[John Whitworth]

I must say that none of this - fascinating though it sometimes is - has anything at all to do with what it seems to me that I do when I write a poem, or make a poem. One thing I don't do is THINK it. The poems have nothing to do with thinking at all. They are constructs. What they are constructed out of I couldn't say. I was watching a cricket match yesterday and the fairly unreflective sportsmen were saying that once you start THINKING about what you are doing then you do it wrong. I think so too and try to think as little as possible. As a poet, I mean. My thinking is concerned with getting through life, catching trains, dodging taxes and so forth.

Yes really. Robert Graves says he thinks in broken images, but that doesn't strike me as what most people call thinking at all. Also, thinking sounds active. most of what I do as a poet isn't active at all. It happens to me.

How can I know what I think until I see what I say? I didn't say that. I read it somewhere, but it's true, isn't it

[Philip Quinlan]

I certainly agree with you, John. It may be possible--some folks say they can, and do, do it--but I can't make a poem by thinking the way David says he thinks (and it's conceivable that both claims are right for us, individually; what do any of us really know about other minds?)

I need a certain amount of "given" material, but then I have to make a picture out of it. If I can't visualise it, I can't write it.

Interestingly, I don't often consciously use metaphors. I posted a poem here a bit ago called "8 Lines", which is actually about a piece of music of that name. Now apart from the (hardly brilliant) thought that the poem itself ought to have 8 lines, I had no idea how to render it. Anyway, shuffling through my mental library of images, I remembered a painting of (of all places) my beloved Southwold, in Suffolk. It's an expansive canvas, half sky, half sand, but with all the distant detail concentrated into a fine line in the middle, which must have been painted with a one-haired brush.

Without thinking about it too much, I wrote:

His is a country which will not be high.
Slight scenery repeats: a single line...

Aha! some would say. You were thinking in metaphors.

Well, no. I was thinking of a picture that gave me the same hypnotic sense as the music, and which demanded the same degree of attention to small details. But when I turned that into words it became a music/landscape metaphor. The connection between the image and the music is an entirely personal, private one, but the only way I could express that publicly was by using a linguistic convention.

Not that I analyze these things much--where poems come from--except when they don't seem to be coming!

Oh, well. Back to the drawing, painting, writing board!

Philip

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

I certainly agree with you, John. It may be possible--some folks say they can, and do, do it--but I can't make a poem by thinking the way David says he thinks (and it's conceivable that both claims are right for us, individually; what do any of us really know about other minds?)

Well now wait a minute. What di I say about how I think? Just that I can't tell the difference between the mental processes going on when I "think" vs. when I "use language." That doesn't necessitate any conclusions about how I come up with poems.

Meanwhile I think I get what John means by this:

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

One thing I don't do is THINK it. The poems have nothing to do with thinking at all. They are constructs.

But I am not sure if I agree with it in a literal sense. I think thoughts are constructs, and I think they are constructed from the same stuff from which language is constructed. I do agree generally about trying to "think as little as possible" in the sense of trying not to intellectualize too much (despite the impression one might get from posts like this).

As for this:

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Also, thinking sounds active. most of what I do as a poet isn't active at all. It happens to me.

I keep hearing people say things like this, but I just don't experience it that way. I mean bit and pieces -- lines, conceits, images, metaphors, etc. -- "come to me," but that is just a metaphor for a complex precess of association that build salience and resonance for me about said bits and pieces. When I actually write a poem, I have to work at it. It doesn't just come or happen. It is more like midwifery than surgery, to be sure, but it is active work.

But this moves away from the topic of the thread. I do agree with John that this discussion, and discussion from which we have diverged, and perhaps the other discussions in this thread, have little to do with how I write poems.

David R.

[Roger Slater]

"I have can't think of any evidence in my own experience that thought precedes language."

David, there are many people who have severe communications disorders that make them unable to learn verbal language, but if you spent some time with them you would be hard pressed to deny that their heads are full of thoughts. If the looks on their faces and in their eyes did not convince you, the purposeful way they negotiate their environment would bring home the point. Language is an incredibly important cognitive tool that assists us in utilizing our power to think, and for verbal people like us it is almost impossible to imagine thought without language. But in my opinion language is like a flashlight. It lets us see the thoughts in our brains and hold them up and discuss them with others, but that doesn't mean that just outside the beam, where we cannot see, there is nothing in the dark that is real.

[David Rosenthal]

Bob,

I have had a fair amount of experience working with kids with various degrees and kinds of communicative and language disorders. I am fully aware of the rich cognitive life people with impaired language have. I hope I am not seeming flippant or ignorant in my posts.

I still don't think it is obvious that thought precedes language. I think that they are made of the same stuff. In fact, just the sort of cases you mention contribute to making me think that. I think that when the apparatus functions "properly" there is little noticeable difference between the mental operations of "thinking" vs. "language." That seamlessness between thought and language is very noticeable when it breaks down.

Essentially where I'm coming from is a notion that "language" and "thought" are results of the same processes played through different post-production equipment. I resist the assertion that either one precedes or necessitates the other. I probably do not have reasons for that resistance that would be acceptable as evidence for an argument. Plus, much of the argument hinges on some sort of broad meaning of "language" that comprises all manner of meaning-making procedures, and is therefore hopelessly nebulous and idiosyncratic.

Anyway, I do know about communicative and language disorders, and I do not mean any of these basically philosophical arguments of mine to be interpreted as dismissive of the minds and experiences of people living with such disorders.

David R.

P.S. -- I went back and edited out the extra "have" in the sentence you quoted. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

[Philip Quinlan]

I meant that thought preceded language in human history, and language, not in some nebulous sense, but in the sophisticated sense of that which we consciously, intentionally use to convey ideas, including abstract ideas, metaphors even. One doesn't even need to consider language impairment to see that thought precedes language in that sense. Human infants quite clearly demonstrate thought long before they can express ideas, let alone abstract ones.

As for examples of metaphor, here is one which cleverly reuses a cliche but makes it fresh by extension:

Lovesick by Rose Kelleher

Don’t look away, you gave me this disease.
A carrier, you passed it unawares.
My every cell is altered now; each bears
your stamp, a mutant, every drop of me
adulterated. If I could, I’d squeeze
the stinging poison out. It’s in my hair,
my fingernails, each microscopic pair
of spiral strands, corrupting by degrees.

Geneticists who study me on slides
could piece you back together. My remains
will carry traces, in these scalded veins,
of your warm hand; in my triglycerides,
and in the deepest etchings of my brain,
they’ll find the you my body memorized.


Philip

[David Rosenthal]

Philip,

I am no more sure that thought preceded language in human history. But I do mean something less easily defined by "language." I also think the infant example doesn't rest the case. But I do not have stamina or the time right now to make my argument, so I will cop out for now. Sorry.

David R.

[W.F. Lantry]

David,

You're right, people always trot out Piaget at this point, and make him jump through a few hoops, along with brain damage, beetles in boxes, and anecdotal testimony. Personally, I wonder about the practical value of the question. How would we even know?

On the original subject though, and from a pragmatic point of view, we're stuck with Morton's fork. Either we go with direct statement, or head for metaphor. But direct statement is never clear, if the Richards/Emerson crowd is right, and all we're left with is misunderstanding.

And if we decide to go with metaphor, then we're really in trouble. Either no metaphor is true (after all, one thing is not another thing), or every metaphor is so true (since all is one, and everything is everything else) that any particular metaphor is meaningless.

But there must be a third choice, something besides misunderstanding and meaninglessness. It's the only pragmatic option. I just have no idea what it is...

Thanks,

Bill

[Tim Love]

Originally Posted by Bill

But there must be a third choice, something besides misunderstanding and meaninglessness. It's the only pragmatic option.

That's right - the third choice is the pragmatic one. Let me draw from science: the description of an atom's nucleus and electrons being like a mini solar system was a misunderstanding (sometimes knowingly so). Use of the simile helped us ask further questions and come up with new similes that revealed the old ones as suggestive but meaningless. Meanwhile, a new vocabulary of theories was invented which we used to make even better similes. But we know they're not "right", that they're a provisional rather than accurate description. And on we go.

[Philip Quinlan]

Bill

I'm not sure it is right to talk about a metaphor being "True" or "False". "Apt" or "inapt", "effective" or "ineffective" maybe, but, even then, every metaphor is more or less so for a given reader. To use a metaphor is not to say, thing a is thing b, but to speak of it as if it were, for the purposes of illuminating some aspect(s) of it, no?

Philip