So materialist in this sense can mean two not necessarily connected things, something like meaning nothing other than a marker in the game of academic reputations. The bigger problem with the term, however, may be "poetics," which seems increasingly to be attached to almost anything and descriptive of almost nothing.
I'm not complaining about the practices grouped by one or another under this or that rubric (hell, in this case I participate in a lot of them), but about the violence done to the language in the quest for status.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Jim Andrews <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 23, 2011 12:51 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Better Books, for those who can recall...
>
>> It's rather difficult when things are given a conceptual sounding name and
>> then one finds there isn't any conceptual basis to it. My impression is
>> that
>> 'materialist poetics' is by analogy with plastic arts.
>
>most everything in poetry is flimsy gossamer but of course it's usually
>presumed to only be the gossamer that can support full weight of the
>imaginary. still, 'materialist poetics' is not particularly quixotic in its
>meanings, david. if prynne tends toward marxism, then there's that sense of
>'materialist': as in 'dialectical materialism'. but 'materialist poetics'
>can also, as has been pointed out, be independent of the
>'materialism/spiritualism' binary and refer, instead, to approaches to the
>use of materials and media that, yes, are usually related to approaches in
>other arts.
>
>as has been remarked--can't remember if it was on this list or the poetics
>list--it's only because writing remains 50 years behind the visual arts--as
>it was when ws burroughs remarked that he and gysin were only doing what was
>done in the visual arts many years before--that allows 'conceptual writing'
>to be radical, given its modelling on conceptual art, something from the
>sixties (50 years ago).
>
>ja
>http://vispo.com
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