Quote:
posted by Mark:
There is always a chance that the current economic crisis will be good for poetry - as Les Murray says, "Rich cultures can't afford poetry/ Poor ones can."
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Yup. Just like in the Middle Ages, where the only ones who could afford to marry for love were the serfs and peasants. Land owners had too much to lose, marriage had to make Good Economic Sense.
It’s just like you guys are saying, the dominant aesthetic of our time is rationalistic, secular humanist--post-“Enlightenment.” And the dryness of the official culture, the economic machine, the education system, has to be compensated for with drugs, pharmaceuticals, the “entertainment industry,” porno, big-money sports. The ecstasy will out, one way or another, even if it has to settle for taking a shower with the raincoat on.
That’s why I don’t totally agree with Mark’s assessment. It isn’t just about emotional catharsis, it’s about emotion with presence of mind, an expansion of consciousness, not just shooting one’s wad. Unconscious wad-shooting is what consumer society is all about.
The topic of ecstasy in poetry that Philip brought up here (for which, thanks, Philip!), has to do with Dionysus and Apollo getting together: to make a poem. Apollo is about form, remember, archetypal form. The rational ego you talk about, Mark, is just Apollo in the unemployment line. His real role, his divinity, is in his gift of form that comes from the nature of things themselves. That's an ecstasy in itself.