[R. Nemo Hill]

John, I suspect you take so much delight in claiming not to understand Heidegger, that the gauntlet you've thrown down seems mostly a rhetorical flourish. But to my mind, no philosopher has rationally tackled the ineffabilities of poetry better than he. Read poetically, I think he is clear as a bell.


".....the exciting question: how can that which by its very nature remains hidden ever become a measure? For something that man measures himself by must after all impart itself, must appear. But if it appears, it is known. The god, however, is unknown, and he is the measure nonetheless. Not only this, but the god who remains unknown, must by showing himself as the one he is, appear as the one who remains unknown. God's manifestness—not only he himself—is mysterious.

A strange measure for ordinary and in particular for all merely scientific ideas, certainly not a palpable stick or rod but in truth simpler to handle than they, provided our hands do not abruptly grasp but are guided by gestures befitting the measure here to be taken. This is done by a taking which at no time clutches at the standard but rather takes it in a concentrated perception, a gathered taking-in, that remains a listening.

Martin Heidegger (trans, Albert Hofstadter)
Poetry, Language, Thought: "...Poetically Man Dwells


That which shows itself and at the same time withdraws is the essential trait of what we call the mystery.

Martin Heidegger (trans, John M. Anderson / E. Hans Freund)
Discourse On Thinking: Memorial Address


To write about something you must write with it, you must write/be in it: within it. Hence the poetic thinking of Heidegger. Oh, he had other political problems as well, but his writings on poetry (on Holderlin in particular) are exquisite and invaluable to me. He walks the rational as far as it can go, and if he needs to re-invent the lexical wheel near the far edge of thought where cerebration falters, then he merely proves himself as much poet as philosopher.

What Andrew says about variety and spice holds true for me as well. In fact, despite all my comments here, I adore Alexander Pope. But I also do not lose sight of my poetic ideals; and these ideals would not be ideals if they were easily made manifest. One of the reasons I may seem to rail against light verse on these boards is because I think it is true that the so-called new formalism tends to elevate it at the expense of "the visionary and hermetic" and thus gives the impression that formal poetry lends itself better to the one that the other. I disagree with that, and feel it vital to take a stand now and again for the contemporary marriage of the formal and the visionary.

Nemo