Subject: Re: Topic
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 16:43:25 +0100


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I think most people understand that form and content function in relation to each other.  Therefore, the skill of a 'well made poem' is in its formal constructs being in tandem with content.  Critics of this approach might argue that form seamlessly disguises the elaborate ideological project beneath, 'beneath' being a guiding trope, since form allows disguise, multi-dimensionality, subtlety - and these are prevailing aesthetic categories, as opposed to signposting, directness etc.  Look at Brecht or the other experimental movements of the post WW1 period for ways in which classical formal approaches were challanged.  In essence,  a film/play/poem with progressive content and traditional form was essentially conservative, hence Socialist Realism.  Contrast it with surrealism and the plethora of tiny movements in that period, and the sudden death or retreat of the avante garde after this period, or its progressive isolation and marginalisation in favour of an aesthetic of 'convention', 'entertainment'.
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jason Stuart
  To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 8:29 PM
  Subject: Re: Topic


  

   Paul Murphy <Villanova-AT-btopenworld.com> wrote:

    I appreciate that you understand prosody well, but do you write verse?  Common problems I come across with poets are very, very simple mistakes when writers attempt forms that are clearly beyond them.  For instance, someone wrote to me to say that they were attempting to write in cinqains, but most of the line breaks cut across sense.  My advice: concentrate on one idea per line, check for coherence and at the end of a line make a pause to breath.  There are many writers I receive work from whose content is sophisticated yet they make this most elementary formal mistake because they are not focused on the form at all.  Form is a purely secondary thing, a poem is merely a vehicle for their ideas.  Essentially they would be better off writing prose poems, or essays.  If you have some poems why not post them, and we can discuss this further?       

  Well, because I don't feel comfortable with that. I don't think throwing some lines out just so you can have a go at them serves any purpose--neither to the discussion you might propose nor to the poetry itself--

  I don't mind tangent threads on a listserv--on this one that's pretty much all I do--, but I'm here primarily to listen in on the discussions of specialists concerning a thinker whose work I don't understand well, but encounter enough (as foundational material for recent and contemporary theory) that reading the work is a necessity. There are too many people advancing critiques of modernity/postmodernity/antimodernity based on information offered in other critiques, without a familiarity of the texts in question. 

  On that note I think we ought to open this up to others by drawing the conversation towards Heidegger, mostly so I can get a little insight on H.'s "The Origin of the Work of Art."  Because you make a point about what is primary and what is "secondary" in some writing, and related the point to form, I took that to mean you feel the author consciously establishes this hierarchy of meaningfulness when addressing the work.  I suppose this also assumes the work has to have taken some shape, or initial form, before the author addresses it in this way--

  Now, in this case, my understanding is very basic, but the consideration of the work before any formal evaluation seems to be what H. is getting at when he considers this problem of the--what, recursive? reciprocal? relationship between the essentially artistic and the specific work itself, both containing the other but neither really being forthright about revealing itself as the thing.  Or being able to--I'm not sure--but out of this weird transaction--two objects that are but combine to reveal a nothingness--comes the thing that we're trying to cite as an origin.  That's the most tortured paragraph I've ever written.  Guys?  Is the rest, what's left, the 'functionality'?

  I can't remember the recent conversation on "techne," so if this has been covered, apologies...

  As for the cinquain, how did the person who wrote you manage to get "one idea" into the two-syllable lines? 

  JS



  !-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------!

   "...even if he recopied them later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean, he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings."





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----- Original Message -----

From: Jason Stuart

To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 8:29 PM

Subject: Re: Topic

 Paul Murphy <Villanova-AT-btopenworld.com> wrote:

I appreciate that you understand prosody well, but do you write verse?  Common problems I come across with poets are very, very simple mistakes when writers attempt forms that are clearly beyond them.  For instance, someone wrote to me to say that they were attempting to write in cinqains, but most of the line breaks cut across sense.  My advice: concentrate on one idea per line, check for coherence and at the end of a line make a pause to breath.  There are many writers I receive work from whose content is sophisticated yet they make this most elementary formal mistake because they are not focused on the form at all.  Form is a purely secondary thing, a poem is merely a vehicle for their ideas.  Essentially they would be better off writing prose poems, or essays.  If you have some poems why not post them, and we can discuss this further?       

 

Well, because I don't feel comfortable with that. I don't think throwing some lines out just so you can have a go at them serves any purpose--neither to the discussion you might propose nor to the poetry itself--

 

I don't mind tangent threads on a listserv--on this one that's pretty much all I do--, but I'm here primarily to listen in on the discussions of specialists concerning a thinker whose work I don't understand well, but encounter enough (as foundational material for recent and contemporary theory) that reading the work is a necessity. There are too many people advancing critiques of modernity/postmodernity/antimodernity based on information offered in other critiques, without a familiarity of the texts in question. 

 

On that note I think we ought to open this up to others by drawing the conversation towards Heidegger, mostly so I can get a little insight on H.'s "The Origin of the Work of Art."  Because you make a point about what is primary and what is "secondary" in some writing, and related the point to form, I took that to mean you feel the author consciously establishes this hierarchy of meaningfulness when addressing the work.  I suppose this also assumes the work has to have taken some shape, or initial form, before the author addresses it in this way--

 

Now, in this case, my understanding is very basic, but the consideration of the work before any formal evaluation seems to be what H. is getting at when he considers this problem of the--what, recursive? reciprocal? relationship between the essentially artistic and the specific work itself, both containing the other but neither really being forthright about revealing itself as the thing.  Or being able to--I'm not sure--but out of this weird transaction--two objects that are but combine to reveal a nothingness--comes the thing that we're trying to cite as an origin.  That's the most tortured paragraph I've ever written.  Guys?  Is the rest, what's left, the 'functionality'?

 

I can't remember the recent conversation on "techne," so if this has been covered, apologies...

 

As for the cinquain, how did the person who wrote you manage to get "one idea" into the two-syllable lines? 

 

JS

!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------!

 "...even if he recopied them later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean, he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings."

---

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