It's a rainy Wednesday in March, and I'm doing boring blogging talk about. March 5th marches forth. On this date both Stalin and Anna Akhmatova died. Unacknowledged Tatar queen of Russia.

& to continue the boring vain of talk about, here's a silly old manifesto:

THE RHODIAN MANIFESTO


'I wonder why in Rhodes they tie up their cats with string. I saw one attached to a front door-knob this morning.'
- Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus


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WHO ARE THE RHODIANS?

The Rhodians are an association of poets who do not live on the Island of Rhodes, but might like to. (The Island of Rhodes is not to be confused with Rhode Island, a small state in the USA.)


THE RHODIAN CREDO

Of Minimalism. The Rhodians accept a simple definition of poetry, ie.:
Poetry = rhythmic/measured language. The features often attributed to poetry, such as imagination, intellect, emotion, pathos, unity of affect, knowledge, communication, dream, and so forth, are understood to be features of consciousness and language in general. Poetry bears the imprint of both consciousness and language, but its distinguishing trait is rhythm, pattern, measure. The Rhodian approach precludes tendentious, apologetic or polemical appropriations of features of general consciousness into specialized definitions of what poetry should or should not be. Rhodians believe that the compositional attributes of poems are all free additions to the simple nature of poetry so defined.


Of Continuity. The Rhodians believe that poetry as an art form is distinguished by its continuity. "Poetry is avant-garde because it doesn't change much." Rhodians declare that each poet and each group of poet-friends is responsible for, and eligible to inherit, the bequest of past poetry in its entirety. Poetry as simply defined passes through the hands of its makers to its audience of hearers and other makers; it is molded by their personalities and the experience of their time on earth. It is a human art form, perhaps shared to some extent with other creatures.


Of Purpose. The Rhodians maintain that there is no particular "correct" way to make poetry. But this does not preclude the Rhodians from choosing certain principles and orientations. One such principle is that poetry-making involves a limited, but sufficient - and self-sufficient - autonomy. If the process is not valuable for its own sake it is not worth doing at all, since it makes no claim to be valuable for any other reason. (Here the Rhodians follow the orientation of fellow Rhodian, and former Cranston native, Ted Berrigan.) Another such principle is that poetic autonomy is linked with a realist approach. Rhodians reject sceptical trends which question our ability to posit the existence of a real world outside our verbal formulations (even though Rhodians would like to reside on an island). Rhodians assert their ability to make true statements about the real world, and assent to the influence of that capability on their poetry. In fact Rhodians believe that the human impulse to respond to reality, in all its consciousness and specificity, is something of an artistic opportunity for which they can be grateful. Finally, the Rhodians reject theories of poetics which devalue the communicative function, reifying denatured words upon the page. For the Rhodians, language is essentially communicative - the propositional, interrogatory, evaluative, expressive making of signs. Within the continuum of such gestures, words play a combinatory and supportive role. So, while recognizing the special quality of language in art and poetry - the "focus on message" or reflexive aspect described by Jakobson - Rhodians acknowledge the fundamental semaphoric aspect of the medium.