Quote:
Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett
...Never make stuff up rules out way too much other poetry for me, however well it works to produce his poems.
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Dear Maryann,
You're quite right, it's troublesome. What would we do with Stevens? Or with Mallarme? Two of my favorites, and any general theory of poetry that excludes them would be useless.
So I think of this position statement, in spite of the imperative tense I so awkwardly used, as descriptive rather than prescriptive. And as purely pragmatic: it helps me keep moving when I'm stuck in the mud. Mostly...
Now, Steve seems upset, and wants me to explain myself. I certainly didn't mean to upset him. La Fontaine gets credit for "by the work, one knows the workman," but it's a much older idea. It's in Matthew 7:16 and Luke 6:44, and many other places besides. But there are a few problems with "by their fruit, you shall know them."
The first one is the separation of product and process. That may be fine for scholars and critics, but for practitioners it may be both troublesome and unhelpful. Worse is the problem of impression: if we bite into the apple, we have certain sensations: sweetness, texture, etc. We're not actually thinking about the apple at all, but rather our experience, what we make of it. In other words, by that point, we've slipped all the way from La Fontaine's fables to
reader response theory, in three easy steps. And while I hope you'll forgive me most of my sins, I have very little sympathy for "The Dynamics of Literary Response."
But back to Maryann's point. The process *is* incredibly difficult, for all the reasons she stated. It's extremely hard to come up with something both accurate and pragmatic. And once you've done that, there are still three problems. First, it gives people something to aim at, and people always have their crossbows strung. Second there are unintended implications: I'm pretty sure Shaun doesn't mean to sound the way he does with his statements on Jackson Pollock, or imply a theory of painting some may infer from his words. But third, and worst of all, are the echoes.
I thank Ed for posting what he did, and I stand by my words in Now Culture. But look at just this short little snippet:
"
through her, I have had an experience of something beyond time and space, something infinite and eternal. It changed everything I knew. Now, every poem I write is an attempt to do for the reader what she has done for me."
Do I believe that? Is it truly part of my core experience? Yes, and yes. But look at the echoes. I want Bergson and Heidegger, but that's not what it sounds like. It sounds like a christian conversion experience, followed by an evangelical fervor. And this coming from someone who thinks Paul fell off his horse because of a migraine, and that Ezekiel's Wheel was the result of a really bad headache. Darn it!
So maybe people are right to shy away from such statements. One simply cannot win. And yet, I persist in thinking they're useful, or at least the process is useful, and that we're only undefeated because we have gone on trying...
Thanks,
Bill