tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post113755854232119256..comments2024-02-23T03:28:33.435-05:00Comments on Culture Industry: poetry as theoryMark Scrogginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1137720495934046812006-01-19T20:28:00.000-05:002006-01-19T20:28:00.000-05:00Maybe I'm just terminally old-fashioned, too, folk...Maybe I'm just terminally old-fashioned, too, folks, but it strikes me that while poetry may offer some of the pleasures of thinking--of argument, of theory, of essay, in the root sense of the word--it does so precisely in the name of pleasure, rather than in the name of truth. That is, while I may enjoy watching a set of ideas thought through by a poem, I don't particularly care whether those ideas strike me as true. Nor does it bother me when the poet turns around and contradicts him or herself between poem and essay, or in another poem, or elsewhere in the same one, even. That's part of the fun of reading someone like, oh, maybe Norman Finkelstein. No?<BR/><BR/>There are limits to my indulgence, of course. As a poet enters "The Baraka Zone" (let's call it) between poetry and politics I may get a little edgy. But by and large, I see no reason to toss out Sidney's "The poet nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth," or even Coleridge's "A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its *immediate* object pleasure, not truth." Theory and philosophy tout court do seem to me still to be proposing truth as an immediate object--unless I'm hopelessly out of date here?E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1137705627176362562006-01-19T16:20:00.000-05:002006-01-19T16:20:00.000-05:00Jane: I don't know if anyone doubts that poetry in...Jane: I don't know if anyone doubts that poetry involves thinking. The problems arise when one wants to make a claim about the status of this thinking. Is it necessary, for example, for philosophers to take account of poetry's formulations and solutions to the classic philosophical problems (about knowledge, being, ethics, etc.)? If the answer is yes, then does poetry need to accept correction from philosophy—or is this the importation of an irrelevant standard? Is thinking central to poetry's task (as it is to philosophy's)? If so, what do we make of those writers we love—Rilke comes to mind—whose language is beautiful and thinking is crap? Also: if we do accept this or that poet's work as an instance of <I>thinking</I>, are we then obliged to adopt a position with regard to its conclusions? Or is this a possible difference from philosophy? And...I could go on. <BR/><BR/>What you say about Baudelaire and Benjamin's Baudelaire is certainly true, but that doesn't resolve the deeper issue. My experience of reading Heraclitus is substantially different than my experience of reading Heidegger's <I>Early Greek Thinking</I>, but both are part of the history of philosophy. Hannah Arendt's wonderful books <I>The Human Condition</I> and <I>The Life of the Mind</I> have no trouble presenting narratives in which thinkers who produced radically different kinds of texts are brought into dialogue. Moreover, if philosophy departments are able to incorporate Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in their curricula, there's no insurmountable reason for excluding—if they prove useful—the letters and poems of Emily Dickinson. I'd venture to say, in fact, that it's precisely the <I>differences</I> between poetry and philosophy that make the question of the former's status as thinking so significant.<BR/><BR/>But, your essay, I'm guessing (and it's an educated guess!), will likely show that we would answer this question (about status) in more or less the same way.<BR/><BR/>Ben FriedlanderAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1137683989720089622006-01-19T10:19:00.000-05:002006-01-19T10:19:00.000-05:00I hope you (all of you) are able to continue this ...I hope you (all of you) are able to continue this conversation. It is a kind of teach-in, on a topic that is significant, I think, quite apart from one's love or distaste for continental philosophy, and quite apart from one's stance in the long-running battle between poets and philosophers over which representation of thinking best accommodates the mind's capacities (or is best-suited to accommodate truth). To put Norman's point about form a little differently: poetry moves <I>forward</I> as thinking (and this is also true of post-Romantic philosophy) precisely by responding to the promptings (and coming to terms with the limitations) of the words that would register its movement. What constitutes the promptings of language is where form comes in, but form in the ordinary sense is to my mind (so to speak) a subsidiary issue. Oh, and my own favorite example of thinking in poetry is the work of Emily Dickinson.<BR/><BR/>Ben FriedlanderAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1137621496821288232006-01-18T16:58:00.000-05:002006-01-18T16:58:00.000-05:00My goodness, that's a lovely poem.As a bear of ver...My goodness, that's a lovely poem.<BR/><BR/>As a bear of very little brain, at least this afternoon, I won't weigh in on the broader topic--although Norman, I'm going to write about you as a thinker-in-poetry in another week or so, at which point I'll say more.<BR/><BR/>For now, I'll just thank you AND Mark (belatedly) for introducing me to Bronk.<BR/><BR/>EE. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1137597025005415612006-01-18T10:10:00.000-05:002006-01-18T10:10:00.000-05:00OK, Mark, for the most part you've called my bluff...OK, Mark, for the most part you've called my bluff, but I'm still glad I got to play the provocateur, given your rich response. Only some poets engage in the kind of thinking I described yesterday, and lots of poets, including some I like, don't seem to have an idea in their heads. Nor am really all that fed up with Heidegger, theory and poetics; I have less of an appetite for such work than I once had, but maybe I'm just getting lazy. Then again, I had the honor of studying poetics and religious hermeneutics with Geoffrey Hartman in 2003 and it was closest thing I'll ever experience to the rabbinic paradise where we get to study Torah with Moses while Ha-Shem, the Rosh Yeshiva, smiles and nods. Even last night's grad class on Russian Formalism and New Criticism was fun.<BR/><BR/>But since you've challenged me to produce a poem that enacts an idea, well, here you go:<BR/><BR/><B>The Nature of Musical Form</B><BR/><BR/>William Bronk<BR/><BR/>It is hard to believe of the world that there should be<BR/>music in it: these certainties against<BR/>the all-uncertain, this ordered fairness beneath<BR/>the tonelessness, the confusion of random noise.<BR/><BR/>It is tempting to say of the incomprehensible,<BR/>the formlessness, there is only order as we<BR/>so order and ordering, make it so: or this,<BR/>there is natural order which music apprehends<BR/><BR/>which apprehension justifies the world;<BR/>or even this, these forms are false, not true,<BR/>and music irrelevant at least, the world<BR/>is stated somewhere else, not there. But no.<BR/><BR/>How is it? There is a fairness of person too,<BR/>which is not a truth of persons or even, we learn,<BR/>a truth of that person, particularly.<BR/>It is only fairness stating only itself:<BR/><BR/>as though we could say of music only, it is.<BR/><BR/>Granted, this is an extreme example by a master of the mode, but we may as well see the creature in its purest form.<BR/>What say you?Norman Finkelsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03673105579717018812noreply@blogger.com