some random and possibly misplaced meditations.
1. for all my fellow poets (and anyone else who can stand a bit of aesthetic theory):
the poetics of 'clarity,' of 'meaning,' are minute moments of triumph in the ongoing ontological quest. their pleasure consists in the sense of triumph over apparent meaninglessness they allow both reader and writer to feel. there is a symmetry in the relationship between reader and writer here; the poem becomes a window each looks through - the writer to glimpse a jigsaw world momentarily shifted into cognizable shape, while the reader simultaneously glimpses both this rendered-into-meaning world, and the rendered-into-meaning poet. the apprehendable poem, then, connotes a concrete, whole, non-illusory 'I' and a world which said 'I' is capable of reordering into a reasonable facsimile of significance.
This is, no doubt, a noble goal - though its truth-value can certainly be questioned.
It is not, however, my goal. read my poems as one might read an abstract expressionist painting: a moment in which there is no extrinsic pleasure of mastery, of triumph over the percept, but a moment of intrinsic pleasure, wherein only the shapes, contours, and textures of sound, image and diction are hopefully rendered as objects of pleasure in and of themselves, without reference to some external ontological quest. make, with me, my poems microcosms, and there will be a symmetry between us, the poem neither window nor mirror, but something opaque and complete in itself, offering only itself.
2. a question to everyone else, preambled by two recollections:
Last semester I was taking a class on the contemporary African novel. One day the professor confessed that she had just been informed of the existence of myspace and facebook. At the urging of another professor, she logged on and took a look around at all the student profiles...
"And all I could think," she gasped, astonished, "was that this is a generation of exhibitionists! here they all are, openly baring themselves to the view of everyone, acting as if the minutest details of their lives were of some interest to others..."
She went on in this vein for some time.
Months later, I told my boss about this observation.
"But it's not like they're baring themselves at all," she exclaimed, "what they're baring are fantasies of themselves, fetishistic doubles with no baring on their reality..."
(And here I must confess I have rendered her words in something more like my own language - but the gist is there...)
So, what do YOU think?
Are we a generation of exhibitionists (acknowledging here that there exists on sites like this, myspace, and facebook, a wide range of ages - a fact neither of these older women took into acount)?
Or are we merely projecting illusory images of ourselves in the hopes of making our lives seem more interesting/meaningful/entertaining?
Or is it something else entirely......?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
1. for all my fellow poets (and anyone else who can stand a bit of aesthetic theory):
the poetics of 'clarity,' of 'meaning,' are minute moments of triumph in the ongoing ontological quest. their pleasure consists in the sense of triumph over apparent meaninglessness they allow both reader and writer to feel. there is a symmetry in the relationship between reader and writer here; the poem becomes a window each looks through - the writer to glimpse a jigsaw world momentarily shifted into cognizable shape, while the reader simultaneously glimpses both this rendered-into-meaning world, and the rendered-into-meaning poet. the apprehendable poem, then, connotes a concrete, whole, non-illusory 'I' and a world which said 'I' is capable of reordering into a reasonable facsimile of significance.
This is, no doubt, a noble goal - though its truth-value can certainly be questioned.
It is not, however, my goal. read my poems as one might read an abstract expressionist painting: a moment in which there is no extrinsic pleasure of mastery, of triumph over the percept, but a moment of intrinsic pleasure, wherein only the shapes, contours, and textures of sound, image and diction are hopefully rendered as objects of pleasure in and of themselves, without reference to some external ontological quest. make, with me, my poems microcosms, and there will be a symmetry between us, the poem neither window nor mirror, but something opaque and complete in itself, offering only itself.
2. a question to everyone else, preambled by two recollections:
Last semester I was taking a class on the contemporary African novel. One day the professor confessed that she had just been informed of the existence of myspace and facebook. At the urging of another professor, she logged on and took a look around at all the student profiles...
"And all I could think," she gasped, astonished, "was that this is a generation of exhibitionists! here they all are, openly baring themselves to the view of everyone, acting as if the minutest details of their lives were of some interest to others..."
She went on in this vein for some time.
Months later, I told my boss about this observation.
"But it's not like they're baring themselves at all," she exclaimed, "what they're baring are fantasies of themselves, fetishistic doubles with no baring on their reality..."
(And here I must confess I have rendered her words in something more like my own language - but the gist is there...)
So, what do YOU think?
Are we a generation of exhibitionists (acknowledging here that there exists on sites like this, myspace, and facebook, a wide range of ages - a fact neither of these older women took into acount)?
Or are we merely projecting illusory images of ourselves in the hopes of making our lives seem more interesting/meaningful/entertaining?
Or is it something else entirely......?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
glassheart:
hey, did you still want your two headed fetus with a tail?
valcapone:
Hehe. Well, you're the only one who's bugged me about it, proving that you really wanted the job, so you're the squeaky wheel who gets the grease... or the job, as the case may be. 