Questions on readers / GT
George Tolis
What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
Is it a useful phrase to you?
Why?
G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
Tom Bishop
"George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
>
> What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
I would say that at least to the dozen or so regular posters here,
average means a fairly high level of English Lit. education, or
a tremendous amount of self-study.
This is far beyond,
say "average for people who dabble in poetry"
..or "average for people who dabble with poetry online"
..or "average for white collar workers"
..or "average for college grads"
..or "average for high school grads"
Even the first 2 categories above finds site after site,
and poetry group after poetry group (I assume.. haven't sampled
that many poetry groups, but the one I went to was
not impressive from a /poetry/ standpoint at all,
after I had been here.) ..where the people drivel on and
on at each other, and NEVER read good poetry, and wouldn't
know if it bit them in their metaphor.
I'm sure there are websites and groups that are more well read,
but oh well.
>
>
> How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
I suggest that the following definitions be
adopted by Usenet Poetry:
- "fred" - an ancient of days.. God of poetry, seasoned and renown
- "a potter" or "a rooster" - a respectable pomet who is crafting their work
- "an dish" or "a chicken,chick" - a somewhat questionable pomet who is worth watching sometimes
- "a shard" or "an egg" - someone who reads poetry and tries occasionally, but hey..
- "average reader" - this includes those who dabble in poetry, and poetry online
(and frequently post here for a while, then leave)
..or "white collar workers"
..or "college grads"
..or "high school grads"
- " joe pubic" - let's not necessarily assume high school
>
>
> Is it a useful phrase to you?
The term "pompous ass" is used a lot, perhaps it
could also plug some holes?
>
>
> Why?
>
Because Fred said.
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Philip K. Dick
Fernando
"George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> schreef in bericht
news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
>
> What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
All blots and broken colors,
imagining a butterfly, a leaf.
And look at this spot.
Is it a spider, or not?
I can almost feel it's true content
as was the creator's artfull intent.
But maybe move those blots to here,
as /then/ I shall truly adhere
the surrealistic sham
of this stereogram.
Best regards,
Fernando
Paul Heslop
Well, it should mean Joe Public, the man on the street. But with poetry
it would depend who was saying it. If some bloke at Oxford was saying it
he would probably be thinking of the middle classes, where if some
gritty northern poet said it he would mean gritty northern people.
With books it's easier, it just means everyone, unless it's a weighty
tome and the author anounced that 'it may not be suitable for the common
reader' in which case we're back to gritty northerners again :O)
--
Paul. (why don't you call me I feel like flying in two)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Not what it seems...
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/
Rik Roots
>
> What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
> How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>
view) someone who takes an active interest in poetry, seeks out anthologies
or collections every now and again, will have (in the UK) heard of Ted
Hughes, Philip Larkin, possibly R S Thomas and Wendy Cope. But not someone
who's fanatical about poetry, subscribes to a dozen literary journals and
can tell the difference between a l.a.n.g.u.a.g.e poem and a bowl of dog
vomit. I call them "afficianados".
"Joe Public" to me represents the bloke down the pub who was taught
Kipling's "If" in a classroom 50 years ago and can still quote it verbatim
after a couple of lagers. Luckily, they don't get around to Wordsworth's
"Daffodils" until pint five, and they can't afford more than 3 pints a
night now they're on the state pension.
"Billy No Mates" is surely a pubescent wreck of hormones who sits in front
of a PC for at least 10 hours a day and breaks off from Grand Theft Auto
"Vice City" every now and again to compose and post a poem from the depths
of his heartburned soul. And posts it to aapc.
> Is it a useful phrase to you?
>
There's nothing wrong with a bit of classification, as long as we don't get
too Linnean about it, in my opinion.
> Why?
>
Identifying your target audiences and shaping your marketing pitch
accordingly? I'd like some of my poems to filter through to the "common"
reader in the next few decades. Though anyone caught reciting my poetry
after a couple of pints will probably need medication.
I've never got the hang of GTA - which probably explains so much ...
> G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
>
It's the answers that scare me.
Rik, knee deep.
--
http://www.kalieda.org/poems/index.html
Pop in for a browse, when you have a moment to spare.
Michael Cook
George Tolis <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
>
> "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
It is an admission of guilt.
>
>
> How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
A pathetic sick lot, best throttled and harnessed, the carriers of common
diseases and common cures who are always in transit. Who if called upon will
answer in one loud shrill voice "it is I"
> Is it a useful phrase to you?
no
> Why?
First, there is no need to define realization is definition enough
You might ask Anne Sexton, or Jewel as to the why they were and or
are common readers with a following of common writers; linear movement of
thought.
Horizontal people in a vertical would never bother to get up.
Julie Carter
<catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
>What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
>"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
Literate but with no history in or with poetry aside from what he or
she was forced to read in school. For me, my husband is an excellent
example of an average reader. Intelligent and well-read, but not in
poetry. He'll get my historical/cultural/theological references, but
not cannibalistic poetry references (in general).
I would sharply distinguish this from "the average poetry reader" or
"a poetry lover" or any similar sorts.
>How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
>e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
Hrm. I think I just did, but I'm probably misunderstanding the
question, as usual.
>Is it a useful phrase to you?
Could be, I suppose.
>Why?
I guess it's just an easy way of defining your audience. When I write
in forms, I'm writing for an average reader. When I write free verse,
I'm not.
--
Julie Carter
Zinc
news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
>
> "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
In /these/ parts it's not meant for someone familiar with the mechanics of
poetry beyond end-rhyming or sentimental, political, or religious themes. In
other words: Charles Osgood's audience. Or people who read Tom Clancy or
Stephen King novels then wait for the movie to come out so they can enjoy
complaining about it. They probably read more than one section of the
newspaper each day.
> How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
A short phrase? One who reads novels usually no older than a decade with
nominal non-fiction reading.
>
> Is it a useful phrase to you?
Not right at this moment.
>
> Why?
Why are you asking? (I smell a project - probably agreed to in haste)
Michael Cook
Julie Carter <jsgo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6a5gcv0mh69bse5gu...@4ax.com...
Speaking of "linear movement of thought."
Once again I find myself correcting a post.
"Horizontal people in a vertical would never bother to get up."
Should read:
Horizontal people in a vertical world would never bother to get up.
Or more accurately:
Horizontal people in a vertical world would not bother to get up.
"First, there is no need to define realization is definition enough"
should be:
First there is no need to define, realization is definition enough.
In defense of Mr. Carter and to clarify myself
I would add:
There are no common readers only common people.
There are no common lovers of art only common lovers
To write to an audience is to write nothing, nothing!
for you have written to no one. I suspect Mr. Carter has
read much more in Mrs. Carter's poetry then anyone could
possibly fathom. That statement is based on my limited understanding
of what the common people call love.
mdc
Susan Palm
Sorry i don't remember the name. The haiku's we're your standard 5-7-5
affair, to a fault many times.
Anyways, is it possible that depending on his/her mood, that even a good
structured though mediocre in content poem can arouse appreciation in a
so-called sophisticated reader when he/she is in a less critizing mood?
This writer was going through various illnesses, that kept him inside
most times. Many of the haiku's reflect his limited view at these times.
Some, I thought, were close to 'the spirit' of the haiku form, yet I did
have a certain appreciation of the whole of the work as it pertained to his
daily life.
Any opinions? Appendiges?
rich.
Jim Sheard
catal...@ukonline.co.uk says...
> What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
I can't 'hear' this usage, really. Do you mean the same as 'general'
reader? If so, I guess it means someone for whom leisure reading is an
established part of their life, without it being pursued as a
specialised, academic or fetishistic activity.
> How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
I know this isn't what you want, but Joe Public and Billy No Mates lie
on either side of the general reader.
> Is it a useful phrase to you?
Yeah. It's the reader I must either a) forget about or b) develop a
secondary repertoire for. The latter seems an increasingly popular
strategy at poetry readings by 'serious' poets.
> Why?
> G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
Well, I think I've tried my 'we're nuclear physicists/coprophiliacs'
argument on you, but you're clearly not happy.
I've written a short story recently 'A Brief History of the Poetburo'
(not the Poetburo which rules here), which imagines what we might do, if
called upon to legislate. After the initial purges and sorting out
state salaries for poets etc., there is a terrible schism between the
Preservers and the Extenders. The former propose top-down adaptive
writing to meet the needs of the general reader. The latter insist that
an increasingly large proportion of the education system be dedicated to
training the population in the reading of poetry, *no matter how
difficult it becomes*. The Extenders win, and within months are
cracking puns in Hittite and deploying click-language strophes, secure
in the knowledge that the readers will catch up.
Jim
--
AAPC FAQ & Resources
http://www.aapcsite.plus.com/
Aidan Tynan
George Tolis wrote in message ...
>
>What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
>"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
I've never made the distinction between common and uncommon readers, because
I never knew which one I was, or which I'd prefer to be.
>
>How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
>e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
I've heard the term common reader to be defined as anyone with a liberal
arts degree or some auto-didact equivalent, but this implies a sub-common
reader and a super-common reader, a hierarchy which is somehow distasteful
to me, and leads to the exclusatory policies which hinders most people from
picking up a book of poetry in the first place. Most poetry, to be
understood, requires a sort of de-educating.
>
>
>Is it a useful phrase to you?
Not really. "Common readers" implies that there is a quorum of superhumans
guarding the academic coffers of poesy, which, occasionally, allow some of
the contents to leak out into the realm of the plebians, who skirt around it
until the okay is given that this is "for the common readers" to consume,
while the "essence" of poetry remains beynd their reach in the land of
uncommon reading. A sort of dystopian image emerges of what's really going.
-Aidan
Gary Warner
I read that book too...Haiku: This Other World, by Richard Wright...
and have a mini-review on my website:
http://www.haikuworld.org/amazon/amazon.html#wright
I agree that he was "trapped" by what he knew a haiku to be -- 5/7/5
and that's about it. Still, he had the haiku eye, even if he didn't
have the haiku voice. He spent time in contemplation of his
surroundings and took the time to write what he saw. Would love to
talk more about the book. My favorite poem, i think, was:
Keep straight down this block,
Then turn right where you will find
A peach tree blooming
Bindi
'Virginia Woolf, indicates that her essays be read by the educated but
non-scholarly "common reader," who examines books for personal enjoyment. '
( a patched extract from here.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156198061/102-8179640-4365712
?vi=glance )
want more?
http://orlando.jp.org/VWWARC/DAT/cmreader.html
--
Bindi
who never thought about it before.
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.slingshot.to/Bindi
-----------------------------------------------
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George Tolis
> "George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
> >
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
> I would say that at least to the dozen or so regular posters here,
> average means a fairly high level of English Lit. education, or
> a tremendous amount of self-study.
>
> This is far beyond,
> say "average for people who dabble in poetry"
> ..or "average for people who dabble with poetry online"
> ..or "average for white collar workers"
> ..or "average for college grads"
> ..or "average for high school grads"
>
> Even the first 2 categories above finds site after site,
> and poetry group after poetry group (I assume.. haven't sampled
> that many poetry groups, but the one I went to was
> not impressive from a /poetry/ standpoint at all,
> after I had been here.) ..where the people drivel on and
> on at each other, and NEVER read good poetry, and wouldn't
> know if it bit them in their metaphor.
>
> I'm sure there are websites and groups that are more well read,
> but oh well.
So 'average' is a relative term, despite being used generically in a
lot of critical texts. Interesting and close to what I was thinking.
But is there a par of 'averageness' - e.g. a 'level of English lit.' -
required to read poetry? I.e. a basic education to create the urge
to pick up a book of poems/type 'poetry' into a search engine?
> >
> >
> > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>
> I suggest that the following definitions be
> adopted by Usenet Poetry:
>
> - "fred" - an ancient of days.. God of poetry, seasoned and renown
> - "a potter" or "a rooster" - a respectable pomet who is crafting their work
> - "an dish" or "a chicken,chick" - a somewhat questionable pomet who is worth watching sometimes
> - "a shard" or "an egg" - someone who reads poetry and tries occasionally, but hey..
Heh.
"Cockle" or "Kookle" - someone who plagiarises poetry and whines a lot
about things other than poetry in poetry environments.
"Hoodwink" or "Tiresias" - someone who writes great poetry but doesn't
know how the hell they do it.
"Goggle" or "Smock lifter" - someone who understands every poetry
device employed in literary history but can't pen a memorable line to
save their life.
"Shuck" or "Fork" - someone who liked some poems in school, but never
picked a another poem up since the age of 16.
> - "average reader" - this includes those who dabble in poetry, and poetry online
> (and frequently post here for a while, then leave)
Ok. 'dabblers'.
> ..or "white collar workers"
> ..or "college grads"
> ..or "high school grads"
>
> - " joe pubic" - let's not necessarily assume high school
The unwashed hairy masses? Or did you mean 'joe pre-pubic'?
> > Is it a useful phrase to you?
>
> The term "pompous ass" is used a lot, perhaps it
> could also plug some holes?
Right.
> > Why?
> >
>
> Because Fred said.
Cheers Tom.
If it's ok with you, may I reprint your post in an appendix to an
essay I'm working on?
GT
George Tolis
> George Tolis wrote:
> >
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
> > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> > Is it a useful phrase to you?
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
>
>
> Well, it should mean Joe Public, the man on the street. But with poetry
> it would depend who was saying it. If some bloke at Oxford was saying it
> he would probably be thinking of the middle classes, where if some
> gritty northern poet said it he would mean gritty northern people.
OK. It's relative. But what about when a posh, hyper-educated poet
uses the word specifically to refer to people who aren't educated?
E.g. Virginia Woolf quoting Dr. Johnson (see Bindi's post) using it to
refer to:
"I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense
of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the
refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally
decided all claim to poetical honours."
I.e. poets can only be measured against each other by people who are
'uncorrupted by literary prejudices'. But that's coming from
well-educated, literary people and it's ignoring the fact that
everyone has taste, is subjective. E.g. you might like more poems
that sound like songs. You might not like poems that don't rhyme,
except for TS Eliot (or another random poet that no one else likes).
> With books it's easier, it just means everyone, unless it's a weighty
> tome and the author anounced that 'it may not be suitable for the common
> reader' in which case we're back to gritty northerners again :O)
You seem to be suggesting that everyone (or a suitably large
proportion of our society) reads novels, but because poetry is read by
so few, it's easier to break up into relativity.
Hmm. OK. This is still a classical way of reading/interpreting - if
the writer is posh, intellectual and so on, then they won't appeal to
gritty northerners, no matter what they write. Old habits die hard.
But how do you make the 'common reader' break these stereotypes? The
assumption is an issue of fecked media reviewing and marketing
techniques used by publishing houses. E.g. "if you liked [x] then
you'll like [y]" so the reader goes out and buys every type of [x]
they can find and reads nothing else.
GT
George Tolis
> George Tolis wrote:
> >
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
> > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> The "common" reader, or someone who commonly reads poetry, will be (in my
> view) someone who takes an active interest in poetry, seeks out anthologies
> or collections every now and again, will have (in the UK) heard of Ted
> Hughes, Philip Larkin, possibly R S Thomas and Wendy Cope. But not someone
> who's fanatical about poetry, subscribes to a dozen literary journals and
> can tell the difference between a l.a.n.g.u.a.g.e poem and a bowl of dog
> vomit. I call them "afficianados".
Very specific, but I like the idea of 'commonly reads poetry'. But
you're using social definitions - how often they read, how many
contemporary poets they know, magazine subscriptions. What about "how
they read poetry"?
> "Joe Public" to me represents the bloke down the pub who was taught
> Kipling's "If" in a classroom 50 years ago and can still quote it verbatim
> after a couple of lagers. Luckily, they don't get around to Wordsworth's
> "Daffodils" until pint five, and they can't afford more than 3 pints a
> night now they're on the state pension.
Gawd no.
> "Billy No Mates" is surely a pubescent wreck of hormones who sits in front
> of a PC for at least 10 hours a day and breaks off from Grand Theft Auto
> "Vice City" every now and again to compose and post a poem from the depths
> of his heartburned soul. And posts it to aapc.
OK, you're joking too...
> > Is it a useful phrase to you?
> >
> There's nothing wrong with a bit of classification, as long as we don't get
> too Linnean about it, in my opinion.
Okeydoke. But without a little Linneaism, I can't get inside the
meaning in the statement, which so far appears to be subjected in a
self-defeating way.
> > Why?
> >
> Identifying your target audiences and shaping your marketing pitch
> accordingly? I'd like some of my poems to filter through to the "common"
> reader in the next few decades. Though anyone caught reciting my poetry
> after a couple of pints will probably need medication.
Kaboom, as they say on the radio one rap show. Chicken or egg: do you
write for pre-existing audiences, or create your own market? E.g.
Kipling's If- was voted the Nation's Favourite (the marketing tool
anthology) so you know it's popular, so you could try and write like
it to sell.
Alternatively, as I've been told repeated up here, 'you have to build
your readership [over 30 years or more]'. i.e. it's irrelevant trying
to write for the common reader/pre-existing concepts, but if you stay
true to your way of writing, push it about, send to mags, etc. you'll
build a readership over time that will be permanent (and financially
rewarding/posterity driven, whichever you fancy more).
> I've never got the hang of GTA - which probably explains so much ...
Well, you, like, steal cars, drive about in them and commit acts of
violence.
Tom Bishop
"George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:d66c9352.03052...@posting.google.com...
What poetry? Thomas, Hopkins, Houstman, Hammes, Tolis?
..Dockery??
I don't think there necessarily has to be Eng. Lit.,
but it seems to go with it.
More seem to flock to the Dockery type stuff, which from
a more read point of view is crap. So what do you do with that?
Am I inaccurate?
Dockery seems like he could be a pied piper to huge segments
of inane post-a-poem sites, and local poetry groups.
But it is all just his energy, and typing ability.
..ain't poetry in anywhere near the same breath with the
other authors mentioned.
> I.e. a basic education to create the urge
> to pick up a book of poems/type 'poetry' into a search engine?
There was just a guy thru that says he doesn't have any desire
to read anything but poetry by equally unread authors,
in AOL chat rooms.. he was adamant.
All they do is tell each other how much they love
each other's clichéd, imageless crap.
It was rather funny.
And there are a lot of him. I think a whole lot.
..but he self-identifies as a poet.
Statistically, I don't think you can ignore it.
I feel that I am far beyond him in much of my understanding
and reading of poetry, but don't consider myself much of a poet,
and am hardly considered seriously here at all.
(which is justifiable from many standpoints, I don't argue.. :-)
I ain't really "fred".. more like an "egg".
>
>
> > >
> > >
> > > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> > I suggest that the following definitions be
> > adopted by Usenet Poetry:
> >
> > - "fred" - an ancient of days.. God of poetry, seasoned and renown
> > - "a potter" or "a rooster" - a respectable pomet who is crafting their work
> > - "an dish" or "a chicken,chick" - a somewhat questionable pomet who is worth watching sometimes
> > - "a shard" or "an egg" - someone who reads poetry and tries occasionally, but hey..
>
> Heh.
>
> "Cockle" or "Kookle" - someone who plagiarises poetry and whines a lot
> about things other than poetry in poetry environments.
>
> "Hoodwink" or "Tiresias" - someone who writes great poetry but doesn't
> know how the hell they do it.
>
> "Goggle" or "Smock lifter" - someone who understands every poetry
> device employed in literary history but can't pen a memorable line to
> save their life.
>
> "Shuck" or "Fork" - someone who liked some poems in school, but never
> picked a another poem up since the age of 16.
>
>
> > - "average reader" - this includes those who dabble in poetry, and poetry online
> > (and frequently post here for a while, then leave)
>
> Ok. 'dabblers'.
I guess.. some are pretty serious.. :-)
>
> > ..or "white collar workers"
> > ..or "college grads"
> > ..or "high school grads"
> >
> > - " joe pubic" - let's not necessarily assume high school
>
> The unwashed hairy masses? Or did you mean 'joe pre-pubic'?
Don't forget joanne pulmonary..
>
>
> > > Is it a useful phrase to you?
> >
> > The term "pompous ass" is used a lot, perhaps it
> > could also plug some holes?
>
> Right.
>
> > > Why?
> > >
> >
> > Because Fred said.
>
> Cheers Tom.
>
> If it's ok with you, may I reprint your post in an appendix to an
> essay I'm working on?
Of course.
>
>
> GT
George Tolis
Michael,
If I thought you weren't so old to be an atheist, I'd call you an
'angry young man'.
==================
THE EXPERIENCE OF LITERATURE
T.S. Eliot, "Points of View" (Faber, MCMXLI).
The author of a work of imagination is trying to affect us
wholly, as human beings, whether he knows it or not; and we are
affected by it, as human beings, whether we intend to be or not. I
suppose that everything we eat has some other effect upon us than
merely the pleasure of taste and mastication; it affects us during the
process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe that exactly the
same is true of anything we read.
The fact that what we read does not concern merely something
called our /literary taste/, but that it affects directly, though only
amongst many other influences, the whole of what we are, is best
elicited, I think, by a conscientious examination of the history of
our individual literary education. Consider the adolescent reading of
any person with some literary sensibility. Everyone, I believe, who
is at all sensible to the seductions of poetry, can remember some
moment in youth when he or she was completely carried away by the work
of one poet. Very likely he was carried away by several poets, one
after the other. The reason for this passing infatuation is not
merely that our sensibility to poetry is keener in adolescence than in
maturity. What happens is a kind of inundation, of invasion of the
undeveloped personality, the empty (swept and garnished) room, by the
stronger personality of the poet. the same thing may happen at a
later age to persons who have not done much reading. One author takes
complete possession of us for a time; then another; and finally they
begin to affect each other in our mind. We weight one against
another; we see that each has qualities absent from other, and
qualities incompatible with the qualities of others: we begin to be,
in fact, critical; and it is our growing critical power which protects
us from excessive possession by any one literary personality. The
good critic--and we should all try to be critics, and not leave
criticism to the fellows who write reviews in the papers--is the man
who, to a keen and abiding sensibility, joins wide and increasingly
discriminating reading. Wide reading is not valuable as a kind of
hoarding, an accumulation of knowledge, or what sometimes is meant by
the term "a well-stocked mind". It is valuable because in the process
of being affected by one powerful personality after another, we cease
to be dominated by any one, or by any small number. The very
different views of life, co-habiting in our minds, affect each other,
and our own personality asserts itself and gives each a place in some
arrangement peculiar to ourself.
It is simply not true that works of fiction, prose or verse,
that is to say works depicting the actions, thoughts, and words and
passions of imaginary human beings, /directly/ extend our knowledge of
life. Direct knowledge of life is knowledge directly in relation to
ourselves, it is our knowledge of /how/ people behave in general, or
/what/ they are like in general, in so far as that part of life in
which we ourselves have participated gives us material for
generalization. Knowledge of life obtained through fiction is only
possible by another stage of self-consciousness. That is to say, it
can only be a knowledge of other people's knowledge of life, not of
life itself. So far as we are taken up with the happenings in any
novel in the same way in which we are taken up with what happens under
our eyes, we are acquiring at least as much falsehood as truth. But
when we are developed enough to say: "This is the view of life of a
person who was a good observer within his limits, Dickens, or
Thackeray, or George Eliot, or Balzac; but he looked at it in a
different way from me, because he was a different man; he even
selected rather different things to look at, or the same things in a
different order of importance, because he was a different man; so what
I am looking at is the world as seen by a particular mind"--then we
are in a position to gain something from reading fiction. We are
learning /something/ about life from these authors direct, just as we
learn something from the reading of history direct; but these authors
are only really helping us when we can see, and allow for, their
differences from ourselves.
Now what we get, as we gradually grow up and read more and more,
and read a greater diversity of authors, is a variety of views of
life. But what people commonly assume, I suspect, is that we gain
this experience of other men's views of life only by "improving
reading". This, it is supposed, is a reward we get by applying
ourselves to Shakespeare, and Dante, and Goethe, and Emerson, and
Carlyle, and dozens of other respectable writers. The rest of our
reading for amusement is merely killing time. But I incline to come
to the alarming conclusion that it is just the literature that we read
for "amusement", or "purely for pleasure" that may have the greatest,
and least suspected influence upon us. It is the literature which we
read with the least effort that can have the easiest and most
insidious influence upon us. Hence it is that the influence of
popular novelists, and of popular plays of contemporary life, requires
to be scrutinized most closely. And it is chiefly /contemporary/
literature that the majority of people ever read in this attitude of
"purely for pleasure", of pure passivity.
[From /Religion and Literature/, 1934]
========================
Also see, "For Lancelot Andrewes", and how the reader must 'elevate to
the level of the poem'.
Consider Eliot's demand for an 'ignorant reader' of /The Waste Land/
(not sure of the source, can anyone help?
Also Edward Said on the need to take responsibility for our engagement
with any kind of art or language, political speeches, poetry, music,
etc. The need to deconstruct anything is vital to understanding the
world
And Ezra Pound's /A B C of Reading/:
"The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his
country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with
contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some
ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the
impression that it was merely eating jam tarts."
"Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value
depends on what is there to meet it... Even if the general statement
of an ignorant man is 'true', it leaves his mouth or pen without any
great validity."
"The above [definitions and degrees of language, communication and
literature] are natural phenomena, they serve as measuring rods, or
instruments. For no two people are these 'measures' identical."
"There is is no end to the number of qualities which some people can
associate with a given word or kind of word, and most of these vary
with the individual."
BUT:
"The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page
than the common reader can lap off it with no strain WHATSOEVER on his
habitually slack attention."
GT
George Tolis
> <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >
> >What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> >"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
> Literate but with no history in or with poetry aside from what he or
> she was forced to read in school. For me, my husband is an excellent
> example of an average reader. Intelligent and well-read, but not in
> poetry. He'll get my historical/cultural/theological references, but
> not cannibalistic poetry references (in general).
OK. A certain lack of literary prejudice, but a knowledge of
non-literary matters that affect writing.
> I would sharply distinguish this from "the average poetry reader" or
> "a poetry lover" or any similar sorts.
How would you distinguish these?
> >How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> >e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>
> Hrm. I think I just did, but I'm probably misunderstanding the
> question, as usual.
Could you separate the qualities of 'average' and 'common'? The
associations you might have, personally, that define each word in or
out of context.
> >Is it a useful phrase to you?
>
> Could be, I suppose.
>
> >Why?
>
> I guess it's just an easy way of defining your audience. When I write
> in forms, I'm writing for an average reader. When I write free verse,
> I'm not.
The argument of writing for or against an audience is something I've
asked before. How it shapes the writing and so on. Stuff on
Eratosphere about this.
However, why do you need to define an audience?
GT
George Tolis
> Julie Carter <jsgo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:6a5gcv0mh69bse5gu...@4ax.com...
> > On Sun, 18 May 2003 16:37:46 +0100, "George Tolis"
> > <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
> To write to an audience is to write nothing, nothing!
> for you have written to no one. I suspect Mr. Carter has
> read much more in Mrs. Carter's poetry then anyone could
> possibly fathom. That statement is based on my limited understanding
> of what the common people call love.
> mdc
OK. But to sell a poem you must have/create an audience, non? Hence
the bastardisation of the writing process, by commerce, since the
appearance of so-called 'celebrity status' even in poetry. "Have you
heard of...?"
GT
George Tolis
> "George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
> >
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
> In /these/ parts it's not meant for someone familiar with the mechanics of
> poetry beyond end-rhyming or sentimental, political, or religious themes. In
> other words: Charles Osgood's audience. Or people who read Tom Clancy or
> Stephen King novels then wait for the movie to come out so they can enjoy
> complaining about it. They probably read more than one section of the
> newspaper each day.
I hate Tom Clancy's books and like some of Stephen King's. I don't
like the films of either. Does that make me uncommon?
I read only one section of one newspaper every week. So I'm not
common?
> > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>
> A short phrase? One who reads novels usually no older than a decade with
> nominal non-fiction reading.
What about poetry? One book a year? One anthology?
> > Is it a useful phrase to you?
>
> Not right at this moment.
>
> >
> > Why?
>
> Why are you asking? (I smell a project - probably agreed to in haste)
Yep, project, hastily taken up, rather than agreed to, when someone
told me I'm not writing for the 'common reader'. I'm investigating
the idea of what a common reader is (i.e. rubbishing it) and then
developing the idea that "difficult poetry is truly democratic"
(Geoffrey Hill) in relation to modernist critical theory/opinion,
alongside Perloff's arguments of the 'interrupted' movement of
modernism.
I'm arguing that the terms 'mainstream' and 'non-mainstream' are false
classifications (as are all genres/movements, to some extent, when not
historical) that undermines the ability for many to read poetry;
contemporary classifications (e.g. back-cover blurbs) for the market
provide authoritarian/dictatorial "one party readings" of work,
whereas the modernist/so-called 'difficult' poets were democratic
(liberal), attempting to empower the reader into critical awareness,
to their own desired level.
GT
George Tolis
It's true. If I'm in a happy mood and with my girlfriend, I can go to
the cinema and watch a soppy rom-com without vomiting, but the
faculties kick in before and after and I unpick cliché, poor dialogue,
all the bad stuff according to other films I've seen that I felt
affected by.
Similarly, some 'sophisticated readers' I know will foam at the mouth
about how good some poetry experiments are, without noticing the
complete absence of anything that 'resonates' on a human level.
But what does it take to see what 'resonates' in a poem? And should
only one part of the emotional-cerebral elements to a poem (e.g.
technique vs. beauty) take dominance?
GT
George Tolis
> In article <ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de>,
> catal...@ukonline.co.uk says...
>
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
> I can't 'hear' this usage, really. Do you mean the same as 'general'
> reader? If so, I guess it means someone for whom leisure reading is an
> established part of their life, without it being pursued as a
> specialised, academic or fetishistic activity.
Specifically I was referring to the term used by Pound, Woolf, and
more modern, less accurate usages in Bloodaxe and so on, where the
term is deployed as a marketing device. Woolf/Johnson.
Where are your boundaries? Secondary education? HEd? I'm driving at
the application of the term - when it refers to someone's critical
abilities, given any poem, is there a boundary where a 'common' reader
will consistently react badly, e.g. to intertextual references
(Julie's 'cannabilism') or foreign language deployment, etc.?
Taking Pound and Eliot's arguments of the individual faculty, the
common reader /then/ referred to critical engagement, but now is a
matter of demographics, social habits, etc. i.e. makes assumptions of
people by virtue of their class/environment.
> > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>
> I know this isn't what you want, but Joe Public and Billy No Mates lie
> on either side of the general reader.
I.e. the 'geek' vs. the 'slob'? If it's a scale of passion for the
subject, it's an unquantifiable meter, isn't it? You'd have to assess
everyone and probably conclude that everyone has a different interest
in poetry, types of poetry, specific poets, etc.
> > Is it a useful phrase to you?
>
> Yeah. It's the reader I must either a) forget about or b) develop a
> secondary repertoire for. The latter seems an increasingly popular
> strategy at poetry readings by 'serious' poets.
Excellent. Can you give me specific examples? I've noticed perhaps
in anthologies (e.g. Staying Alive) that the selection from
'difficult' poets has been weak, 'easy', despite not being what they
are/were famous for.
But it seems to be having an effect on how people showcase their work
- a serious poet perceived as an entertaining poet is essentially
falsely advertising themselves to sell something - possibly to get
heard, to surprise, who knows? But it seems part of a
capitalist-driven mentality.
There's an interesting thing on the Faber website (it's down at the
moment) where post-war in the fifties (I think) they 'expanded' their
repetoire, in a similar way to what you're suggesting;
popularity/commercial motives defining output.
> > Why?
>
> > G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
>
> Well, I think I've tried my 'we're nuclear physicists/coprophiliacs'
> argument on you, but you're clearly not happy.
I'm never happy :D
> I've written a short story recently 'A Brief History of the Poetburo'
> (not the Poetburo which rules here), which imagines what we might do, if
> called upon to legislate. After the initial purges and sorting out
> state salaries for poets etc., there is a terrible schism between the
> Preservers and the Extenders. The former propose top-down adaptive
> writing to meet the needs of the general reader. The latter insist that
> an increasingly large proportion of the education system be dedicated to
> training the population in the reading of poetry, *no matter how
> difficult it becomes*. The Extenders win, and within months are
> cracking puns in Hittite and deploying click-language strophes, secure
> in the knowledge that the readers will catch up.
>
> Jim
Ah, Jim, you're such an optimist. Feel free to send it me.
The idea actually came about partly through talking to you about the
symposium idea. If you're creating a readership, you're looking at
long term building of the tools to read in the reader. G. Hill has
achieved this; he's a 'bestseller', a must-own, despite being
incredibly difficult, perhaps to a 'common reader'; he has created the
ability to read his work on certain levels by 'democratically'
empowering his readership.
But I see this empowerment in the writings of certain modernists. In
Edward Said. I'm looking into modern critics, e.g. Gioia and Perloff,
for similar things, but so far Gioia has been a bit of a let down,
taking the idea for granted. What happened to the spate of critical
texts that offered the tools for reading, either generally, or
author-by-author, text-by-text?
Currently, the best example is the Guardian Review's 'service to
reading groups'.
GT
George Tolis
> George Tolis wrote in message ...
> >
> >What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> >"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
>
> I've never made the distinction between common and uncommon readers, because
> I never knew which one I was, or which I'd prefer to be.
Good answer. That's what I was thinking.
> >How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> >e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>
> I've heard the term common reader to be defined as anyone with a liberal
> arts degree or some auto-didact equivalent, but this implies a sub-common
> reader and a super-common reader, a hierarchy which is somehow distasteful
> to me, and leads to the exclusatory policies which hinders most people from
> picking up a book of poetry in the first place. Most poetry, to be
> understood, requires a sort of de-educating.
Yes. The skills of deconstruction must be learned case-by-case, but
the validity of certain people's abilities is questioned by the term.
> >Is it a useful phrase to you?
>
> Not really. "Common readers" implies that there is a quorum of superhumans
> guarding the academic coffers of poesy, which, occasionally, allow some of
> the contents to leak out into the realm of the plebians, who skirt around it
> until the okay is given that this is "for the common readers" to consume,
> while the "essence" of poetry remains beynd their reach in the land of
> uncommon reading. A sort of dystopian image emerges of what's really going.
>
>
> -Aidan
I just got back from Hay-on-Wye, watching DeLillo, Markham and Said.
Said, at one point, made an aside about how even in the media, but
generally in the realm of 'industry', there is a presentation of the
idea of 'expertise'. This filters down to the audience, as a form of
accreditation to the language conveyed, to justify the financial
transaction involved.
I'm currently trying to connect this to the notion of capitalism as a
non-place, a non-identity in the forced description of the reader. By
making a 'Joe Public' classification, you disempower the reader, as
was done in the forced perceptions of black/jews/gays/women/etc. by
so-called (self-professed) 'masters' in respective fields.
Any thoughts you have on this would be much appreciated. I'm working
towards a conclusion that poetry needs to undergo
unbranding/decommercialisation to allow the entry of anyone, not just
a market base.
GT
George Tolis
"Bindi" <Bin...@bigpond.com.au> wrote in message
news:bacjo7$rlukp$1...@ID-66859.news.dfncis.de...
> George Tolis wrote:
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to?
> > (E.g. "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
> >
> > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar
> > terms, e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> >
> > Is it a useful phrase to you?
> >
> >
> > Why?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
>
> 'Virginia Woolf, indicates that her essays be read by the educated but
> non-scholarly "common reader," who examines books for personal enjoyment.
'
>
> ( a patched extract from here.
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156198061/102-8179640-4365712
> ?vi=glance )
>
> want more?
>
> http://orlando.jp.org/VWWARC/DAT/cmreader.html
>
>
>
> --
> Bindi
> who never thought about it before.
Cheers Bindi, I'm on it already. I'm starting with Woolf, Pound and Eliot
and jumping forwards to Perloff, Hill, Gioia (if I find anything useful
there) and the LANGUAGE movement.
The only reason you should think about it is if you've ever felt a poem
'excluded' you for some reason.
GT
Aidan Tynan
George Tolis wrote in message ...
21st Century Modernism? I bought it a few months ago, but never got around
to reading it completely. As an avowed postmodernist I'm a little wary of
any "return" to modernism as a critical monotheism with its fascist
overtones, and all.
>
>I'm arguing that the terms 'mainstream' and 'non-mainstream' are false
>classifications (as are all genres/movements, to some extent, when not
>historical) that undermines the ability for many to read poetry;
Certainly not false, mainly just remnants of a Romanticism co-opted by
conservatives like Bloom and Arnold (not to mention Leavis and Abrams), and
the notion of the artist as sole, wandering, misunderstood being that
modernism inherited from the Romantics. The quintessential modernist notion
is that art must remain difficult, fragmentary and misunderstood in order to
resist co-optation into pop culture and consummerism. Postmodernists like me
think such monotheism as rather pointless, while sharing some modernist
aesthetic concerns (hence we're accused of nihilism by old fogeys).
>contemporary classifications (e.g. back-cover blurbs) for the market
>provide authoritarian/dictatorial "one party readings" of work,
>whereas the modernist/so-called 'difficult' poets were democratic
>(liberal),
Don't equate democracy with liberalism *please*.
-Aidan
Aidan Tynan
George Tolis wrote in message ...
>
>I just got back from Hay-on-Wye, watching DeLillo, Markham and Said.
Nice for some.
>Said, at one point, made an aside about how even in the media, but
>generally in the realm of 'industry', there is a presentation of the
>idea of 'expertise'. This filters down to the audience, as a form of
>accreditation to the language conveyed, to justify the financial
>transaction involved.
Yes, Bourdieu's idea of "cultural capital" etc. If you're interested in
reading a critique of Taste, then definitely read Bourdieu's La Distinction.
>
>I'm currently trying to connect this to the notion of capitalism as a
>non-place,
Marc Auge's "Non-places" might be handy.
>a non-identity in the forced description of the reader.
Capitalism definitely allows for identity, demands it, in fact
(worker/boss), just not the ones we'd always like.
By
>making a 'Joe Public' classification, you disempower the reader, as
>was done in the forced perceptions of black/jews/gays/women/etc. by
>so-called (self-professed) 'masters' in respective fields.
Definitely, but, as recent work in Queer Theory, Post-colonial theory, etc,
there is plenty of room for resistance even within capitalist hegemony.
Capitalism demands high levels of production, and ideology is never enough
to counter the "schizomachy" or the production of radical, oppostional
identities and subversive reader positions. Which is why I'm happy to be a
postmodernist and not a nostalgic modernist.
>
>Any thoughts you have on this would be much appreciated. I'm working
>towards a conclusion that poetry needs to undergo
>unbranding/decommercialisation to allow the entry of anyone, not just
>a market base.
I'm not sure how far you can go with the idea of poetry brands, in the
commercial sense, since poetry is such a marginal industry. But yes, it's
definitely an interesting project to tackle.
-Aidan
>
>GT
Michael Cook
"If I thought you weren't so old to be an atheist, I'd call you an
'angry young man'."
Well, at forty-six years of age I guess you could say a little of both.
Twenty-nine years ago I could hit a baseball from the front of the rear
fountain of the Jefferson Ave Ford Mansion Into the Detroit River, I did it!
Slam over the servant's quarters and into the river, a feat that has never
been matched. Eliot knew the futility of his early efforts; I suspect he
wrote "The Hippopotamus" with a mawkish grin on his face, and read it in 62
with a tear in his eye.
mdc
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> "George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
> >
> > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>
> average means a fairly high level of English Lit. education, or
> a tremendous amount of self-study.
>
> This is far beyond,
> say "average for people who dabble in poetry"
> ..or "average for people who dabble with poetry online"
> ..or "average for white collar workers"
> ..or "average for college grads"
> ..or "average for high school grads"
>
> Even the first 2 categories above finds site after site,
> and poetry group after poetry group (I assume.. haven't sampled
> that many poetry groups, but the one I went to was
> not impressive from a /poetry/ standpoint at all,
> after I had been here.) ..where the people drivel on and
> on at each other, and NEVER read good poetry, and wouldn't
> know if it bit them in their metaphor.
>
> I'm sure there are websites and groups that are more well read,
> but oh well.
There's also a difference among those who've read what they read and
those who haven't.
And some of the better Old Masters were not particularly
well-read, but the want always bit their early work severely; Keats
is the usual example.
And too much reading can wreck... "The Waste Land" is the usual
example.
But Eliot is right ("Tradition and the Individual Talent") in that
nobody can well fit his own universe without knowing [reading] how
it came to be what it is, nor fit his art without the same
criterion's being met.
The individual experience is simply too small.
--
------(m+
~/:o)_|
A poem is no place
for a good loser.
http://scrawlmark.org
Dennis M. Hammes
Thomas is Thomas' Welch-trained ears. Hopkins is a
tool-and-syllable kicker (admits it severally to his buddy Bridges).
Hammes? Hammes wouldn't be Hammes without a lot of "Brit Lit."
And American. And a few others.
Anybody who can count feet and rhyme for the sound alone can be
Dockery.
If they can type fast enough...
>
> I don't think there necessarily has to be Eng. Lit.,
> but it seems to go with it.
I still hafta concur with Eliot on that; the individual experience
is too damned small for the /individual/ to be a universal poet,
since the universe grows /at least/ as fast as the body of lit.
(You got the sciences, other arts, trying to multiply hell out of
that, too, so the poet can /not/ confine himself to "lit" any
longer.)
>
> More seem to flock to the Dockery type stuff, which from
> a more read point of view is crap. So what do you do with that?
> Am I inaccurate?
See that other thread about "haggling over the price."
Federal Reserve Notes and Dockery pomes are as plentiful as paper
(or screen space). Both are putatively infinite.
Now divide /any/ value by infinity...
>
> Dockery seems like he could be a pied piper to huge segments
> of inane post-a-poem sites, and local poetry groups.
Precisely. He /Agrees/ with the wannabe theorem that Art Should Be
Equally Cheap For All.
> But it is all just his energy, and typing ability.
Precisely.
Now note that his customers' ability to pay for it is on a par
with the pometic ability that produced it.
Can you say "John Maynard Keynes"?
> ..ain't poetry in anywhere near the same breath with the
> other authors mentioned.
Well, you don't see him sweat, and you don't see me sweat, and you
don't see Thomas sweat.
That would be called "proof of Equality."
>
> > I.e. a basic education to create the urge
> > to pick up a book of poems/type 'poetry' into a search engine?
>
> There was just a guy thru that says he doesn't have any desire
> to read anything but poetry by equally unread authors,
> in AOL chat rooms.. he was adamant.
> All they do is tell each other how much they love
> each other's clichéd, imageless crap.
Read "babyshit." It's exact.
>
> It was rather funny.
It wasn't.
>
> And there are a lot of him. I think a whole lot.
> ..but he self-identifies as a poet.
Because nobody can Make Him Learn that he isn't.
TrVth. You can only kill 'em if they don't respond to a full set
of lumps.
Can your Lumpet Generator deliver a full set of lumps over a
modem?
There you are then, already.
Brat can refuse to learn the word for "pome" precisely because he
can refuse to learn the word for "full set of lumps."
>
> Statistically, I don't think you can ignore it.
Materially, you can. Materially, you must.
What's statistics but counting marbles?
I got marbles.
He lost his.
I.e., all the marbles are on one side of the spine. That's not
"statistics," that's DE bookkeeping.
>
> I feel that I am far beyond him in much of my understanding
> and reading of poetry, but don't consider myself much of a poet,
> and am hardly considered seriously here at all.
> (which is justifiable from many standpoints, I don't argue.. :-)
You were many moons ago, and could have continued to be.
>
> I ain't really "fred".. more like an "egg".
>
Only because you left out the "i."
As, moons ago, you left out the "I" and tried to replace it with a
'Net program. You can only get away with the library part of doing
that, and not even all of that.
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Paul Heslop <paul....@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:<3EC7B729...@blueyonder.co.uk>...
> > George Tolis wrote:
> > >
> > > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> > >
> > > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> > >
> > > Is it a useful phrase to you?
> > >
> > > Why?
> > >
> > > G "Not sure if I'm asking the right questions" T
> >
> >
> > Well, it should mean Joe Public, the man on the street. But with poetry
> > it would depend who was saying it. If some bloke at Oxford was saying it
> > he would probably be thinking of the middle classes, where if some
> > gritty northern poet said it he would mean gritty northern people.
>
> OK. It's relative. But what about when a posh, hyper-educated poet
> uses the word specifically to refer to people who aren't educated?
> E.g. Virginia Woolf quoting Dr. Johnson (see Bindi's post) using it to
> refer to:
>
> "I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense
> of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the
> refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally
> decided all claim to poetical honours."
Though this is really a wordy translation (with marbles in its
mouth) of the fact that "somebody's gotta pay for it," it's not hard
to spot the origin of Wordsworth's thesis. Nor that Wordsworth
modified it right back out of the "common" with his addendum, "...no
one has... who has not also thought long and deeply."
Not oddly, the greatest poets are the ones who worked "pro bono,"
so to speak, i.e., paying for their own research. Thus, the were
free to make of their art whatever /they/, their worst critics and
best, wanted to make of it, rather than leaving that call to a
publisher and thus to the nickels of the "common."
Rand illustrates the point severally and substantially in both
/Fountainhead/ and /Atlas/.
This is "Art for Art's sake"? Hell, no.
It's art for the /author's/ sake. Which can be nickels, or
anything else he'd rather wish to see as long as he can "get there
from here."
>
> I.e. poets can only be measured against each other by people who are
> 'uncorrupted by literary prejudices'. But that's coming from
> well-educated, literary people and it's ignoring the fact that
> everyone has taste, is subjective. E.g. you might like more poems
> that sound like songs. You might not like poems that don't rhyme,
> except for TS Eliot (or another random poet that no one else likes).
>
> > With books it's easier, it just means everyone, unless it's a weighty
> > tome and the author anounced that 'it may not be suitable for the common
> > reader' in which case we're back to gritty northerners again :O)
>
> You seem to be suggesting that everyone (or a suitably large
> proportion of our society) reads novels, but because poetry is read by
> so few, it's easier to break up into relativity.
There are fewer styles of novel than of poultry for the simple
reason that the sheer investment in typing words to get a number of
them on paper constitutes a material filter.
That, and the fact that popular (and even art) novels contain
/fewer techniques/ more often used (beginning with the number of
words themselves). Thus, the usual novel is easier to figure out
than the usual pome, the outre novel easier to figure out than the
outre pome, etc.
And you've a large "slush pile" that never sees print of any kind
in either case. Because pomes are smaller, faster (that material
filter), and stories must make /sense/ while the modern pomet
appears to find sense anathema, there are far more wannabe poets in
the slush pile than there are would-be novellists.
Why most major houses have halted /any/ accecptance of poultry mss
over three decades ago. The eviction of recognisable toolkit from
modern poultry allows any random crapper to claim to've written a
"pome," and it looks so on the face of it to the modern editor who
evicted that toolkit.
I.e., it's his own dam' fault.
>
> Hmm. OK. This is still a classical way of reading/interpreting - if
> the writer is posh, intellectual and so on, then they won't appeal to
> gritty northerners, no matter what they write. Old habits die hard.
And tastes even harder. /All/ literature is in a sense "regional";
a region of the market no matter its geography.
>
> But how do you make the 'common reader' break these stereotypes?
You can't "make" the 'common reader' to a damned thing. But the
cover designer /can/ entice him to /pick up the book/; publishers
assert it increases the chance of sale by a factor of at least ten.
Origin of the term "monkeyshines." Monkey pick up shiny thingy...
Sometimes enough to make a Serious Pomet (whatever that is) sick,
yes.
> The
> assumption is an issue of fecked media reviewing and marketing
> techniques used by publishing houses.
Precisely. As sickening when you put it that way, too.
> E.g. "if you liked [x] then
> you'll like [y]" so the reader goes out and buys every type of [x]
> they can find and reads nothing else.
Typical congregational reaponse to a priesthood, yes.
And you expected...?
>
> GT
Dennis M. Hammes
>
...
> Michael,
>
> If I thought you weren't so old to be an atheist, I'd call you an
> 'angry young man'.
>
> ==================
> THE EXPERIENCE OF LITERATURE
> T.S. Eliot, "Points of View" (Faber, MCMXLI).
>
> The author of a work of imagination is trying to affect us
> wholly, as human beings, whether he knows it or not; and we are
> affected by it, as human beings, whether we intend to be or not. I
> suppose that everything we eat has some other effect upon us than
> merely the pleasure of taste and mastication; it affects us during the
> process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe that exactly the
> same is true of anything we read.
Hm. He's left out one of the principal modern uses of any
writing/teaching: throwing it on the floor or ignoring it by name
to Prove Our Superiority to it.
And where this use is ignored by those who write or purvey it, it
probably becomes the principal use.
At which point they're stuck (if they want to be paid) with
Agreeing with the slobberer that art/knowledge exists only to be
thrown on the floor or ignored.
Well, it /has already happened/, and it began as a movement not
long after he wrote this.
...
> generalization. Knowledge of life obtained through fiction is only
> possible by another stage of self-consciousness. That is to say, it
> can only be a knowledge of other people's knowledge of life, not of
> life itself. So far as we are taken up with the happenings in any
> novel in the same way in which we are taken up with what happens under
> our eyes, we are acquiring at least as much falsehood as truth. But
...
Not often I disagree with Eliot, but when I do I do so absolutely.
This is not Eliot's (1941) view of literature or life, it's
Bradley's rather earlier (it influenced, even caused, the
"Prufrock," 1917) view of perception.
Literature is a /map/ to "where the Rocks are."
It's presumed the reader has his own Rocks, and, indeed /any/ kind
of literature is meaningless without them. Korzybski (1933) didn't
understand this either; he put that "all words are ultimately
defined by other words," with the result that general semantics took
a flying leap right off the planet, so that Chomsky is back to
drooling about Pije in the Sky. (But he's doing so on Good
Authority.)
If any reader has "touched the Rocks" mentioned by the literature,
he has touched /that/ world, the author's world, /as materially as
he has touched his own/. This is even true in science fiction (the
Rocks may not, and do not have to, assemble the same planets, the
same Bug Eyed Monsters -- and /we're/ BEMs to the inhabitants of,
e.g., Tau Ceti IV however we have the same physics, i.e., Rocks).
Fantasy, by contrast, whether in the novel or in the pome,
falsifies the Rocks.
That would be called "religion."
Thus, Arthur walks up to a prefab sword stuck in a stone, pulls,
and is So Holy That...
Sorry. "Drawing the sword from the stone" refers to smelting and
forging, thank you, a technique brand-new to, and contemporary with,
Arturius of Wales. (Touched those Rocks myself, is how I know
that.) The literature itself says there were at least /three/
"Excaliburs," and two came from "The Lady of the Lake," i.e.,
Vikings with their long blonde hair in braids, coming "up" out of
the "Lake" of the Irish Sea. Carrying Saxon rope steel, the
/saxe/. Arthur's own forging was, well, a little brittle; he busted
it on Lancelot du Lac, so went back to the Viking barrow caches.
Eliot fails here to define his universe. If "the happenings in
any novel" are real Rocks (which, to stick to the symbology, become
on the page "Earth-Colored Bubbles," "Bubbles" being language, Water
+ Air), and the reader has moved them about in his own world, the
author's world is equally real and the reader equally at home in it.
/Provided that both move the Bubbles according to the rules for
the Rocks/, rather than according to the rules avaiable for banging
words together -- that including no rules at all (as we see on these
froups).
If the author's Rocks are real and the reader /hasn't/ touched
them, the novel or pome is a /map to where he can find them/ --
again presuming they both use the Rocks' rules for mapping, not the
altar boy's.
These Rocks are the "ultimate definition" of words, not
Korzybski's "other words." I.e., that "words are ultimately defined
by other words" is true /only of religion, of fantasy/.
And our "sciences" are descending into it for the same reason; two
decades ago, a student of mine /bragged/ that he had got a PhD in
"physics," "/without ever taking a lab course or a course in
chemistry/."
Chaos Theory, indeed.
Dennis M. Hammes
You're both right. But the writer's writing will thus be directed
/entirely/ by what sort of audience he has created (out of Bubbles,
the Idea Of A Reader) /before/ he writes the piece to it.
A clue of sorts...
The publisher may know nothing of this, and in any case will sell
what he's learened to sell (Rocks) to whom he's learned to sell it
(Rockheads).
Hey. The pomet may have wordpiles, but the publisher has a
warehouse full of /paper/ piles.
They're not the same businesses, and frankly they don't deal in
the same coin.
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Julie Carter <jsgo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<6a5gcv0mh69bse5gu...@4ax.com>...
> > On Sun, 18 May 2003 16:37:46 +0100, "George Tolis"
> > <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > >"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
> > Literate but with no history in or with poetry aside from what he or
> > she was forced to read in school. For me, my husband is an excellent
> > example of an average reader. Intelligent and well-read, but not in
> > poetry. He'll get my historical/cultural/theological references, but
> > not cannibalistic poetry references (in general).
>
> OK. A certain lack of literary prejudice, but a knowledge of
> non-literary matters that affect writing.
The division missing from this discourse is "allusion," reference to
literature as opposed to reference to Stuff.
Good, excellent, great pomes, even pomes full of Rocks, can be
writ entirely without allusion.
/Rely/ on allusion, you get "The Waste Land," which deteriorates
immediately after its most Rocklike references to Cruel Lilacs,
which essentially /everybody/ can decipher, having touched those
Rocks themselves: winter, cruelty, lilacs, the warmth of ignorance,
even the warm comfort of suicide as an alternative to grubbing
around for the meaning of It All.
>
> > I would sharply distinguish this from "the average poetry reader" or
> > "a poetry lover" or any similar sorts.
>
> How would you distinguish these?
Hm. "I shall now set about to read poultry," opposed to "I shall
read my wife's poultry because it is my wife's"? Or even oppose
"poultry" to /The National Enquirer/ and NBC.
>
> > >How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
> > >e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> > Hrm. I think I just did, but I'm probably misunderstanding the
> > question, as usual.
>
> Could you separate the qualities of 'average' and 'common'? The
> associations you might have, personally, that define each word in or
> out of context.
>
> > >Is it a useful phrase to you?
> >
> > Could be, I suppose.
> >
> > >Why?
> >
> > I guess it's just an easy way of defining your audience. When I write
> > in forms, I'm writing for an average reader. When I write free verse,
> > I'm not.
Wow. I pretty much /reverse/ those assignments.
>
> The argument of writing for or against an audience is something I've
> asked before. How it shapes the writing and so on. Stuff on
> Eratosphere about this.
>
> However, why do you need to define an audience?
'Cos it defines the writing (see other post). I no more talk to Boy
Scouts the same way I talk to fencing students, or for that matter
to their own Patrol Leaders. Nor to any of them quite the same way
as to poultry students or to a platoon or to an apprentice
lithographer or to a jackass who's waving a switchblade or a God at
me.
As you can be certain that somebody who writes of feelings
ascending purply to Heaven is /not/ writing to /me/.
Tom Bishop
"Dennis M. Hammes" <scraw...@arvig.net> wrote in message news:3ED4BEE6...@arvig.net...
I know it's all a cheap trick. :-)
..just read Andromeda again yesterday. yum.
> Hammes? Hammes wouldn't be Hammes without a lot of "Brit Lit."
> And American. And a few others.
And I commend your efforts to gather
the dripping stars from the numerous
universes you've visited.
> Anybody who can count feet and rhyme for the sound alone can be
> Dockery.
You can almost see the pinballs of his brain hitting
the next rhyme, and the bell rings. Ding..
> If they can type fast enough...
> >
> > I don't think there necessarily has to be Eng. Lit.,
> > but it seems to go with it.
>
> I still hafta concur with Eliot on that; the individual experience
> is too damned small for the /individual/ to be a universal poet,
> since the universe grows /at least/ as fast as the body of lit.
> (You got the sciences, other arts, trying to multiply hell out of
> that, too, so the poet can /not/ confine himself to "lit" any
> longer.)
Now you are talking about universal poetry.
Andrew's poetry, for example, could not lean on very much
English Lit. Some of course, but not much.
It is striving to bring an experience out of a more /primitive/ culture,
into the language of another. Obviously not universal poetry,
but what is? What would be universal to Andrew?
I'm not really arguing, just seems that no one poem can
approach /universal/ except thru its specific, concrete context.
> > ..ain't poetry in anywhere near the same breath with the
> > other authors mentioned.
>
> Well, you don't see him sweat, and you don't see me sweat, and you
> don't see Thomas sweat.
> That would be called "proof of Equality."
Never let um see you sweat.
> >
> > > I.e. a basic education to create the urge
> > > to pick up a book of poems/type 'poetry' into a search engine?
> >
> > There was just a guy thru that says he doesn't have any desire
> > to read anything but poetry by equally unread authors,
> > in AOL chat rooms.. he was adamant.
> > All they do is tell each other how much they love
> > each other's clichéd, imageless crap.
>
> Read "babyshit." It's exact.
> >
> > It was rather funny.
>
> It wasn't.
I have my own triggers.
> >
> > And there are a lot of him. I think a whole lot.
> > ..but he self-identifies as a poet.
>
> Because nobody can Make Him Learn that he isn't.
> TrVth. You can only kill 'em if they don't respond to a full set
> of lumps.
> Can your Lumpet Generator deliver a full set of lumps over a
> modem?
> There you are then, already.
> Brat can refuse to learn the word for "pome" precisely because he
> can refuse to learn the word for "full set of lumps."
> >
> > Statistically, I don't think you can ignore it.
>
> Materially, you can. Materially, you must.
See George's original question.
I am just saying that you can't toss Dockery from
discussions of "average readers".
Average is a statistical term.
> What's statistics but counting marbles?
> I got marbles.
> He lost his.
> I.e., all the marbles are on one side of the spine. That's not
> "statistics," that's DE bookkeeping.
> >
> > I feel that I am far beyond him in much of my understanding
> > and reading of poetry, but don't consider myself much of a poet,
> > and am hardly considered seriously here at all.
> > (which is justifiable from many standpoints, I don't argue.. :-)
>
> You were many moons ago, and could have continued to be.
Well thanks, I guess my moon when out.
> >
> > I ain't really "fred".. more like an "egg".
> >
> Only because you left out the "i."
> As, moons ago, you left out the "I" and tried to replace it with a
> 'Net program. You can only get away with the library part of doing
> that, and not even all of that.
??..
All I did was write something to make various lookups easy to do.
I was doing the lookups anyway, and <doh> noted that a small bit
of programming, and I could turn the entire edit space of the poem
into a lookup box of any number of sources.
Others have had other words, but I did, and still do call it
a "no-brainer".. A term used in software development for something
that is rock obvious.
You use, and distributed at one time, such tools,
namely RimeTyme. (I even approached you about incorporating it).
Whatever.. Rhymezone.com probably isn't as good as RimeTyme,
and Dictionary.Com isn't as good as OED (which is online, for a
very stiff subscription, BTW)
But it's better than nothing, and my current tool is configurable,
so that you can choose your own dictionary. (They are all online)
Look around Dennis.
Most people use no spellchecker ON THEIR POEMS.
..they have no interest in language.
I show a tremendous interest,
and you figure to step on me like a bug.
:-)
I'll try to smoosh nicely for you..
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
"Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life."
- Marquis de Sade
George Tolis
<snip>
> > "I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense
> > of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the
> > refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally
> > decided all claim to poetical honours."
>
> Though this is really a wordy translation (with marbles in its
> mouth) of the fact that "somebody's gotta pay for it," it's not hard
> to spot the origin of Wordsworth's thesis. Nor that Wordsworth
> modified it right back out of the "common" with his addendum, "...no
> one has... who has not also thought long and deeply."
> Not oddly, the greatest poets are the ones who worked "pro bono,"
> so to speak, i.e., paying for their own research. Thus, the were
> free to make of their art whatever /they/, their worst critics and
> best, wanted to make of it, rather than leaving that call to a
> publisher and thus to the nickels of the "common."
> Rand illustrates the point severally and substantially in both
> /Fountainhead/ and /Atlas/.
> This is "Art for Art's sake"? Hell, no.
> It's art for the /author's/ sake. Which can be nickels, or
> anything else he'd rather wish to see as long as he can "get there
> from here."
<snip>
> > You seem to be suggesting that everyone (or a suitably large
> > proportion of our society) reads novels, but because poetry is read by
> > so few, it's easier to break up into relativity.
>
> There are fewer styles of novel than of poultry for the simple
> reason that the sheer investment in typing words to get a number of
> them on paper constitutes a material filter.
> That, and the fact that popular (and even art) novels contain
> /fewer techniques/ more often used (beginning with the number of
> words themselves). Thus, the usual novel is easier to figure out
> than the usual pome, the outre novel easier to figure out than the
> outre pome, etc.
> And you've a large "slush pile" that never sees print of any kind
> in either case. Because pomes are smaller, faster (that material
> filter), and stories must make /sense/ while the modern pomet
> appears to find sense anathema, there are far more wannabe poets in
> the slush pile than there are would-be novellists.
> Why most major houses have halted /any/ accecptance of poultry mss
> over three decades ago. The eviction of recognisable toolkit from
> modern poultry allows any random crapper to claim to've written a
> "pome," and it looks so on the face of it to the modern editor who
> evicted that toolkit.
> I.e., it's his own dam' fault.
OK, so on the one hand you're saying that the authors are out for themselves
and will make of their art what they want to, but on the other you're saying
technique has fizzled out, hence "I call it a poem!" syndrome has
overwhelmed publishers with Stuff, rather than Rocks (to use your metaphor
elsewhere).
But Eliot, Pound, Woolf provided the tools by which they wanted their work
deconstructed. They attempted to build the staircase for the readers
(common?) to reach the poem. But you're saying the tools were 'evicted' -
why were they evicted.
And who is providing the 'tools' these days, if not the publishers? Is it
easier to say "make what you want of my poetry" or to let your publisher
make what /they/ want of your poetry and sell 10 times as many copies in the
process?
My take on it is that /that/ modernist bunch were misogynistic,
anti-semitic, racist and/or facist to varying degrees - i.e. politically
exclusive, therefore unavoidably questioned in their literary-critical
views. Fair enough.
But now we've intellectuals, (like yourself?), who will e.g (mostly)
instinctively write sentences without referring to "he" as the predominant
subject ("they") and generally write inclusively, with an awareness of the
'other', imperialist history, Holocaust, etc. that allows the questioning of
hegemony.
May be there are people around (I'm still looking) who offer inclusively
interpretable work, alongside the tools that anyone can use to read the
work. And they do so without the prejudices of previous generations, or
some contemporary generations, as a result of knowing not only of the
'other' but also that they themselves are an 'other'. It's been suggested
to me that Perloff, or perhaps the language poets have done so, but that's
what I'm looking for.
> > Hmm. OK. This is still a classical way of reading/interpreting - if
> > the writer is posh, intellectual and so on, then they won't appeal to
> > gritty northerners, no matter what they write. Old habits die hard.
>
> And tastes even harder. /All/ literature is in a sense "regional";
> a region of the market no matter its geography.
Yes, but reading just one literature leads to the "inundation, of invasion
of the undeveloped personality, the empty (swept and garnished) room, by the
stronger personality of the poet." Hence the need to read more than one
author, to prevent personality dominance in the reader.
But Eliot wrote that from a Western, imperialist standpoint, despite some
vague notion of rebellion in his writing. Now, if someone else suggests the
need to read multiply (e.g. Said), they mean you need to compare cultures,
you need to compare histories, you need to play off the 'others' to be able
to further "cease to be dominated by any one, or by any small number" of
poets (again, same essay).
> > But how do you make the 'common reader' break these stereotypes?
>
> You can't "make" the 'common reader' to a damned thing. But the
> cover designer /can/ entice him to /pick up the book/; publishers
> assert it increases the chance of sale by a factor of at least ten.
> Origin of the term "monkeyshines." Monkey pick up shiny thingy...
> Sometimes enough to make a Serious Pomet (whatever that is) sick,
> yes.
Monkeyshining. Great word.
But Serious Poets need to eat as well, if they're going to blow chunks. So
how to put money in thy purse? Ultimately, doing what you love doing /and/
getting paid is a contradiction if you hate the industry that pushes you
onto the public, because it bastardises your love of poetry, commodifies it
and says, ok, great, slap on the back for the serious poet who actually
SELLS, goddamn.
Second repetoires, anyone?
GT
Julie Carter
Tolis) wrote:
>Julie Carter <jsgo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<6a5gcv0mh69bse5gu...@4ax.com>...
>> On Sun, 18 May 2003 16:37:46 +0100, "George Tolis"
>> <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
>> >"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
>>
>> Literate but with no history in or with poetry aside from what he or
>> she was forced to read in school. For me, my husband is an excellent
>> example of an average reader. Intelligent and well-read, but not in
>> poetry. He'll get my historical/cultural/theological references, but
>> not cannibalistic poetry references (in general).
>
>OK. A certain lack of literary prejudice, but a knowledge of
>non-literary matters that affect writing.
Not just a lack of literary prejudice, but a lack of specifically
poetry history. Sure, he's read Dickens, but he hasn't read Eliot,
nor would I be able to convince him to.
>> I would sharply distinguish this from "the average poetry reader" or
>> "a poetry lover" or any similar sorts.
>
>How would you distinguish these?
By the insertion of the word "poetry." The average reader versus the
average poetry reader.
>> >How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar terms,
>> >e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
>>
>> Hrm. I think I just did, but I'm probably misunderstanding the
>> question, as usual.
>
>Could you separate the qualities of 'average' and 'common'?
I wouldn't, really. I think of them as fairly interchangeable in this
context.
By the way, I think of myself as an average reader, as well. I'm
slightly more familiar with poetry than my husband, but not enough to
make me into a poetry literate.
>The associations you might have, personally, that define each word in or
>out of context.
For me, the important word, in this context, is "reader." "The
average reader" isn't an average person, just average among readers.
One of the qualities of average readers (and why I consider myself
very much one) is that we read widely but shallowly. People who will
read "almost anything, including cereal boxes."
>> >Is it a useful phrase to you?
>>
>> Could be, I suppose.
>>
>> >Why?
>>
>> I guess it's just an easy way of defining your audience. When I write
>> in forms, I'm writing for an average reader. When I write free verse,
>> I'm not.
>
>The argument of writing for or against an audience is something I've
>asked before. How it shapes the writing and so on. Stuff on
>Eratosphere about this.
I don't set out to write for an audience; I just find the end result
to have an audience. I think you and I have talked about this before.
For me, forms can enable a relaxation of diction/imagery/etc.
precisely because they have a framework that shouts out "I am a poem!"
The form does the work of defining the words as poetry.
It's amazing what rhyme a meter will do.
So, what happens is that the signals in formal poetry are all there
for the non-poetry reader. "Hey, this is rhymed. It must be a poem."
(I think people hear and feel meter, but don't necessarily know that
they are noticing it.) Once you get past that barrier in the person's
mind, your way is clearer. And if you write in a reasonably
straightforward manner, one that is at least intelligible, that poem
will be accessible to that reader.
And that reader is always my goal, because writing for poets is too
much like masturbating.
In free verse, on the other hand, I have to work harder to make the
"feel" right, which means I'm often playing around with the very
structures that keep the language accessible. Ta da. Suddenly the
only people who are willing to tag along are those goddamned
voyeuristic poets!
>However, why do you need to define an audience?
Don't need to, but I find it fascinating to investigate who gets what
and why.
--
Julie Carter
Michael Cook
"Michael Cook" <coo...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:vnXxa.3345$sh5.2...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
>
> news:6a5gcv0mh69bse5gu...@4ax.com...
> > On Sun, 18 May 2003 16:37:46 +0100, "George Tolis"
> > <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to?
> (E.g.
> > >"This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
> > Literate but with no history in or with poetry aside from what he or
> > she was forced to read in school. For me, my husband is an excellent
> > example of an average reader. Intelligent and well-read, but not in
> > poetry. He'll get my historical/cultural/theological references, but
> > not cannibalistic poetry references (in general).
> >
> > "a poetry lover" or any similar sorts.
> >
terms,
> > >e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> > Hrm. I think I just did, but I'm probably misunderstanding the
> > question, as usual.
> >
> >
> > Could be, I suppose.
> >
> > >Why?
> >
> > I guess it's just an easy way of defining your audience. When I write
> > in forms, I'm writing for an average reader. When I write free verse,
> > I'm not.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Julie Carter
>
> Speaking of "linear movement of thought."
> Once again I find myself correcting a post.
> "Horizontal people in a vertical would never bother to get up."
> Horizontal people in a vertical world would never bother to get up.
> Or more accurately:
> Horizontal people in a vertical world would not bother to get up.
>
> "First, there is no need to define realization is definition enough"
> First there is no need to define, realization is definition enough.
>
> In defense of Mr. Carter and to clarify myself
> I would add:
> There are no common readers only common people.
> There are no common lovers of art only common lovers
> To write to an audience is to write nothing, nothing!
> for you have written to no one. I suspect Mr. Carter has
> read much more in Mrs. Carter's poetry then anyone could
> possibly fathom. That statement is based on my limited understanding
> of what the common people call love.
> mdc
>
>
I just reread that post, I in no meant to infer that Ms or Mr. Carter were
"common"
on the contrary.
Tom Bishop
"Michael Cook" <coo...@ameritech.net> wrote in message news:TegBa.4588$4G.21...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
This is precious..
Mike, you're so sweet.
> >
> >
>
> I just reread that post, I in no meant to infer that Ms or Mr. Carter were
> "common"
>
> on the contrary.
Now reread this one. You missed your "way"..
:-)
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Michael Cook
mdc
Tom Bishop
"Michael Cook" <coo...@ameritech.net> wrote in message news:uVgBa.4595$4G.21...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
Now reread this one..
:-)
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Michael Cook
No, no because I dont (don't) really give a shit.
Are you following me around again? Lonely?
Or are you just looking for perfection,
If so you have sallied up to the wrong bar
as I am one seriously flawed son of a bitch
and have no compunction about expressing those flaws
in as lucid and loud a manner as I am capable
mdc
Tom Bishop
"Michael Cook" <coo...@ameritech.net> wrote in message news:H1iBa.4597$4G.21...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
"The little red pill"..
>
> Are you following me around again? Lonely?
>
> Or are you just looking for perfection,
>
> If so you have sallied up to the wrong bar
>
> as I am one seriously flawed son of a bitch
>
> and have no compunction about expressing those flaws
>
> in as lucid and loud a manner as I am capable
Mike I love you like the Piranha Salad I left
in Needles when I was young and easy on
the cactus couch.
I don't know why you sperm my afflictions?
I expect your claws.
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
"Drink more de-cafe!"
- an anonymous friend
>
> mdc
>
>
Michael Cook
>
> "Michael Cook" <coo...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:H1iBa.4597$4G.21...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
> >
> > "Tom Bishop" <tom-r...@truly.nu> wrote in message
> > news:bb46qt$5hrr9$1...@ID-138561.news.dfncis.de...
> >
> > No, no because I dont (don't) really give a shit.
>
> "The little red pill"..
>
> >
> > Are you following me around again? Lonely?
> > Or are you just looking for perfection,
> > If so you have sallied up to the wrong bar
> > as I am one seriously flawed son of a bitch
> > and have no compunction about expressing those flaws
> > in as lucid and loud a manner as I am capable
> Mike I love you like the Piranha Salad I left
> in Needles when I was young and easy on
> the cactus couch.
>
> I don't know why you sperm my afflictions?
> I expect your claws.
>
>
I'm so glad I was here for you, that my presence alone could elevate you
above the mundane, the ever so "common". It is moments like this for which
I live, indeed tis the inspiration from which I draw the energy to take in
yet one more breath, and now to exhale.
mdc
Zinc
> "Zinc" <zin...@honospamtmail.com> wrote in message
news:<2iXxa.4048$rO.4...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
> > "George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
> > >
> > > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to?
(E.g.
> > > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> >
> > In /these/ parts it's not meant for someone familiar with the mechanics
of
> > poetry beyond end-rhyming or sentimental, political, or religious
themes. In
> > other words: Charles Osgood's audience. Or people who read Tom Clancy or
> > Stephen King novels then wait for the movie to come out so they can
enjoy
> > complaining about it. They probably read more than one section of the
> > newspaper each day.
>
> I hate Tom Clancy's books and like some of Stephen King's. I don't
> like the films of either. Does that make me uncommon?
Of course. I thought everyone loved Clancy's books - except for me.
> I read only one section of one newspaper every week. So I'm not
> common?
I said "in these parts" partner. For all I know, you only /have/ one section
in your papers ;)
> > > How would you define a common reader (without resorting to similar
terms,
> > > e.g. "Joe Public", "Billy No Mates")
> >
> > A short phrase? One who reads novels usually no older than a decade with
> > nominal non-fiction reading.
>
> What about poetry? One book a year? One anthology?
No poetry for the 'common' reader. For the common reader of poetry maybe one
anthology. Just a guess.
> > > Is it a useful phrase to you?
> >
> > Not right at this moment.
> >
> > >
> > > Why?
> >
> > Why are you asking? (I smell a project - probably agreed to in haste)
>
> Yep, project, hastily taken up, rather than agreed to, when someone
> told me I'm not writing for the 'common reader'. I'm investigating
> the idea of what a common reader is (i.e. rubbishing it) and then
> developing the idea that "difficult poetry is truly democratic"
> (Geoffrey Hill) in relation to modernist critical theory/opinion,
> alongside Perloff's arguments of the 'interrupted' movement of
> modernism.
Oh, an optimist! There are probably enough people pursuing their heart's
desires nowadays to keep even "difficult" poetry alive through the next
century (see? I'm an optimist, too). Difficult poetry takes time to ponder
and we, in general, are finding more free time to dig a little deeper. But I
only think in terms of generations. No one can predict the next generation's
capacity for stupidity.
> I'm arguing that the terms 'mainstream' and 'non-mainstream' are false
> classifications (as are all genres/movements, to some extent, when not
> historical) that undermines the ability for many to read poetry;
> contemporary classifications (e.g. back-cover blurbs) for the market
> provide authoritarian/dictatorial "one party readings" of work,
> whereas the modernist/so-called 'difficult' poets were democratic
> (liberal), attempting to empower the reader into critical awareness,
> to their own desired level.
I agree that - for now - mainstream doesn't apply to an 'common' reader of
poetry. There is too much freedom to pursue what we desire today. Although
if one were to poll the majority of poetry readers there would undoubtedly
be a preference for certain styles, or a level of difficulty, and in that
respect 'common' could be an applicable term for the biggest slice on the
pie chart.
>
> GT
>
Julie Carter
<coo...@ameritech.net> wrote:
>In defense of Mr. Carter and to clarify myself
>I would add:
>There are no common readers only common people.
>There are no common lovers of art only common lovers
>To write to an audience is to write nothing, nothing!
>for you have written to no one. I suspect Mr. Carter has
>read much more in Mrs. Carter's poetry then anyone could
>possibly fathom. That statement is based on my limited understanding
>of what the common people call love.
Well, Mr. Carter would, generally speaking, rather have his eyes poked
out than read my poetry. He thinks me a talentless hack, which is,
I'll warrant, pretty justifiable.
So, while he is the reader I'd like to impress, I don't think I've a
snowball's chance.
--
Julie Carter
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> "Dennis M. Hammes" <scraw...@arvig.net> wrote in message news:3ED4BEE6...@arvig.net...
> > Tom Bishop wrote:
> > >
> > > "George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:d66c9352.03052...@posting.google.com...
> > > > "Tom Bishop" <tom-r...@truly.nu> wrote in message news:<ba8c9n$po21t$1...@ID-138561.news.dfncis.de>...
> > > > > "George Tolis" <catal...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:ba897j$q0ilj$1...@ID-137423.news.dfncis.de...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What do you understand "the common [or average] reader" to refer to? (E.g.
> > > > > > "This poem is aimed at the common reader")
> > > > >
> > > > > I would say that at least to the dozen or so regular posters here,
> > > > > average means a fairly high level of English Lit. education, or
> > > > > a tremendous amount of self-study.
> > > > >
> > > > > This is far beyond,
> > > > > say "average for people who dabble in poetry"
> > > > > ..or "average for people who dabble with poetry online"
> > > > > ..or "average for white collar workers"
> > > > > ..or "average for college grads"
> > > > > ..or "average for high school grads"
> > > > But is there a par of 'averageness' - e.g. a 'level of English lit.' -
> > > > required to read poetry?
> > >
> > > What poetry? Thomas, Hopkins, Houstman, Hammes, Tolis?
> > > ..Dockery??
> >
> > Thomas is Thomas' Welch-trained ears. Hopkins is a
> > tool-and-syllable kicker (admits it severally to his buddy Bridges).
>
> I know it's all a cheap trick. :-)
> ..just read Andromeda again yesterday. yum.
>
> > Hammes? Hammes wouldn't be Hammes without a lot of "Brit Lit."
> > And American. And a few others.
> > > I don't think there necessarily has to be Eng. Lit.,
> > > but it seems to go with it.
> >
> > I still hafta concur with Eliot on that; the individual experience
> > is too damned small for the /individual/ to be a universal poet,
> > since the universe grows /at least/ as fast as the body of lit.
> > (You got the sciences, other arts, trying to multiply hell out of
> > that, too, so the poet can /not/ confine himself to "lit" any
> > longer.)
>
> Now you are talking about universal poetry.
Events are universal. Poetry and language can only try to be.
Events are exactly reproducible. Poetry and language can only try
to be. The better read a */poet and his reader/* are, the better
their chances of approaching the condition. Telepathy must be both
sent and received, or there is not telepathy.
My pomes point first to the objects and their events. /My/
objects and events. My Rocks. Pometry is not Walking On The Water;
it's Knowing Where The Rocks Are. (Peter Walked On The Water.
Pointing to /somebody else's Rocks/. The Rockhead /sank/. You
expected maybe...?)
If some pome that /I/ can reasonably expect to be well-read (in
/my/ loose estimates, of cuss, chief of which is other reference to
it) /also/ remarks the same(ish) objects and events, the same Rocks
/that I am already walking on/, I may hook it in.
This automatically expands the universe of /my/ objects and
events.
But if I said, "Well, He Said," I'd be obviating /my own/
authority, i.e., my own pome. I.e., I'd f.kin' /sink/.
So I kick the reference around a bit. I pun, skew, reverse,
expand, contract, hyperbolise, or kick it out of the discourse --
which I can only do from the foundation of /my/ objects and events.
Done so, the reference /confirms/ my own authority.
And I get my Rocks off doing it.
And the reader's attention is so on the pun, etc., that he seldom
notices the expansion or confirmation until he wakes up in it some
time later.
...
(parenthesis)
> I am just saying that you can't toss Dockery from
> discussions of "average readers".
>
> Average is a statistical term.
Betcha. I didn't toss Dockery from any estimate of "average."
Seeing the handwriting on the latrine wall long ago, I tossed the
statistical "average" the hell out of my readership and other
academies.
The readers poets wrote to a century ago are evident in their
pomes. I write to them. I discuss things with them. Hell -- I was
/one of them/, albeit some time later.
The reader a century ago seemed often enough to want civilisation,
to want demonstration and confirmation of values sought.
If the reader today wants suck, well, it's a free country.
But this is still a chancel because /I/ say so.
The Happy Meal is down the street.
(end parenthesis)
...
> > Only because you left out the "i."
> > As, moons ago, you left out the "I" and tried to replace it with a
> > 'Net program. You can only get away with the library part of doing
> > that, and not even all of that.
>
> ??..
>
> All I did was write something to make various lookups easy to do.
>
> I was doing the lookups anyway, and <doh> noted that a small bit
> of programming, and I could turn the entire edit space of the poem
> into a lookup box of any number of sources.
...
> Most people use no spellchecker ON THEIR POEMS.
> ..they have no interest in language.
>
> I show a tremendous interest,
> and you figure to step on me like a bug.
>
> :-)
Actually, I got a couple sprains trying to /avoid/ stepping on you;
you've got some good ankle-nip twists. Proving that you /can/
observe and replicate when you care to.
But note how, /in your own words/, you threw /my/ lesson on the
floor.
By having the "machine" (the whole InterNet is a machine as well
as an organism that may yet wake up, any God can do it) do the
lookups, /the associations with the universe of the extant
literature/, you (well, the wannabe pomet) deprive the wannabe pomet
of some utterly-crucial training in seeing /and arranging/ the
universe as an object of pometry.
But esp. of seeing that seeing and arranging as an even more
important object of pometry.
I.e., of /his/ pometry. Your description of your tools replaced
/his/ pometry (always difficult) with /other people's pometry/
(always easy to quote IF YOU FOUND IT FOR HIM).
And in short, you assert to deprive him of pentecost, the deprival
to be a legitimate tool of the act of writing, the condition of
/poein/.
Well -- what the hell else is there to write about? (A pentecost
is the whole of a haiku, e.g.; call it a "haiku moment" if you
gotta.)
And the filthy fact is that your own pometry exhibited this
undigested gaggle (the New Word should prolly be "google") of other
people's voices and observations more often than not. (As does
Dockery's; the only difference is that your source was usually
recognisable, where such a goddam /mob/ have already requoted his so
often and widely that about all you hear is "bar, bar, bar, ding."
Simple mechanics says the Shakespearian Monkeys made exactly the
same sound line after line.)
And yes, it's a matter of degrees, "roughly zones," overlaps -- in
the use of your lookups, I mean. I use Google routinely ("never let
um see ya sweat," yeah) -- but frankly, not often. I use /my/
objects, events, /and references/. Mulled long with my feet up by
the stove or underneath the bough or grubbing through the
supermarket: associations are what /your data/ can make of them,
not somebody else's, not a lookup table, not a machine.
And goddammit, deedle dumpling, /I wrote my own prosody manual,
and I wrote my own rhyming dictionary/ so there is no way in hell
you can toss them in /my/ face as substantiating your theorem about
using /somebody else's prosody, somebody else's rhyming dictionary/
at a dead minimum.
However I did indeedy /start with/ somebody else's prosody. Ages
ago.
The rhyming dictionary /began/ out of my own ears in the margins
of my own drafts.
And I use spellcheck so goddam seldom in /any/ form that /you/
caught me out on the spelling of "villanelle" after 32 years of
"vilanelle."
That mythical "average reader"? Did you bother to check /how
many/ of those "variant spellings of 'villanelle'" were /my own/ or
quoted me directly?
But the /real bitch/ about a machine lookup is that it will give the
"average reader" or even "average pomet" /every goddam lookup I
rejected/ -- and it will print out every one of 'em as an authority
/greater than his own/.
When I looked the same crap up on paper, mine enemies /had to/
come at me one at a time -- just like a kung-fu movie, in which the
"backup" stand around watching each other get kilt off by the
superhero one at a time.
Tom Bishop
"Dennis M. Hammes" <scraw...@arvig.net.spumf> wrote in message news:3ED86AD5...@arvig.net.spumf...
Seems like any one poem is nailed to something much more limited.
> Events are exactly reproducible. Poetry and language can only try
> to be. The better read a */poet and his reader/* are, the better
> their chances of approaching the condition. Telepathy must be both
> sent and received, or there is not telepathy.
Yes.. why I read poetry most every day,
plus a lot of you and this group.
> My pomes point first to the objects and their events. /My/
> objects and events. My Rocks. Pometry is not Walking On The Water;
> it's Knowing Where The Rocks Are. (Peter Walked On The Water.
> Pointing to /somebody else's Rocks/. The Rockhead /sank/. You
> expected maybe...?)
> If some pome that /I/ can reasonably expect to be well-read (in
> /my/ loose estimates, of cuss, chief of which is other reference to
> it) /also/ remarks the same(ish) objects and events, the same Rocks
> /that I am already walking on/, I may hook it in.
> This automatically expands the universe of /my/ objects and
> events.
> But if I said, "Well, He Said," I'd be obviating /my own/
> authority, i.e., my own pome. I.e., I'd f.kin' /sink/.
> So I kick the reference around a bit. I pun, skew, reverse,
> expand, contract, hyperbolise, or kick it out of the discourse --
> which I can only do from the foundation of /my/ objects and events.
> Done so, the reference /confirms/ my own authority.
> And I get my Rocks off doing it.
And have some great lines!
> And the reader's attention is so on the pun, etc., that he seldom
> notices the expansion or confirmation until he wakes up in it some
> time later.
> ...
>
> (parenthesis)
> > I am just saying that you can't toss Dockery from
> > discussions of "average readers".
> >
> > Average is a statistical term.
>
> Betcha. I didn't toss Dockery from any estimate of "average."
> Seeing the handwriting on the latrine wall long ago, I tossed the
> statistical "average" the hell out of my readership and other
> academies.
And your blood groove gets use.
> The readers poets wrote to a century ago are evident in their
> pomes. I write to them. I discuss things with them. Hell -- I was
> /one of them/, albeit some time later.
> The reader a century ago seemed often enough to want civilisation,
> to want demonstration and confirmation of values sought.
> If the reader today wants suck, well, it's a free country.
> But this is still a chancel because /I/ say so.
> The Happy Meal is down the street.
> (end parenthesis)
There is limited variety.
I bet I would never be able to persuade McDonald's
that a sauce made out of Vindaloo Curry Paste and mayonnaise
would be just the thing.
>
> ...
> > > Only because you left out the "i."
> > > As, moons ago, you left out the "I" and tried to replace it with a
> > > 'Net program. You can only get away with the library part of doing
> > > that, and not even all of that.
> >
> > ??..
> >
> > All I did was write something to make various lookups easy to do.
> >
> > I was doing the lookups anyway, and <doh> noted that a small bit
> > of programming, and I could turn the entire edit space of the poem
> > into a lookup box of any number of sources.
> ...
> > Most people use no spellchecker ON THEIR POEMS.
> > ..they have no interest in language.
> >
> > I show a tremendous interest,
> > and you figure to step on me like a bug.
> >
> > :-)
>
> Actually, I got a couple sprains trying to /avoid/ stepping on you;
> you've got some good ankle-nip twists. Proving that you /can/
> observe and replicate when you care to.
> But note how, /in your own words/, you threw /my/ lesson on the
> floor.
The lookups are minimally essential.
There simply is no /lesson/ of yours that countermands it,
short of you living in my underwear.
> By having the "machine" (the whole InterNet is a machine as well
> as an organism that may yet wake up, any God can do it) do the
> lookups, /the associations with the universe of the extant
> literature/, you (well, the wannabe pomet) deprive the wannabe pomet
> of some utterly-crucial training in seeing /and arranging/ the
> universe as an object of pometry.
Righty roony..
I doubt I gots that much tribble /arranging/ as I haft
in finding the right words (even from words that I know),
and expanding the words I know.
Learning all the time, and my tools assist that process, of cuss.
> But esp. of seeing that seeing and arranging as an even more
> important object of pometry.
> I.e., of /his/ pometry. Your description of your tools replaced
> /his/ pometry (always difficult) with /other people's pometry/
> (always easy to quote IF YOU FOUND IT FOR HIM).
> And in short, you assert to deprive him of pentecost, the deprival
> to be a legitimate tool of the act of writing, the condition of
> /poein/.
> Well -- what the hell else is there to write about? (A pentecost
> is the whole of a haiku, e.g.; call it a "haiku moment" if you
> gotta.)
>
> And the filthy fact is that your own pometry exhibited this
> undigested gaggle (the New Word should prolly be "google") of other
> people's voices and observations more often than not. (As does
> Dockery's; the only difference is that your source was usually
> recognisable, where such a goddam /mob/ have already requoted his so
> often and widely that about all you hear is "bar, bar, bar, ding."
> Simple mechanics says the Shakespearian Monkeys made exactly the
> same sound line after line.)
My enjoyment of poetry is quite distinct from my
ability or interest to create it.
The poetry that I enjoy, I have well satisfied myself that I will never
create, and even if I could, I am not willing to spend the time to do so.
I have not noted where anyone really gets better. Your poetry hasn't, IMO.
(I am curious if you think you have gotten better in 30 years?)
My poetry sucks..
I followed the advice, I read some, and now I am convinced.
Didn't take that long did it?
My poetry sucks. (but it sucks less than much I read, but of course
I like my own babyshit more than some other baby's)
I still write it for the BDSM community, and various Mistresses
that I have served, and submissives I have had.
And seem to be the only (or one of the few, since I have never met another)
pomet who write sonnets. Or at least I don't see them.
I joined a kinky poet group, and their stuff was laughable,
goo goo gaa gaa.
> And yes, it's a matter of degrees, "roughly zones," overlaps -- in
> the use of your lookups, I mean. I use Google routinely ("never let
> um see ya sweat," yeah) -- but frankly, not often. I use /my/
> objects, events, /and references/.
Good for you.. I spent my life looking at 'C' code.
There are young people in need of /everything/.
My tools are all applicable as hell. "no-brainer"
Whenever I am typing /words/ why would I not want
to look up some of them?? (Since I know I do, it is rhetorical)
The fact is, I don't do it enough.
..and am lazy with spellcheck also.
> Mulled long with my feet up by
> the stove or underneath the bough or grubbing through the
> supermarket: associations are what /your data/ can make of them,
> not somebody else's, not a lookup table, not a machine.
Life happens.. But when you write a poem it is done with
language. Tools that facilitate language related searches cannot be
painted as bad. You look silly trying when you use, create and
distribute such tools yourself.
>
> And goddammit, deedle dumpling, /I wrote my own prosody manual,
> and I wrote my own rhyming dictionary/ so there is no way in hell
> you can toss them in /my/ face as substantiating your theorem about
> using /somebody else's prosody, somebody else's rhyming dictionary/
> at a dead minimum.
I will stop sourcing your prosody manual if you wish.
Since I'm the only one that does,
there goes your marketing program.
:-)
>
> However I did indeedy /start with/ somebody else's prosody. Ages
> ago.
> The rhyming dictionary /began/ out of my own ears in the margins
> of my own drafts.
> And I use spellcheck so goddam seldom in /any/ form that /you/
> caught me out on the spelling of "villanelle" after 32 years of
> "vilanelle."
> That mythical "average reader"? Did you bother to check /how
> many/ of those "variant spellings of 'villanelle'" were /my own/ or
> quoted me directly?
Apparently not enough to sway the dictionary pollsters,
imperfect as they are.
Hey, fred gets to spell it any way he wants to. :-)
>
> But the /real bitch/ about a machine lookup is that it will give the
> "average reader" or even "average pomet" /every goddam lookup I
> rejected/ -- and it will print out every one of 'em as an authority
> /greater than his own/.
Well you could work with me, so that /yours/ is the authority.
(at least for rhyme, at least theoretically)
Rhymezone really does suck.. but numerous times I have
found rhymes that fit /really/ well, even after staring at the Rhymezone
screen for multiple minutes. Not a word that I didn't know.. Just a word
that rhymed, that I needed (since as you say, it is all forced)
Perhaps you would say that some such rhyme didn't fit well,
whatever. You might very well have a better this or that rhyme list.
My tool makes Rhymezone easy. Just tap a key.
I could (possibly) do the same for RimeTyme.
(harder, but value added to what you have now, AFAIC)
> When I looked the same crap up on paper, mine enemies /had to/
> come at me one at a time -- just like a kung-fu movie, in which the
> "backup" stand around watching each other get kilt off by the
> superhero one at a time.
Then Indiana Jones plugs 'um with a little technology.
Hey, I'm your biggest fan. :-)
..plus I know you can beat me up.
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
Andrew W. Mathis
George Tolis
> George Tolis wrote:
> >
> ...
> > Michael,
> >
> > If I thought you weren't so old to be an atheist, I'd call you an
> > 'angry young man'.
> >
> > ==================
> > THE EXPERIENCE OF LITERATURE
> > T.S. Eliot, "Points of View" (Faber, MCMXLI).
> >
> > The author of a work of imagination is trying to affect us
> > wholly, as human beings, whether he knows it or not; and we are
> > affected by it, as human beings, whether we intend to be or not. I
> > suppose that everything we eat has some other effect upon us than
> > merely the pleasure of taste and mastication; it affects us during the
> > process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe that exactly the
> > same is true of anything we read.
>
> Hm. He's left out one of the principal modern uses of any
> writing/teaching: throwing it on the floor or ignoring it by name
> to Prove Our Superiority to it.
"The critic, one would suppose, if he is to justify his existence, should
endeavour to discipline his personal prejudices and cranks... we find that
quite the contrary prevails, we begin to suspect that the critic owes his
livelihood to the violence and extremity of his opposition to other
critics... We are tempted to expel the lot." -- TSEliot, /The Function of
Criticism/.
c}:-|)
> And where this use is ignored by those who write or purvey it, it
> probably becomes the principal use.
> At which point they're stuck (if they want to be paid) with
> Agreeing with the slobberer that art/knowledge exists only to be
> thrown on the floor or ignored.
> Well, it /has already happened/, and it began as a movement not
> long after he wrote this.
>
> ...
> > generalization. Knowledge of life obtained through fiction is only
> > possible by another stage of self-consciousness. That is to say, it
> > can only be a knowledge of other people's knowledge of life, not of
> > life itself. So far as we are taken up with the happenings in any
> > novel in the same way in which we are taken up with what happens under
> > our eyes, we are acquiring at least as much falsehood as truth. But
> ...
As for the rest below, on early/late opinions by the modernists, that's a
tricky issue I'm not going to play with. Their views may have changed over
time, but the key statements remain the same, with the same
truths/falsehoods, when applied. Contradictions within the same text are
more interesting to me, e.g. screaming 'tools for criticism are different in
everyone' in the same breath as invoking a 'common reader'.
A critic's perspective on poetry readers is primarily concerned with the
critical faculties of the readers, whereas the industry is obviously
concerned with the social status of the readership/marketbase, a fact that
has started to influence modern critics as well (as review publications are
obviously marketed as well...)
GT