[lit-ideas] Re: Violence as Destruction of Doubt

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:26:49 -0500

Tsoy Crie wrote:

...that is hardly adequate to explain the difference between a piece of nonsense like '$%q9 suit four'

Nonsense to you. To someone cognizant of the code, it might be the meaning of life. In other words, meaning means you know code. Of course, if no one knows the code then the sign, symbol, utterance, statement or whatever has no meaning -- well, not at the moment anyway. Give me time.

I used to like to argue religion and God and all that with the Baptists and Seventh Day Adventists who'd come knocking on my door in their ministery to the infidels, but then I realized that we weren't arguing, we weren't even talking the same language. All the words we were using were encoded with our own Weltanschuuangs and primal emotional needs. Same in arguing with Republicans -- hell, even in arguing with my lover. Her meaning of "love" carries a whole department store of meanings with it, I just mean food and pussy by it. [just kidding] I try to understand what they mean by the words they use, but it's hopeless -- it just confuses as to what I mean by the words I use. So one should be careful saying one knows that something is nonsense. One should only say that's nonsense to me. But then, it's all about me, so I guess it is nonsense.

Mike Geary
Memphis



----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 8:27 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Violence as Destruction of Doubt


Many things that can be "said" are none too clear - and many examples, say from poetry, could be given. We can escape this refutation by saying that such poetry does not in fact "say"
anything. But this is really a definitional manouevre (about the definition of 'sense') that is hardly adequate to explain the difference between a piece of nonsense like '$%q9 suit four' and 'in Just-/spring when the world is mud-/lusicious the little/lame ballonman/whistles far and wee/and eddieandbill come/running from marbles and/piracies and it's/spring/when the world is puddle-wonderful' (from 'Chansons Innocentes', e.e.cummings).

____

Let me offer another route here. What Mallarme or cummings or Jorie Graham write is perfectly clear. It cannot be rephrased with greater clarity. Skillful poetry, no matter how abstruse, is the most concise description of its subject, the most clear formulation of the poet's intentions. It is irreducible.

This proposition answers the question of clarity as well as Mike's quibble about rationality.

It also answers that old anecdote about Sibelius. Sibelius played an early recording of his Fourth Symphony to a critic friend. When it was over, the critic asked, "What does it mean?" Sibelius held up his index finger and played the recording again.

The intrinsic meaning of a successful work of art is the entire work of art. Elements can be chipped off and held up for inspection, but these only serve to illuminate some aspect of craft.

Poetry edges into the nonsense of "'$%q9 suit four'" when it is poorly made, or as Valery would say, abandoned too soon.

Regards,
Eric

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