Re: bad poetry?

Robbie,

First off, your specific description differs considerably from the one Luke
offered, especially in its vocabulary (as you yourself note when you steer us
away from his distinctions between "objective" and "subjective").

Still, Luke spoke of "divine," and now you speak of "magical" when you write
about a discourse which is not political, in which there is no struggle for
power and which is not in some way enmeshed in manipulative rhetorics of desire.

But you add that, although it is extremely rare, it does, in fact exist, and
certain people have seen it.

To me, this all sounds less like the language of the Gods than it does like
Bigfoot. And frankly, I suspect that were I to see this most civilized exchange
of opinion, were I permitted to examine it closely, I would find plenty of
the very sorts of ideological and rhetorical maneuverings and power struggles
that one finds everywhere else. I would, that is, quickly be able to locate the
zipper and the sewed in fur and the giant rubber feet of a man in an ape suit
loping along the edge of the trees for a shaky movie camera in the distance.

And, I'm also willing to bet that at the faculty meetings at those
"institutions" you claim are founded on this ideal of cooperation and charmingly
innocent discourse, the very same petty power struggles and machinations over who
gets what committee assignments and what the FTE rate should be and who said what
during whose tenure review and what the next empty budget line should be used
for dominate the Friday afternoon. Just as I'd be willing to bet that more
than a few students go back to their dorm rooms after class each day and replay
with a smile the moment when they finally blew away the annoying know-it-all
kid up front with a perfect reply or try to forget those instants of
humiliation when they said what they knew only a fatal moment after everyone else was a
tragically stupid thing that reinforced their standing as the lame kid in the
back (or the lame kid at one end of the circle, if the professor is one of
those).

I still say you all live in my world, whether you want to or not. Perhaps
it's just that some of you believe that by saying the right prayers, by mouthing
the magic words, you can get yourselves somewhere else for a time. I still
see no evidence that such talking to oneself is anything but a pretty delusion.

All the best,

--John

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Sat Jul 12 20:03:14 2003