1.07.2004

Extra busy at the Rock these days.

Reading the poem examples over at John Latta's Hotel (evidence for non-binary unpigeonholeability), thinking

there should be a poetics - a theory of poetry in the Wallace Stevens sense - capable of interpeting recent & contemporary literary history - under the aegis of a concept of poetry per se -

which transcends the politico-polemics of the subcultures -

both the modest/minor security of academic conservatism (finicky re-workings of traditional forms for mandarins in the wilderness)

and the bowdlerizing, vulgar blare of all these callow oppositionalists -

said poetics would go beyond particular notions, such as my remarks here recently about "dialogic" resurrection of past poetries - this is only part of the story - & would "explain" the relations between a beautiful, well-wrought, careful style, the sense of an addressee or audience, and the conceptual/aesthetic transformations made possible in the process of reception - based perhaps on an underlying notion of the synthesis of speech, language and beauty -

a more rigorous general poetics might create a context for closer attention to what a particular poet is trying to do - a frame for criticism rather than promotionals -

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