Quote:
Originally posted by Rhina P. Espaillat:
the "applehood" of the apple doesn't concern the poem in the first place.
|
Wow, Rhina, that's about as final a rejection of Platonism as it's possible to make. I think I maybe agree with it--as I said before, I think Platonism the wrong way to do aesthetics--but I'd duck when I presented your proposition to any of our high poets, from Spencer to Eliot, with cosmic ambitions for their poetry. I imagine they believed poems could and ought to reach toward the inwardness of things: the esse, the real nature, the appleness of the apple.
[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited August 15, 2003).]