Thinking about previous post, on the status of the image:

It seems like this would be an issue only if the poet were attempting to depict something, or present a vision of something. And not only that, but to depict something in a moving or compelling way. Or in a complete way: ie. the mimesis or representation of an experience in its wholeness (an action, in other words).

A tragedy or a comedy affects us emotionally, while simultaneously offering a perspective - a detached point of view (the spectator) - from which to interpret an action (which is another element of the complete representation of a scene or event).

What am I getting at, here? Not sure, exactly. When does a poem move beyond being simply a form of talking, or joking, or complaining - self-presentation, generally? Is it when the poem's language begins to model something separate from both the speaker and the event itself - an image of it, an icon?

This would be something distinct from mere manner - it would be style engaged with something outside itself, a "subject". & does this have something to do with the difference between poetry (a form of mimesis) and rhetoric (a form of persuasion)?

*

On somewhat of a side note, I remember once again those long & varied wrangles on the old Buffalo discussion list. Realism & nominalism; language poetry & poetry per se; postmodernism...

When I look back on it (and I'm sure my memory is playing tricks on me), it seems that at the core of many of those debates - for me, anyway - was that poetry's general function or purpose seems inextricably bound up with this problem of representation. & why, for me, does this seem so serious an issue? Because the special capability of poetry to present vivid, living, holistic images of reality gets at an intrinsic quality of that reality itself - its living, spiritual, "non-objectivity" if you will; its aspect as creation or work of art or manifestation of beauty. This is the ultimate equation or mirror between the reality itself and its icon, and why wholeness - the integration of the intellectual & the emotional & the sensible - is its criterion.