Paul:
A rather simple-minded, reductive Aristotelian division of form and content seems to me to lie at the heart of much of post-modernism, and if my one reading of your essay is correct, we agree about that. So I was glad that you demonstrated how inextricable they are in a fine poem. Someone said once that the true artist is person who is condemned to be unable to distinguish form from content. I suspect that all of us, back in those primordial conditions so beloved of theorists are so condemned, even to the point of a kind of underlying synesthesia that melds our senses -- no, that rejects the artificial parsing of them.
Well, as you can see, your essay has inspired me well beyond my powers of expression.
Richard
|