Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 06:49:41 +0100
Subject: I can't get no relief
From: michaelP <michael-AT-sandwich-de-sign.co.uk>


on 15/8/03 2:39 pm, GEVANS613-AT-aol.com at GEVANS613-AT-aol.com wrote via Richard
Sanson:

> But,
> they are not leaves,
> they are not green,
> they have no veins,
> they are not a host of shapes.
> 
> I am the one suspended
> in a morphology of words.
> 
> They are, and will remain,
> my leaves,
> only my leaves

The poet here has caught on to the peculiar position of having to say [with
language] that the leaf is not caught in the net of conceptual speech
[having properties, definitions, shapes, mathematically arranged, etc]; that
the signifier ["leaves"]/signified [leaves] relation is "just" a "suspension
in a morphology of words"; the leaves are only "leaves", in short, a human
convenience. One will not argue with this, but... But, some relief [sic]
from this prison-house of language is possibly at hand here: to be able to
articulate this prison-housed convenience, in order to *say it* at all, is
to suggest something *other* (in language) than the prison-housedness of
language, because *otherwise* the saying of the prison-housedness of
language is itself prison-bound and thus a mere convenience (i.e., only a
"suspension in a morphology of words", only a purely [though humanly
convenient] arbitrary [read: free?] relation between signifier/signified).
For the saying to say what it says and not be reducible to nonsense [which
it is not: we all understand what it means and that it is not an arbitrary
convention that we all understand, etc], i.e., for the poet's saying not to
terminate in silence [or, what is analytically the same, interminable
chatter, sophistry], it perhaps unwittingly, points towards *another*
relation between language [logos] and things [like leaves], unlike,
decidedly unlike, the grasping and capturing [over-against] of conceptual
speech [definitions, properties, predication, etc].

Thus, I neither agree nor disagree with the sentiment expressed in the
thoughtful poem quoted [to agree or disagree would lend credence to the
self-cancelling, nihilistic appearance of the poem]: rather, I am interested
and arrested in/by the promise of this other relation of language which also
comes forth from the poem, albeit, implicitly. Which is why I suggested in
my previous post that we leave the leaves be [and think again about language
and thinking: which necessitates rethinking things too]. So, "let us not
talk convulsely now" [Dylan, All Along the Watchtower], instead ... think.

regards

mP



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