. Many techniques claimed
by film well predate it. I thought a jump cut (which IS a film
technique) was an editing technique that cuts out bits of action so
the flow judders unnervingly, as in Godard or the final scene of Taxi
Driver. You could perhaps shift it to poetry, but it's not going to be
accurate, because the medium of words does other things with its
linearity - the naturalism of film can represent a flow of action, say
a man walking, in a way that's not possible in language. Bob seems to
be suggesting a jump cut is sudden incongruous juxtaposition and shift
of scene, which is, for example, amply present in A Season in Hell -
I loved the desert, burnt orchards, tired old shops, warm drinks. I
dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with my eyes closed I
offered myself to the sun, the god of fire.
"General, if on your ruined ramparts one cannon still remains, shell
us with clods of dried-up earth. Shatter the mirrors of expensive
shops! And the drawing rooms! Make the city swallow its dust. Turn
gargoyles to rust. Stuff boudoirs with rubies' fiery powder..."
Oh! the little fly drunk at the urinal of a country inn, in love with
rotting weeds, a ray of light dissolves him!
At this point I'm not sure what the argument is.
xA
On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Alison...point by point:
>
>
> 1) “Jeffrey, you're not talking about poetry, but about something else. The fact that modernism was later institutionalised has sweet fa to do with the work itself, which at the time it was made did not emerge from institutions. One can study the sociology of perception and status, and that can be quite interesting, but please don't think that says anything about actual poems.”
>
> Alison, when I said,
>
> “It isn’t as trivial as it seems. Whole poetic careers, sinecures, academic tenures, funding and grant availability etc. (if not institutions, e.g. Black Mountain etc) have been built on an assumed innovatory practice which has developed since Eliot et al."
>
> I wasn’t using this as an argument from authority, which may have been the impression it gave you. I was questioning the “poetic innovation industry” that has grown out of Pound’s “make it new” edict. To this industry, the question of High Modernism’s importance, or not, is not a trivial matter, as Uche was suggesting it was.
>
>
> 2) “Also, it's nonsense to apply a film term to poetry and then to argue that this application says something about the chronology of poetry. I've seen film terms used to discuss a narrative poem by Catullus, although manifestly the Romans didn't have cinema. And Rimbaud made leaps in his work that could be called jump cuts, but might just be a mimesis of thought.”
>
> Yes, but if one does this to argue that a later innovation was already present in the past, without making sure that the comparison is accurate, then it just leads to relativism. Saying, for instance, that Shakespeare used jump-cuts, when what you mean was he used quick scene changes just muddies the water.
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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