10-25-2013, 01:03 PM
Abu, yes, I'm pretty familiar with the line of thought you present. The meaning of any text, after all, must be thought of as a tension between what the writer brings to it, as much as the reader. To try and collapse this tension in one direction or another destroys even the possibility of miscommunication or misunderstanding. The popular postmodern dictum, "all reading is misreading," is a patent self-contradiction.
With your closing remark, the process of influence is a strange beast. Why does one poet become more widely read than another? The processes that all dump into poetic influence, in both the occult and the practical sense of this idea, are so manifold as to be nearly incomprehensible, even for the most widely read of us.
Finally, it is easy to write any poet off as a fraud. Poetry is, in some profound sense, a hokey kind of business, literally playing around with words. Harder still to to see that every game has something in it worth giving loving and careful attention too.
With your closing remark, the process of influence is a strange beast. Why does one poet become more widely read than another? The processes that all dump into poetic influence, in both the occult and the practical sense of this idea, are so manifold as to be nearly incomprehensible, even for the most widely read of us.
Finally, it is easy to write any poet off as a fraud. Poetry is, in some profound sense, a hokey kind of business, literally playing around with words. Harder still to to see that every game has something in it worth giving loving and careful attention too.
“Poetry is mother-tongue of the human race; as gardening is older than agriculture; painting than writing; song than declamation; parables,—than deductions; barter,—than trade”
― Johann Hamann
― Johann Hamann