File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0008, message 294


From: "MRFanning" <MRFanning-AT-email.msn.com>
Subject: RE: PLC: Poetry, prose, fiction as meaningful
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 12:47:47 -0400




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From: owner-phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 10:27 AM
To: phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: RE: PLC: Poetry, prose, fiction as meaningful



On Sun, 20 Aug 2000 08:56:44 -0400, phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

One would have to read all the theory behind surrealism and dadaism first,
rather than dealing with the poems as they stand on the page.
>
I have to disagree again. One needn't do all that to see, from the poems as
they stand on the page that they're addressing or putting forward a
different kind of question, or questioning something that had crept along as
self-evident. If one can read the poems at all, one has read other things,
Dick and Jane readers, newspapers, something, a background of reading that
not only makes it possible to read them but that forms a context in which or
against which to read them. Reading all the theory would just be moving
toward the formulation of a "correct" reading, wouldn't it?



Well, if we are considering the Koran and the BIble as literature in the
discussion we have been having,then we have to include the works of all the
philosophers as well. I was talking about poetry and fiction, as I'm sure
everyone else was talking about too. If you get too broad in what you are
considering "Literature" in this discussion, you will make the term useless
to the discussion at hand.

My Bible is just full of poetry.. psalms, the song of songs, all that. How
is this "too broad"? But I will admit that there're some philosophers who
can be read as "literature" on one ground or another, I don't see how this
makes the term useless.
>

>  To keep from babbling too much, here I'll just say that I don't think I
can
>  agree with the distinction you draw between Real and Ideal.

Materialism and Transcendentalism, then. WHatever. That discussion was a
long time ago, and the distinction made clearly by others.

What I meant was that I don't agree with the way you're using the
distinction, or with how you make the distinction such that prose is "real
world stuff" and poetry isn't. That is to say, I do not think that the
distinction, as you make it, holds.



I read for entertainment. To enjoy the story, to meet interesting
characters, and to enjoy good writing. Since I have started writing, I have
added learning how to write well (or poorly, with some writers), looking for
where writers have failed, where they have succeeded, learning more about
different ways to write stories or develop characters, etc. I have recently
read Henry MIller's "Tropic of Cancer." It was a lot of fun to read, and I
have learned a lot about writing from him, butI wouldn't suggest it
necessarily as a place to go to learn how to live. He's a bum and a
scoundrel and he's sexist - but a joy to get to know. Others I have gotten
morals from more clearly than others. BUt none I have read primarily to get
a moral or to learn how to live.

Are you meaning to say that the moral/anti-moral has to be unambiguous for
it to count? That because Miller's a "bum and a scoundrel" etc, but that he
was "a joy to get to know" there's no morality there? That's the sense I'm
getting from this. That and a continued prescriptive stance on how and to
what ends Literature, as opposed to other types of writing not only should
but *can* be read. There's also an assumption, I think, in your original
challenge to find some moral in your "surrealist" poem that it qualifies as
Literature just because it looks like a poem on the page or something like
that. Not to mention the very distinct line you seem to want to draw around
Literature to keep out whatever other kinds of writing don't fit the
definition you're accepting and putting forward for what Literature is and
is not in the first place. One can make arguments for your position,
certainly, but neither those arguments nor your position are self-evident.

Just a few more worms for the can,

Regards,

Robert


Troy Camplin





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