🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 2:40:12 PM UTC-4, Her Illustrious Ashes wrote:
> Dale Houstman wrote:
> >
> >
> > Her Illustrious Ashes wrote:
> >
> >>>   I'll leave it to them.
> >>
> >>
> >> Every good poet is a "philosopher" to some extent,
> >
> > Not so much. At least one poet (Auden perhaps?) has said that poets are
> > NOT philosophers, and I agree. Philosophers tend to create intllectual
> > structures which offer answers to life's questions and pathways to a
> > "good life" or some such thing. Poets tend to ask questions, and to
> > create ambiguities about life which affirm - in many ways - the
> > unknowability of existence. They create vignettes of moral and cognitive
> > confusion, and try to render beautiful that which is least so.
>
> This may be the effort of some poets, but there are all types that make
> the world go around. Confusion isn't the order of the day for someone
> like Percy Shelly compared to, say, Dylan Thomas, who does write in more
> creative ambiguities. From expositions of concrete subject matter to
> some minor illuminations on the human condition, poets have different
> styles and approach language differently.
>
>   I wrote "philosopher" in quotes for a reason and obviously not because
> I insist upon formal philosophy in poetry. But as you have agreed, poets
> do ask questions as well as seek different modes of thought. And many of
> them apply philosophies to their work. Francis Ponge, for instance,
> approached poetry using a method of phenomenology.
>
> Rimbaud approached poetry through the disordering of the senses. But
> that was not the extent of it: "The poet makes himself a seer by a long,
> prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of
> love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the
> poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences."
>
> Also, in War: "When a child, certain skies sharpened my vision: all
> their characters were reflected in my face. The Phenomena were roused.--
> At present, the eternal inflection of moments and the infinity of
> mathematics drives me through this world where I meet with every civil
> honor, respected by strange children and prodigious affections.-- I
> dream of a War of right and of might, of unlooked-for logic. It is as
> simple as a musical phrase."
>
> In his work, Rimbaud searches for, and sometimes finds, the "keys" of
> life, love, freedom, and so on, and in doing so he has taken a
> premeditated step forward into unknown places on long journeys. In his
> works exist both immutable text as well as flights of little theoretical
> exercises, which are not altogether uncommon in other examples of poetry
> from just about any time.

A good read.............