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Unread 08-28-2008, 11:03 PM
wendy v wendy v is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Western Colorado
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Mark, I'm not sure which modern philosophers you refer to. These mentioned above are not thinkers for whom intuition is not, as they say, the mind's piston.

I guess there are no relevant living philosophers... Let me get in another plug for Dillard then, who I think shows signs of greatness, if only she'd stop writing poems. I recommend her strange little book, "For the Time Being". Abandon all expectation.

I'm surprised too, that modern poets don't drink more from the philosopher's well. As poets interested in rhythms and meters (which is music which is math, which is reason which is order which exists as brother to chaos), I'm especially surprised.

I think it's the contemporary aversion to granting the intellect any credence, as though doing so might sully the spirit, as if the two were in competition. As if the immortals were not in possession of both reason and intuition ! I would speculate that our emphasis on interpretation has brought modern poets to take Positions, rather than embody life's complexities in ever-evolving philosophies. One would hardly call Yeats, Frost, RPW, or ED didactic, and yet they touch many of us as teachers, with philosophic leanings. I wouldn't call them poets of witness, but poets for whom witnessing has formed not just a unique poetry, but what might be called a philosophy in motion. The term 'voice' is the new stand-in for the whole shebang, which sort've implies, rather bloodlessly and mindlessly, it seems to me, song without flesh, or instrument. Or to go back to Andrew's Yeats quote, vibration with no deep string, no marrow bone. I remind myself of these kinds of thoughts each time I produce what I call a float away poem.

Might be interesting to see samples of contemporary poems people perceive as well wedded to philosophy ...


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