the place of poetry among discourses

[jdeirmend]

There is a quote from Ernst Cassirer at the end of one of his book, Language and Myth, about the essence of poetry. I keep coming back to it, because I think it places poetry so very well among other forms of discourse. Here it is.

"What poetry expresses is neither the mythic word-picture of gods and daemons, nor the logical truth of abstract determinations and relations. The world of poetry stands apart from both, as a world of illusion and fantasy--but it is just in this mode of illusion that the realm of pure feeling can find utterance, and can therewith attain its full concrete actualization. Word and mythic image, which once confronted the human mind as hard realistic powers, have now cast off all reality and effectuality; they have become a light, bright ether in which the spirit can move without let or hindrance. This liberation is achieved not because the mind throws aside the sensuous forms of word and image, but in that it uses them both as organs of its own, and thereby recognizes them for what they are: forms of its own self-revelation."

Of course, to rip the final paragraph of the book away from its entirety is a problematic maneuver. It makes it hard to understand exactly what Cassirer is getting at. But the point, broadly speaking, seems to me essentially this. Poetry occupies a kind of middle-ground between two different aspects, types and powers or potentialities of language. The first of these is characterized by compulsion, the necessity and opacity endemic to the earliest forms of mythic and religious language. The second can be identified in the practical power, the freedom and transparency afforded to us by rational and scientific determinations of language. This makes more sense if you read the book; in the beginning of it, Cassirer goes at lengths to discuss how early man "fell under the spell and shadow" of language; how in antiquity and prior, it was often supposed that the mythical creatures and beings described in mythic lore could be grasped in their essences, by attending to the etymological study of their names. To name something offers the illusion, then, that there is a connection between the meaning/root of its name, and the reality of the named. This is what I mean, in part, by compulsion, necessity and opacity. Language first speaks through and masters us; only late in the game of history, as it were, have we learned how to employ it as a tool. Natively and initially, language doesn't necessarily permit us to achieve the most sophisticated of descriptive, practical, technical and scientific tasks. Rather are the latter features of a language that has evolved in power and purpose.

Poetry, then, is the quintessentially human form of language, insofar as it occupies a tension between these two forms of discourse. For poetry is not just composed ciphers whose sense is shrouded, enigmatic and illusory, but must also be the self-conscious, self-revelatory deciphering of the same. This latter aspect is something of which poetry's performative dimension seems inherently to lend it. Furthermore, the tension between these two aforementioned elements itself is just a determination or expression one that is contemporaneous to poetry: the tension between absolute freedom and absolute necessity that is constitutive of human existence.

But why should anyone care about this -- particularly, I'll ask, why should we care about this, as readers and writers of poetry? I'll try and spell that out below.

One of the marks of a truly good poem, for me, is one that displays a certain sort of play between these two and variously aforementioned elements in its sense. What I mean by this is that a good poem cannot 1) merely evoke possible meanings that suggest particular interpretations or 2) be merely descriptive and apophantic (i.e., a story told in the driest and most abstract fashion). Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning. Perhaps as profound, we must recognize that in the play between these two elements, poetry expresses itself as just that sort of activity, namely, play.
The technical aspect of writing, then - while its importance perhaps cannot be overstated - is something whose mastery is achieved for this higher purpose: to create a delicate balance between evocative images and descriptive symbols; a teetering see-saw between clarity and opacity, freedom and necessity, ambiguity and univocity. That I can recognize this, furthermore, does not mean that I can consistently achieve it, but it is something, I felt, that might be of some use to the sympathetic among you all.

Anyways, if you made it to the end of that, you deserve a banana sticker. Discuss away.

[Keith]

There is a quote from Ernst Cassirer at the end of one of his book, Language and Myth, about the essence of poetry. I keep coming back to it, because I think it places poetry so very well among other forms of discourse. Here it is.

"What poetry expresses is neither the mythic word-picture of gods and daemons, nor the logical truth of abstract determinations and relations. The world of poetry stands apart from both, as a world of illusion and fantasy--but it is just in this mode of illusion that the realm of pure feeling can find utterance, and can therewith attain its full concrete actualization. Word and mythic image, which once confronted the human mind as hard realistic powers, have now cast off all reality and effectuality; they have become a light, bright ether in which the spirit can move without let or hindrance. This liberation is achieved not because the mind throws aside the sensuous forms of word and image, but in that it uses them both as organs of its own, and thereby recognizes them for what they are: forms of its own self-revelation."

Of course, to rip the final paragraph of the book away from its entirety is a problematic maneuver. It makes it hard to understand exactly what Cassirer is getting at. But the point, broadly speaking, seems to me essentially this. Poetry occupies a kind of middle-ground between the compulsion, the necessity and opacity endemic to the earliest forms of mythic and religious language, as much as the practical power, the freedom and transparency afforded to us by rational and scientific determinations of language. This makes more sense if you read the book; in the beginning of it, Cassirer goes at lengths to discuss how early man "fell under the spell and shadow" of language; how in antiquity and beyond, it was often supposed that the mythical creatures and beings described in mythic lore could be grasped in their essences, by attending to their etymology. To name something offers the illusion, then, that there is a connection between the meaning of its name, and the reality of the named. This is what I mean, in part, by compulsion, necessity and opacity. Language first speaks through and masters us; only late in the game of history, as it were, have we learned how to employ it as a tool to achieve the most sophisticated of descriptive, practical, technical and scientific tasks.

Poetry, then, is the quintessentially human form of language, insofar as it occupies a tension between these two forms of discourse. For poetry is not just composed ciphers whose sense is shrouded, enigmatic and illusory, but must also be the self-conscious, self-revelatory deciphering of the same, something of which its performative dimensions seem inherently to lend it. Furthermore, the tension between these two aforementioned elements itself is just a determination or expression one that is contemporaneous to poetry: the tension between absolute freedom and absolute necessity that is constitutive of human existence.

But why should anyone care about this -- particularly, I'll ask, why should we care about this, as readers and writers of poetry? I'll try and spell that out below.

One of the marks of a truly good poem, for me, is one that displays a certain sort of play between these two and variously aforementioned elements in its sense. What I mean by this is that a good poem cannot 1) merely evoke possible meanings that suggest particular interpretations or 2) be merely descriptive and apophantic (i.e., a story told in the driest and most abstract fashion). Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning. Perhaps as profound, we must recognize that in the play between these two elements, poetry expresses itself as just that sort of activity, namely, play.
The technical aspect of writing, then - while its importance perhaps cannot be overstated - is something whose mastery is achieved for this higher purpose: to create a delicate balance between evocative images and descriptive symbols; a teetering see-saw between clarity and opacity, freedom and necessity, ambiguity and univocity. That I can recognize this, furthermore, does not mean that I can consistently achieve it, but it is something, I felt, that might be of some use to the sympathetic among you all.

Anyways, if you made it to the end of that, you deserve a banana sticker. Discuss away.

Sorry could you repeat the question only joking

I would tend to agree about the fine line between telling the story and showing what you think is the story as the latter when used one line after the other can make the reader switch off.

Quote
Perhaps this reader is tired...or lazy...but I get decreasing pleasure from untangling words in order to get to the message...and I find this more irritating when I sense that there IS a message.(not always the case).
You string together some fine imagery but the glue that binds it all together is sticking to everything and causing an unholy tangle. Sorry, but your love for words is not enough.

Like that the city turns its back, a fumbled custard pie has splat the pavement echoes as it laughs.....I mean, really?

I think Tectak just about sums it up here with his signature delicate touch so please give him my bannana sticker. Keith

[jdeirmend]

There is a quote from Ernst Cassirer at the end of one of his book, Language and Myth, about the essence of poetry. I keep coming back to it, because I think it places poetry so very well among other forms of discourse. Here it is.

"What poetry expresses is neither the mythic word-picture of gods and daemons, nor the logical truth of abstract determinations and relations. The world of poetry stands apart from both, as a world of illusion and fantasy--but it is just in this mode of illusion that the realm of pure feeling can find utterance, and can therewith attain its full concrete actualization. Word and mythic image, which once confronted the human mind as hard realistic powers, have now cast off all reality and effectuality; they have become a light, bright ether in which the spirit can move without let or hindrance. This liberation is achieved not because the mind throws aside the sensuous forms of word and image, but in that it uses them both as organs of its own, and thereby recognizes them for what they are: forms of its own self-revelation."

Of course, to rip the final paragraph of the book away from its entirety is a problematic maneuver. It makes it hard to understand exactly what Cassirer is getting at. But the point, broadly speaking, seems to me essentially this. Poetry occupies a kind of middle-ground between the compulsion, the necessity and opacity endemic to the earliest forms of mythic and religious language, as much as the practical power, the freedom and transparency afforded to us by rational and scientific determinations of language. This makes more sense if you read the book; in the beginning of it, Cassirer goes at lengths to discuss how early man "fell under the spell and shadow" of language; how in antiquity and beyond, it was often supposed that the mythical creatures and beings described in mythic lore could be grasped in their essences, by attending to their etymology. To name something offers the illusion, then, that there is a connection between the meaning of its name, and the reality of the named. This is what I mean, in part, by compulsion, necessity and opacity. Language first speaks through and masters us; only late in the game of history, as it were, have we learned how to employ it as a tool to achieve the most sophisticated of descriptive, practical, technical and scientific tasks.

Poetry, then, is the quintessentially human form of language, insofar as it occupies a tension between these two forms of discourse. For poetry is not just composed ciphers whose sense is shrouded, enigmatic and illusory, but must also be the self-conscious, self-revelatory deciphering of the same, something of which its performative dimensions seem inherently to lend it. Furthermore, the tension between these two aforementioned elements itself is just a determination or expression one that is contemporaneous to poetry: the tension between absolute freedom and absolute necessity that is constitutive of human existence.

But why should anyone care about this -- particularly, I'll ask, why should we care about this, as readers and writers of poetry? I'll try and spell that out below.

One of the marks of a truly good poem, for me, is one that displays a certain sort of play between these two and variously aforementioned elements in its sense. What I mean by this is that a good poem cannot 1) merely evoke possible meanings that suggest particular interpretations or 2) be merely descriptive and apophantic (i.e., a story told in the driest and most abstract fashion). Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning. Perhaps as profound, we must recognize that in the play between these two elements, poetry expresses itself as just that sort of activity, namely, play.
The technical aspect of writing, then - while its importance perhaps cannot be overstated - is something whose mastery is achieved for this higher purpose: to create a delicate balance between evocative images and descriptive symbols; a teetering see-saw between clarity and opacity, freedom and necessity, ambiguity and univocity. That I can recognize this, furthermore, does not mean that I can consistently achieve it, but it is something, I felt, that might be of some use to the sympathetic among you all.

Anyways, if you made it to the end of that, you deserve a banana sticker. Discuss away.

Sorry could you repeat the question only joking

I would tend to agree about the fine line between telling the story and showing what you think is the story as the latter when used one line after the other can make the reader switch off.

Quote
Perhaps this reader is tired...or lazy...but I get decreasing pleasure from untangling words in order to get to the message...and I find this more irritating when I sense that there IS a message.(not always the case).
You string together some fine imagery but the glue that binds it all together is sticking to everything and causing an unholy tangle. Sorry, but your love for words is not enough.

Like that the city turns its back, a fumbled custard pie has splat the pavement echoes as it laughs.....I mean, really?

I think Tectak just about sums it up here with his signature delicate touch so please give him my bannana sticker. Keith

Keith, thanks for chiming in. As a footnote, I only initiate this kind of stuff, in terms of discussion, because I find it interesting and I have a weird itch that I frequently feel the need to scratch. So I'm happy you indulged me by responding.

As a caveat, it seems to me that there are some poets that can (almost) tell a cohesive, if ambiguous story through images alone, but the amount of control and skill that this takes is exceedingly rare and remarkable.

And yeah . . . that quote seems quintessentially tektakish. However unsympathetic it may seem at a glance, I'm glad he has the balls to call people out. Maybe we can give him something a little more apropos . . . I can't think of what it would be. ???

[Leanne]

Probably 80% of poems posted these days don't pass the barnacle test, i.e. if you can substitute "barnacle" for any given word and the text still makes the same amount of sense, then you have got not poetry, but amphigory.

Many writers seem to be losing sight of the three fundamentals of any writing: know your purpose, audience and context. Perhaps this is largely because people these days tend to write "for themselves" as if their diary entries are going to fascinate the rest of the world. This crime is second only to that of deliberate obfuscation in an attempt to make the writer seem terribly clever and impressive.

Empty vessel, diary or cryptic crossword ≠ poem.

Great poetry has layers and levels that are not immediately obvious, but is not a series of in-jokes or randomly thesaurused phrases. Great poetry should exist independent of its writer and his/her own small circle of experience and influence. Great poetry should demand to be read over and over, not to puzzle it out but to luxuriate in its depths. Great poetry should inspire those who currently do not write great poetry and make them want to build such a monument to humanity.

Alternatively, I'd just as soon read a series of fart jokes. Where's billy when you need him?

[billy]

i'm here sock puppet :J:

i like humour and i'm a toilet dweller, i have no other mitigating circumstances
you know you've read a good it sort of makes you think a little bit before reading again and then again
most poets think they know what poetry is and think they write good poetry but it's seldom the case.
but more of the poetic discourse. i live in the philippines now but when i was in the uk (the days before wine bars and pub restaurants) if you spoke of poetry in anything but a joke or parody, someone would
a] steal your beer
b] piss in your beer
c] take a dump in your beer
or outright leave the pub with your beer.

and to be honest, i'd sooner spend a session in a pub with non poetry discoursing people than be at some pseudo academical gathering where would be poets are blowing each other with who they now and what they know. here and other forums, fine (even if this starting post seems like the magna fucking carta with the American bill of rights tagged on to the end) you'll get more gravy if you take some of the veg off and add more meat :J but i have to honestly say, i've never spoken about poetry for more than 5 mins outside the internet except with addy and then we're ridiculing everyone elses poetry. (just kidding)....or am i

one of the marks of a truly good poem for me is if i can appreciate it or not. i don't have to like it, i'm not keen on bmw's but there's no doubt they're well made. same with art. i don't always like what i appreciate. many people think, i hate it, it's shite...and that's often a truism but there's another truism and it's this. we don't all have good taste. whistlers mother god bless her, classed as one of the best paintings whistler ever did, i hate to see his other works and then you have Picasso. i seriously dislike most of his works but see him as a painting genius.

[Leanne]

Oh yes, there was something about where it belongs in discourse -- I tuned out of that part because frankly, I don't separate discourse into different text types and genres but view it as a constant multimodal interplay punctuated by the occasional limerick or one of billy's jokes (sometimes combined). Everything we communicate just pours into that ocean, and to separate it back out into he said/she said morphemes and monosyllables is both tedious and irrelevant. Does that mean we shouldn't take care to write, edit and analyse thoroughly if it's all going to the same place anyway? No, it doesn't. I don't want my ocean to be full of sewage.

I rarely remember whole poems -- in fact, I rarely remember whole lines of poetry. I remember the ideas that I associated with particular poems (it's all about the vibe). Sometimes those ideas are linked closely with the phrasing, so I remember that as well, but more often the poem is just another piece in a much larger, probably unsolvable puzzle.

And billy, I have impeccable taste. I just prefer not to exercise it too often, so I can enjoy the gross stuff.

[jdeirmend]

Probably 80% of poems posted these days don't pass the barnacle test, i.e. if you can substitute "barnacle" for any given word and the text still makes the same amount of sense, then you have got not poetry, but amphigory.

Good point. My inclination, however idle, is to try and speculate as to why this is so. The causes are manifold, but if there is a general rubric under which they fall, what is it?

Many writers seem to be losing sight of the three fundamentals of any writing: know your purpose, audience and context. Perhaps this is largely because people these days tend to write "for themselves" as if their diary entries are going to fascinate the rest of the world. This crime is second only to that of deliberate obfuscation in an attempt to make the writer seem terribly clever and impressive.

Within the venue of creative writing, specifically, I am inclined to say that many writers simply aren't taught these three fundamentals, if much of anything in terms of fundamentals. I know that in my creative writing coursework, I certainly wasn't; I was generally given free-for-all, and ideas like "craft" were generally just mentioned in passing.

What's more alarming is what passes for creative writing these days, with the increasing popularity of "creative non-fiction" and other roughly autobiographical forms on the rise in popularity.

Now, to be honest, I don't think I have a problem, in any absolute sense, with people writing about themselves. In fact, my favorite authors often do. But such writers will invariably use their writing as a way to explore, interrogate, and ultimately deconstruct themselves, along with their claims to self-importance. There is a discipline and a level of self-reflection necessary to do this well that over 90% of all people, I'm convinced, simply can't come to.

In the most recent creative writing course I took, the first assignment was for us to write a piece "on something we'd each personally lost." Of course this is just a terribly inappropriate way of starting out with people in general, writing class or not. The next assignment was a "reflective, autobiographical memoir," and the pieces that were paraded as examples for us to imitate were so very self-involved, it put a horrid taste in my mouth. As much as what commenced after this made for a fascinating experience for me, all of this probing set a very bleak and frustrating tone for the entirety of the course. And all this, from a national level prize winning poet . . .

I guess the deeper question becomes this: in our time, why are people so terribly self-involved? And not only that: how is it that the education of writers has declined, to the point where it's come to encourage this sort of navel-gazing? I do not think that my well-intentioned teacher's improprieties were the pedagogical exception, in other words, but rather more of the rule. Granted, she wasn't all bad, and taught us some good stuff . . .

Empty vessel, diary or cryptic crossword ≠ poem."

Agreed.

Great poetry has layers and levels that are not immediately obvious, but is not a series of in-jokes or randomly thesaurused phrases. Great poetry should exist independent of its writer and his/her own small circle of experience and influence. Great poetry should demand to be read over and over, not to puzzle it out but to luxuriate in its depths. Great poetry should inspire those who currently do not write great poetry and make them want to build such a monument to humanity.

I think that this is all very well and true, but the problem lies in the implications. I want to focus on the author-independence criteria that you mention. Most people in our time, I would reckon to say, simply aren't open to the idea that someone can write something that transcends the author's ipsiety, as much as his/her own time and place. Going back to the first question I asked, this, I think, is partly responsible for the cluster of narcissistic symptoms that we can't help but notice in what passes for poetry and creative writing in our era. What people don't realize, sadly, is the way that this tacit belief in the contingency of every truth, subverts the very norms whereby we can differentiate between great art and masturbatory drivel . . . which you get to with the fart jokes remark.

---

i'm here sock puppet :J:

i like humour and i'm a toilet dweller, i have no other mitigating circumstances
you know you've read a good it sort of makes you think a little bit before reading again and then again
most poets think they know what poetry is and think they write good poetry but it's seldom the case.
but more of the poetic discourse. i live in the philippines now but when i was in the uk (the days before wine bars and pub restaurants) if you spoke of poetry in anything but a joke or parody, someone would
a] steal your beer
b] piss in your beer
c] take a dump in your beer
or outright leave the pub with your beer.

and to be honest, i'd sooner spend a session in a pub with non poetry discoursing people than be at some pseudo academical gathering where would be poets are blowing each other with who they now and what they know. here and other forums, fine (even if this starting post seems like the magna fucking carta with the American bill of rights tagged on to the end) you'll get more gravy if you take some of the veg off and add more meat. but i have to honestly say, i've never spoken about poetry for more than 5 mins outside the internet except with addy and then we're ridiculing everyone elses poetry. (just kidding)....or am i.

one of the marks of a truly good poem for me is if i can appreciate it or not. i don't have to like it, i'm not keen on bmw's but there's no doubt they're well made. same with art. i don't always like what i appreciate. many people think, i hate it, it's shite...and that's often a truism but there's another truism and it's this. we don't all have good taste. whistlers mother god bless her, classed as one of the best paintings whistler ever did, i hate to see his other works and then you have Picasso. i seriously dislike most of his works but see him as a painting genius.

Billy, your input is, as per usual, cause for copious laughter.

I will readily concede that, from the point of view of a "healthy, practical" form of self-consciousness - i.e., the bloke who knows that what he wants is beer and ass, and doesn't waste time pussyfooting, but just goes out and gets it - I have an illness. When I was studying for my M.A. in England, there was a native brit who was a Ph.D. candidate who regularly and in so many words called me a pussy for talking too much shop whenever we nerds were gathered at the pub.

So yeah, I think too much about things. What's more, I enjoy doing this. On that note, though, I truly do think that there is some divine sort of health in it. But what to speak it better than a poem?

Emily Dickinson, #620

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -

[jdeirmend]

Milo,

Here we go again. I am excited that you have a contrary opinion to offer, and an informed one at that. Speaking of Nietzsche, it is the agon that is the most fun in all of this. And yet, with Nietzsche in mind, don't we have to concede that finding truths of a disinterested nature is not in some respect and to some degree impossible? This is just to suggest that for our discussion to bear fruits, we need to be open to the thought that prejudices of certain sorts inform our varied perspectives. Anyhow, I'll leave that issue aside for now, as a promissory note.

With cassirer's thinly disguised hatred for poetry and, especially the modernists, it isn't surprising to hear him attempt to redefine it in a box he finds more palatable. You poets shouldn't write about your faeries and demons and their disgusting mythos, it isn't correct art. Not surprisingly clinging to his neo-kantian logical aesthetic principles on universal beauty long after nietzche usurped them.

I'm a little disconcerted with the hasty judgment you come to on Cassirer's position. Admittedly, you didn't read the whole book, but it seems to me that you rushed through the substantive discussion/context I tried to offer. You may think all that was crap. But you're still obliged to read it carefully if you expect me to do the same with what you're offering.

That having been said, the man never takes the prescriptive voice you ascribe to him. Rather, he is at pains to distinguish properly (and primitive) religious discourse from properly poetic discourse. The task is admittedly specious, but it's philosophy, after all.

". . .but you have to put this in its context: about a century or so before
Pope would reiterate Locke's sentiments of language being the dress of
thought. The paripatetic notions of truth and beauty in poetics had not yet been overhauled by Nietzsche and post-structuralism's notion that all
writing is equally metaphoric (Nietzsche lauded the Sophists for admitting
what Socrates did not, that all language, even Socrates's modest diction, is an exercise in rhetoric) and truth a complex 'lie' constructed from
effective and agreed upon arrangements of tropes."- Aidan Tynan defending kant

And then we get cassirer's retort that we are not writing about faeries and demons anyway but about our inner selves. Bollocks! It was poetic justice that killed him before the confessionals would render his irrelevant damning of poesy a dialectic retrospect!

Again, it would serve you better to pay close attention to the context, especially the tidbits I offered about the spell and shadow of language. Cassirer's own metaphor at work here is "the mythic word picture of gods and daemons." He spent an entire book elaborating on what this means, and it's a far cry from what you seem to think it means. Cassirer is not saying that poets don't write about gods and daemons. What he writes, in fact, is that poetry doesn't express the mythic word picture of gods and daemons. On my reading, this is as much to say that poetry doesn't have the same sort of thrall over man's imagination as the earliest religious and mythic sorts of discourse. There was a time, in other words, wherein the distinction between image and symbol was not so ready and apparent; wherein art, religion, myth, and language were as of yet undifferentiated. Take the Lascaux cave paintings, for instance, a series of art objects that seem to connote worship, hunger, the desire to hunt and to communicate, all wrapped up into one little polyvalent package. Clearly, poetry as we know it today shares some real similarities to this kind of art, but is also a different sort of animal than this.

As another and favorite example, classicists speak to the Oresteia, for instance, as one of the first manifestations of a discourse that occupies the place of poetry proper, per Cassirer's conceptualization of it. Namely, something that partakes of the evocations, the opacities and immediacies of religious discourse, while at the same time attempting to overcome all the superstition, the barbarism and provinciality that goes hand in hand with such language qua its function as religion. Poetry, then, is illusion that actively attempts to free itself from the ignorance of its own status as illusion. It is image contemplating its own contingency and finitude, evocation that refuses to dominate (as in the case of primitive religion or unreflective myth). This really isn't so different from what Nietzsche thinks in regards to "living artfully," is it? The point of poetry, then, per my reading of Cassirer, is to be able to swim in the illusion of selfhood and not drown.

On that note, I think there is something remiss in your response. Namely, the assumption that by "self-revelation," Cassirer means to speak about an "inner self." "Self-revelation" can mean something besides this. It can mean the dissolution of the thought that there is a distinction between self and world, or even a dissolution of whatever impedes the fluidity that the great poet achieves in his or her observations and metaphors of his or her world. The poetic act, on my understanding of Cassirer, is just this kind of unconcealment, where the chthonic and occult aspects of the meaning that informs the poet's life are revealed -- not as "inner" attributes, per se, but as unconscious valences that constitute the spiritual substance from which the sculpture, so to speak, is assembled. This disclosure, however, takes the form of an interaction between self and world, wherein one is free to re-imagine the world. Thus poetry's status as the illusory, imaginary space in which the poet plays.

Cassirer might be rolling in his grave at such a Heideggerian appropriation of his position. Nonetheless, I think it makes his position viable, against the alternative you suggest.

[milo]

Milo,

Here we go again. I am excited that you have a contrary opinion to offer, and an informed one at that. Speaking of Nietzsche, it is the agon that is the most fun in all of this. And yet, with Nietzsche in mind, don't we have to concede that finding truths of a disinterested nature is not in some respect and to some degree impossible? This is just to suggest that for our discussion to bear fruits, we need to be open to the thought that prejudices of certain sorts inform our varied perspectives. Anyhow, I'll leave that issue aside for now, as a promissory note.

With cassirer's thinly disguised hatred for poetry and, especially the modernists, it isn't surprising to hear him attempt to redefine it in a box he finds more palatable. You poets shouldn't write about your faeries and demons and their disgusting mythos, it isn't correct art. Not surprisingly clinging to his neo-kantian logical aesthetic principles on universal beauty long after nietzche usurped them.

I'm a little disconcerted with the hasty judgment you come to on Cassirer's position. Admittedly, you didn't read the whole book, but it seems to me that you rushed through the substantive discussion/context I tried to offer. You may think all that was crap. But you're still obliged to read it carefully if you expect me to do the same with what you're offering.

That having been said, the man never takes the prescriptive voice you ascribe to him. Rather, he is at pains to distinguish properly (and primitive) religious discourse from properly poetic discourse. The task is admittedly specious, but it's philosophy, after all.

". . .but you have to put this in its context: about a century or so before
Pope would reiterate Locke's sentiments of language being the dress of
thought. The paripatetic notions of truth and beauty in poetics had not yet been overhauled by Nietzsche and post-structuralism's notion that all
writing is equally metaphoric (Nietzsche lauded the Sophists for admitting
what Socrates did not, that all language, even Socrates's modest diction, is an exercise in rhetoric) and truth a complex 'lie' constructed from
effective and agreed upon arrangements of tropes."- Aidan Tynan defending kant

And then we get cassirer's retort that we are not writing about faeries and demons anyway but about our inner selves. Bollocks! It was poetic justice that killed him before the confessionals would render his irrelevant damning of poesy a dialectic retrospect!

Again, it would serve you better to pay close attention to the context, especially the tidbits I offered about the spell and shadow of language. Cassirer's own metaphor at work here is "the mythic word picture of gods and daemons." He spent an entire book elaborating on what this means, and it's a far cry from what you seem to think it means. Cassirer is not saying that poets don't write about gods and daemons. What he writes, in fact, is that poetry doesn't express the mythic word picture of gods and daemons. On my reading, this is as much to say that poetry doesn't have the same sort of thrall over man's imagination as the earliest religious and mythic sorts of discourse. There was a time, in other words, wherein the distinction between image and symbol was not so ready and apparent; wherein art, religion, myth, and language were as of yet undifferentiated. Take the Lascaux cave paintings, for instance, a series of art objects that seem to connote worship, hunger, the desire to hunt and to communicate, all wrapped up into one little polyvalent package. Clearly, poetry as we know it today shares some real similarities to this kind of art, but is also a different sort of animal than this.

As another and favorite example, classicists speak to the Oresteia, for instance, as one of the first manifestations of a discourse that occupies the place of poetry proper, per Cassirer's conceptualization of it. Namely, something that partakes of the evocations, the opacities and immediacies of religious discourse, while at the same time attempting to overcome all the superstition, the barbarism and provinciality that goes hand in hand with such language qua its function as religion. Poetry, then, is illusion that actively attempts to free itself from the ignorance of its own status as illusion. It is image contemplating its own contingency and finitude, evocation that refuses to dominate (as in the case of primitive religion or unreflective myth). This really isn't so different from what Nietzsche thinks in regards to "living artfully," is it? The point of poetry, then, per my reading of Cassirer, is to be able to swim in the illusion of selfhood and not drown.

On that note, I think there is something remiss in your response. Namely, the assumption that by "self-revelation," Cassirer means to speak about an "inner self." "Self-revelation" can mean something besides this. It can mean the dissolution of the thought that there is a distinction between self and world, or even a dissolution of whatever impedes the fluidity that the great poet achieves in his or her observations and metaphors of his or her world. The poetic act, on my understanding of Cassirer, is just this kind of unconcealment, where the chthonic and occult aspects of the meaning that informs the poet's life are revealed. This disclosure, however, takes the form of an interaction between self and world wherein one is free to re-imagine the world. Thus poetry's status as the illusory, imaginary space in which the poet plays.

Cassirer might be rolling in his grave at such a Heideggerian appropriation of his position. Nonetheless, I think it makes his position viable, against the alternative you suggest.

I have read and discussed Cassirer ad nauseum, I think the mistaken assumption you have here is that I was referring strictly to the text you cited. I was enlightening the text through a knowledge of Cassirer and his hatred for poets and poesy in general that tends to upset his delicate Kantian sensibilities.

This specific citation has his usual thin veneer of "poetry is great, I am fine with it, really" that is belied by a more thorough reading of his positions.

I ended up deleting the post when I remembered that I already had this discussion several times and was bored then.

Cassirer is a dilletante - everyone laughs about his naive proclamations of what poetry is and isn't.

[SirBrendan]

In my opinion, poetry is a willow tree getting fucked by a woodpecker.

"I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."-- Wilde

Poetry and every art form is masturbatory; anyone who says otherwise is a tosser. Everything I have ever written or will ever write came from me and my relations to the world around me. What boggles my mind is not the narcissistic nature of my generation, but the brow beating it receives from the previous. Here we have anyone born between 1960-80 as belonging to a generation that was part of the cultural turnover to Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney, to laissez faire neo-liberalism, jerked off to Ayn Rand (it was the second most sold book in the USA aside from the Bible) while loooooving the Beatles. The same generation that gave birth to disco and then New Wave while simultaneously pretending they didn't like it. For fuck's sake, your generation made Catcher in the Rye and Sylvia Plath-- so don't leave self-indulgence and insecurity on our doorstep :p

"Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning."

That's a fantastically cogent description. However, it misses key elements of some poetry which, since I'm butting into the conversation, I'll try to add.

1. Words sound great. I often listen to the Editors of Merriam-Webster and their lovely little clips that scroll down the side of their online definitions. One of them in particular was about the word 'defenestrate'. See, despite being a remarkably specific word that most people would never hear in a casual conversation, according to this particular editor, it is the word he most often hears cited to be the speakers favourite word. The implication is that it only takes a listener to hear the word once or twice to decide it sounds great. Why does butthole not compel my soul, but catharsis make me shiver? Same reason a tritone in music makes people aggressively sad: who the fuck knows?

2. Words have secret connotations. See, a pearl is defined by being a coloured deposit that's pretty. It has the overt connotations of being something highly prized, and its association with the ocean (which a poet can make use of). However, it also has the secret sexual connotations of being creamy white and typically found in the vagina resembling clam.

Another example is the word 'Freak'. I grew up with six brothers and was drawn to androgynous figures like Wilde, Freddie Mercury, and David Bowie. This meant I developed extremely thick skin fairly early. I've been called twat, cunt, whiny bitch, faggot, pussy, weak, pathetic, etc.. usually by my family, and it doesn't bother me. However, the word freak finds a secret spot inside of me that although I wouldn't show to anyone but my wife, makes me want to find a dark place and cry. That word is associated with a period in my life in which my ego and personality was still freshly forming, and the total rejection thereof by others. It is a child's mean. Now I guarentee you, were I to construct a poem (provided I was a better poet than I presently am) about that word, there would be a million other 20 something Canadians who would feel that word with the same secret connotation, and so my naval gazing becomes their connection.

If you disagree, remember the song 'Creep'. In countless ways, it was just another of the angst filled pube buckets of the 90's, however it launched Radiohead and stands the test of time simply because the line "I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. I don't belong here" has secret connotations so many of us felt.

3. What you said and I quoted, which is a lovely way of saying it.

[Leanne]

"Poets" (always with an audibly capitalised P) these days seem to think that they're either "writing for themselves" or "writing for everyone". This dread of being disliked (even when writing patently dislikable stuff, e.g the "dirty pretty" movement) leads to generic, surface-level mush and lack of the controversy that makes poetry valid as an art.

One of today's great poets, John Kinsella, has this to say:

Well, poetry has never been about the masses, I'd argue. I do think poets should be excluded from stinking Platonic republics or any other hierarchical power structure. They can make use of them, suck their finances dry, but never be part of them. Shelley's 'unacknowledged legislators' is right in one sense, but it is also a sop to the neglected poet's ego. If poets legislate, then we need to be worried. That suggests something set in stone. They can express a desire for change (the revolutionary poetry of the Sandinistas is a fascinating recent example), but if the poem sets precedents and is used as authority then it undoes, to my mind, its own purpose in existing -- that is, to undo the givens, to upset the status quo.

Read the full interview.

[milo]

"Poets" (always with an audibly capitalised P) these days seem to think that they're either "writing for themselves" or "writing for everyone". This dread of being disliked (even when writing patently dislikable stuff, e.g the "dirty pretty" movement) leads to generic, surface-level mush and lack of the controversy that makes poetry valid as an art.

One of today's great poets, John Kinsella, has this to say:

Well, poetry has never been about the masses, I'd argue. I do think poets should be excluded from stinking Platonic republics or any other hierarchical power structure. They can make use of them, suck their finances dry, but never be part of them. Shelley's 'unacknowledged legislators' is right in one sense, but it is also a sop to the neglected poet's ego. If poets legislate, then we need to be worried. That suggests something set in stone. They can express a desire for change (the revolutionary poetry of the Sandinistas is a fascinating recent example), but if the poem sets precedents and is used as authority then it undoes, to my mind, its own purpose in existing -- that is, to undo the givens, to upset the status quo.

Read the full interview.

Normally, I would at this point argue, as I detest the "poetry is this, poetry is that discussions" as poetry's greatest strength is that it is a pointless waste of time. John here, seems to tap into the purpose of the poet though - to challenge. Not just the status quo, I would argue, but everything. Every single precept, even her own.

Still, I detest this statement far less than I detest most statements about poetry.

[Leanne]

Nobody has it completely right, but I find this to be headed in the right direction. And yes, challenge everything. If your ideas about poetry don't change constantly, you're probably not doing it right.

[billy]

Nobody has it completely right, but I find this to be headed in the right direction. And yes, challenge everything. If your ideas about poetry don't change constantly, you're probably not doing it right.

if you think about it, isn't this how people become real poets, by starting off as gingerbread men; reading a writing a lot of poetry and in the process transforming into muffin men. we start off thinking it's all rhyme and shirt sleeves then move on to trouser legs of free or blank verse. from there it's forms such as sonnets etc. and all the time we're changing the things we learn to suit what our needs are. we create or try to, new forms and new concepts. stagnation in any creative form is the Antichrist. it's why people teach others to LEARN THE RULES first in order to fuck them up at a later date.

back to discoursing poetry and pubs. the paddy's in my local wouldn't only steal your beer they 'd outright tell you fuck off with your nancy ideas. of course they'd then sing a poetical song from their homeland but in pubs, poetry marks you as a dick head.

what i'm also realizing is this, these few threads so far all seem to count for nothing but warm air

[milo]

what i'm also realizing is this, these few threads so far all seem to count for nothing but warm air

and leanne said you were slow . . .

[jdeirmend]

Bravo. It seems to me that there is a lot of pretense and seriousness that I'm still struggling to slough off . . . your reply helped me to see this, so thanks Brendan.

In my opinion, poetry is a willow tree getting fucked by a woodpecker.

"I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."-- Wilde

Poetry and every art form is masturbatory; anyone who says otherwise is a tosser. Everything I have ever written or will ever write came from me and my relations to the world around me. What boggles my mind is not the narcissistic nature of my generation, but the brow beating it receives from the previous. Here we have anyone born between 1960-80 as belonging to a generation that was part of the cultural turnover to Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney, to laissez faire neo-liberalism, jerked off to Ayn Rand (it was the second most sold book in the USA aside from the Bible) while loooooving the Beatles. The same generation that gave birth to disco and then New Wave while simultaneously pretending they didn't like it. For fuck's sake, your generation made Catcher in the Rye and Sylvia Plath-- so don't leave self-indulgence and insecurity on our doorstep :p

"Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning."

That's a fantastically cogent description. However, it misses key elements of some poetry which, since I'm butting into the conversation, I'll try to add.

1. Words sound great. I often listen to the Editors of Merriam-Webster and their lovely little clips that scroll down the side of their online definitions. One of them in particular was about the word 'defenestrate'. See, despite being a remarkably specific word that most people would never hear in a casual conversation, according to this particular editor, it is the word he most often hears cited to be the speakers favourite word. The implication is that it only takes a listener to hear the word once or twice to decide it sounds great. Why does butthole not compel my soul, but catharsis make me shiver? Same reason a tritone in music makes people aggressively sad: who the fuck knows?

2. Words have secret connotations. See, a pearl is defined by being a coloured deposit that's pretty. It has the overt connotations of being something highly prized, and its association with the ocean (which a poet can make use of). However, it also has the secret sexual connotations of being creamy white and typically found in the vagina resembling clam.

Another example is the word 'Freak'. I grew up with six brothers and was drawn to androgynous figures like Wilde, Freddie Mercury, and David Bowie. This meant I developed extremely thick skin fairly early. I've been called twat, cunt, whiny bitch, faggot, pussy, weak, pathetic, etc.. usually by my family, and it doesn't bother me. However, the word freak finds a secret spot inside of me that although I wouldn't show to anyone but my wife, makes me want to find a dark place and cry. That word is associated with a period in my life in which my ego and personality was still freshly forming, and the total rejection thereof by others. It is a child's mean. Now I guarentee you, were I to construct a poem (provided I was a better poet than I presently am) about that word, there would be a million other 20 something Canadians who would feel that word with the same secret connotation, and so my naval gazing becomes their connection.

If you disagree, remember the song 'Creep'. In countless ways, it was just another of the angst filled pube buckets of the 90's, however it launched Radiohead and stands the test of time simply because the line "I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. I don't belong here" has secret connotations so many of us felt.

3. What you said and I quoted, which is a lovely way of saying it.

[jdeirmend]

One of the marks of a truly good poem for me is if i can appreciate it or not. i don't have to like it, i'm not keen on bmw's but there's no doubt they're well made. same with art. i don't always like what i appreciate. many people think, i hate it, it's shite...and that's often a truism but there's another truism and it's this. we don't all have good taste. whistlers mother god bless her, classed as one of the best paintings whistler ever did, i hate to see his other works and then you have Picasso. i seriously dislike most of his works but see him as a painting genius.

Billy, that's fine and well, but why do you appreciate a given poem? That's kind of the point of this thread, however useless and long-winded my inquiry might seem to you. Saying "whether or not you appreciate it" is pretty vacuous at the end of the day.

---

Nobody has it completely right, but I find this to be headed in the right direction. And yes, challenge everything. If your ideas about poetry don't change constantly, you're probably not doing it right.

Well at least someone is trying to be encouraging. Between Milo sneering at me and Billy telling me I'm long winded and a nancy, I am seriously wondering what the fuck I'm doing trying to engage you guys in a discussion on this topic.

---

Oh yes, there was something about where it belongs in discourse -- I tuned out of that part because frankly, I don't separate discourse into different text types and genres but view it as a constant multimodal interplay punctuated by the occasional limerick or one of billy's jokes (sometimes combined). Everything we communicate just pours into that ocean, and to separate it back out into he said/she said morphemes and monosyllables is both tedious and irrelevant. Does that mean we shouldn't take care to write, edit and analyse thoroughly if it's all going to the same place anyway? No, it doesn't. I don't want my ocean to be full of sewage.

I really don't get it. I try to take a stab at what distinguishes poetry from other ways in which language is used, and I get told that what I'm doing is tedious and irrelevant, only to be given some completely sentimental judgment about "not wanting oceans being full of sewage."

How do you tune out something someone writes anyways? So you admit you didn't really read what I had to write carefully. Great.

If you think I'm taking things too seriously, I already know I am. That's the entire point of this exercise.

---

I have read and discussed Cassirer ad nauseum, I think the mistaken assumption you have here is that I was referring strictly to the text you cited. I was enlightening the text through a knowledge of Cassirer and his hatred for poets and poesy in general that tends to upset his delicate Kantian sensibilities.

This specific citation has his usual thin veneer of "poetry is great, I am fine with it, really" that is belied by a more thorough reading of his positions.

I ended up deleting the post when I remembered that I already had this discussion several times and was bored then.

Cassirer is a dilletante - everyone laughs about his naive proclamations of what poetry is and isn't.

I don't doubt that you're more familiar with Cassirer than myself. Language and myth is the only book of his I've read. If what I'm on about bores or bothers you, though, you don't need to participate.

Look closely at the insulting connotation in the last sentence you've written. "Everyone laughs about his naive proclamations of what poetry is and isn't." You've basically taken a giant shit on my efforts at a discussion, and you've excluded me from the category of "everyone," by virtue of my appreciation of Cassirer (sorry I'm not sophisticated enough for you, Milo). Besides that, dismissing a thinker with a million times more clout than yourself with a simple ad hominem (i.e. calling Cassirer a dilettante) reflects very poorly on you.

Let me make it plain to you: I already know I'm a nobody. I don't need you to remind me of it. If you'd like to spell out why you disapprove, in depth and detail, you are welcome to. Otherwise, I'll call it like I see it, namely that you've just taken this opportunity to proclaim, once again, that you're perspectives are so vastly superior to mine. I could give two shits.

---

All,

Can we have a discussion without people being insulting, or plainly disclosing their disapproval, inattentiveness, etc., without any hint of appreciation?

If you feel like you're wasting your time responding to the thread and the initial post, which I've already admitted is just motivated by a weird itch I need to scratch, you don't need to participate.

Otherwise, I think it may be time for me to just get away from this "place" for good.

Thanks,
James

[milo]

One of the marks of a truly good poem for me is if i can appreciate it or not. i don't have to like it, i'm not keen on bmw's but there's no doubt they're well made. same with art. i don't always like what i appreciate. many people think, i hate it, it's shite...and that's often a truism but there's another truism and it's this. we don't all have good taste. whistlers mother god bless her, classed as one of the best paintings whistler ever did, i hate to see his other works and then you have Picasso. i seriously dislike most of his works but see him as a painting genius.

Billy, that's fine and well, but why do you appreciate a given poem? That's kind of the point of this thread, however useless and long-winded my inquiry might seem to you. Saying "whether or not you appreciate it" is pretty vacuous at the end of the day.

---

Nobody has it completely right, but I find this to be headed in the right direction. And yes, challenge everything. If your ideas about poetry don't change constantly, you're probably not doing it right.

Well at least someone is trying to be encouraging. Between Milo sneering at me and Billy telling me I'm long winded and a nancy, I am seriously wondering what the fuck I'm doing trying to engage you guys in a discussion on this topic.

---

Oh yes, there was something about where it belongs in discourse -- I tuned out of that part because frankly, I don't separate discourse into different text types and genres but view it as a constant multimodal interplay punctuated by the occasional limerick or one of billy's jokes (sometimes combined). Everything we communicate just pours into that ocean, and to separate it back out into he said/she said morphemes and monosyllables is both tedious and irrelevant. Does that mean we shouldn't take care to write, edit and analyse thoroughly if it's all going to the same place anyway? No, it doesn't. I don't want my ocean to be full of sewage.

I really don't get it. I try to take a stab at what distinguishes poetry from other ways in which language is used, and I get told that what I'm doing is tedious and irrelevant, only to be given some completely sentimental judgment about "not wanting oceans being full of sewage."

How do you tune out something someone writes anyways? So you admit you didn't really read what I had to write carefully. Great.

If you think I'm taking things too seriously, I already know I am. That's the entire point of this exercise.

---

I have read and discussed Cassirer ad nauseum, I think the mistaken assumption you have here is that I was referring strictly to the text you cited. I was enlightening the text through a knowledge of Cassirer and his hatred for poets and poesy in general that tends to upset his delicate Kantian sensibilities.

This specific citation has his usual thin veneer of "poetry is great, I am fine with it, really" that is belied by a more thorough reading of his positions.

I ended up deleting the post when I remembered that I already had this discussion several times and was bored then.

Cassirer is a dilletante - everyone laughs about his naive proclamations of what poetry is and isn't.

I don't doubt that you're more familiar with Cassirer than myself. Language and myth is the only book of his I've read. If what I'm on about bores or bothers you, though, you don't need to participate.

Look closely at the insulting connotation in the last sentence you've written. "Everyone laughs about his naive proclamations of what poetry is and isn't." You've basically taken a giant shit on my efforts at a discussion, and you've excluded me from the category of "everyone," by virtue of my appreciation of Cassirer (sorry I'm not sophisticated enough for you, Milo). Besides that, dismissing a thinker with a million times more clout than yourself with a simple ad hominem (i.e. calling Cassirer a dilettante) reflects very poorly on you.

First, know that I did try to delete my initial response as I realized I would not be offering anything productive to this discussion, why you replied to me afterwards is unclear.

Second, clout means nothing to me at all. How things reflect on me means nothing to me at all.

Let me make it plain to you: I already know I'm a nobody. I don't need you to remind me of it. If you'd like to spell out why you disapprove, in depth and detail, you are welcome to.

I know you say this, but trust me, you really don't want it.

[Leanne]

How do you tune it out? It's not poetry, it's a philosophical argument and I think it's fair to say that I'm entitled to make judgments as to the philosophies I follow and those I dismiss. In ideas about poetry, nobody has for me surpassed Boccaccio, though Shelley comes close. Although I wouldn't take instructions from him about crossing the street, I tend to remain quite true to Barthes as well. And Kierkegaard. With a little bit of Heideggerian pomposity thrown in. How? They're all a little bit different, but then so am I on any two given occasions.

You clearly haven't learned the most fundamental of truths, though. Poetry is like religion: if you don't want people calling you a wanker and occasionally threatening violence against you, don't bring it up in conversation. And whatever you do, don't expect people to act like uppity scholars at a moderation meeting -- this is the Pig Pen. The clue is in the name.

[SirBrendan]

This point is going to be largely off-topic

Well, the original question is 'what role does poetry take in discourse'. If we use this discussion as our example, the better question would be, 'what role does discourse take on poetry'--not a very pleasant one it seems.

Pretense, for me, is of course of a fully forgivable and even sometimes attractive sin. If I wasn't trying to be impressive when I was fourteen (not to imply I don't suffer from pretense now), I never would have read Marx and learned my love for political science and social imagination; I never would have read Tolkien and discovered my love for fantasy; and I never would have read Wilde and discovered my love for writing. Pretense is the idea that we are more than we currently are, and that can have some very healthy consequences if we're willing to explore that pretense.

Now you, jdeirmend, made a self deprecating nod to inherent pretense of the discussion which ameliorates any of that particular sin present. What really bothers me though is the seeing the precise sort of anti-intellectualism that cripples us today.

Billy, you should have gathered from my reference to six brothers that I derive from an Irish-immigrant family (an entire people allergic to rubbers). All of my life I've been called a nancy-boy in one form or another, which is fitting since my mum's name is Nancy. But it certainly didn't stop me from ranting about whatever intellectual quest I found myself on in pubs. Stating that we share a space with bullyin' buttfucks doesn't validate them or invalidate us. Every single one of my friends called me a faggot when I told them about this very forum and how I was trying to get better at poetry. BUT they also, after mocking me for about an hour and telling me to fuck off, listened to my poems and told me what they liked or disliked, or just gave an honest confession that they never really 'liked' poetry.

Point being, a discussion might feel like nothing but warm air to you, but it doesn't change the fact that it can be lovely and even rarely enlightening to shoot the shit on whatever interests.

But can we leave the mean shit at the pubs, where it belongs? Jdeirmend, you're not a nobody-- you're clearly an intelligent person engaged on a given topic of interest. I'm just sorry that I've not studied poetical theory and so can't give anything back but my own understanding.

To the rest: you don't need to clarify 'this discussion is nothing and I can gain nothing'. Just don't join conversation then. Going out of your way to say you're disinterested is about the single most pretentious thing anyone can do but with the extra touch of being both ignorant and cruel.