Re: the quiet life

I'm probably wrong, but consulting the ghost of Martin H. might lead you
to think the poem was closed, a thing in itself.

But, apart from that, language doesn't exist independently of social and
literary contexts. It's probably more accurate to say that language
_creates_ social and literary contexts, that on some level it even
creates society itself. So it's not that a poem "can't be" closed, a
thing in itself, that it is yearning to be such but is prevented by
nasty people like John O.

It simply and factually just never is. You pick up a poem and you make
it into something. What you make it into is dependent, usually, upon
your own quite personal contexts -- your general reading, your previous
reading of other poems by same the poet, your mood, your ideas, your
preferences for language and how it's reflected in the way you inflect
or emphasize specific words, your life history, and on and on.

Note we're talking about poetry here, not physics equations or chemical
formulas. But even these are given specific and predictable context via
our educational system.

Jim

John Gedsudski wrote:

> Why can't a poem be closed, a "thing-in-itself"?
>
> An addendum suggested that isn't good enough for Omlor. For all we
> know, he's still consulting the ghost of Martin H.
>
> Cordially,
>
> John

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Received on Tue Mar 4 13:29:07 2003