>From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: "self-sufficient work of art"
>Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 11:23:51 -0500
>
>Tim,
>
>After your lucid comment on dramatic structure in an epic like the Cantos,
>I must
>say you've lost me here. So I'll simply make some random observations.
>
>[Wait let me get more coffee.]
>
>My use of the notion of "arcane" was meant to be in contra-distinction to
>yours.
>The usual meaning especially as regards literature implies a non-utile
>dimension,
>that is that the public for example can ignore the arcana if it chooses
>becuase it
>little impacts on their daily existence.
>
>However, now with the rise of hundreds of scientific and technical
>specialties not
>to mention specialties outside of these two general disciplines we have
>"arcana",
>if you will, which profoundly effect the utility of our everyday lives. In
>large
>part Pound sought, mistakenly, a return to a culture not as reliant on
>'specialties.'
>
>Thus, Pound's arcana are generally speaking comfortably non-utile. Hence,
>he
>clearly has not written the "anthem to Fascism" because any
>political/military
>movement that does not ground itself in modern science and technology will
>be
>ground under as recently witnessed. Pound never included a paean to
>Fascism's
>reliance and development of modern weapons of war such as the V-1, V-2
>rocket.
>
>I, for one, seeing this as a serious epistemological lacuna in the Cantos
>decades
>ago sought to put myself in the center of the concern for the everyday
>arcana that
>is science and technology. Your email seems to suggest that to engage this
>arcana
>in its original forms violates some sort of communication with the poetry
>reader.
>Let's leave aside the obligation of the reader because, generally, this is
>one
>'obligation' the reader has no intention of meeting.
>
>There are all important ontological and epistemological dimensions to
>scientific
>and technological arcana. To simplify, this provides a philosophical and
>"expository" bridge from the dominant epistemologies of the sciences to
>"epic"
>poetry as you've described it. This, for me, is also the field of poetic
>engagement
>because this is the field of dialectic. On one side lies the sciences in
>all of
>their mathematical/formal immunity. On the other, the public in all of its
>naive
>acceptance. (Exceptions would appear to be the environment, nuclear power
>and
>biogenetics though challenges here are not at the epistemological level. In
>fact,
>their criticisms lose much of their force because they do not attach an
>epistemological dimension to the moral and ethical arguments that they
>proffer.)
>
>When you write:
><Within those narrative limitations, the modern epic poet might well be
>able to
>create a dramatic narrative that showed how statistical probabilities have
>come to
>affect the
>quality of life as lived by the man in the street.>
>you are addressing a poet who has done exactly that for years and within
>more
>scientific taxonomies than just Game Theory. As far as Game Theory, I just
>appear
>particularly prescient again which is not surprising because it is the type
>of
>study I am involved in all the time. As far as the man in the street; he
>needs to
>get wacked upside the head with something heavier than a manuscript.
>
>My urging is simply that more poets engage underlying epistemologies of
>their time
>and not abandon the lessons of the high modernist model whether it be
>through the
>cipher of Pound, Joyce, Eliot, Olson, Zukofsky, Tolson, Duncan, Jones (yes,
>Jones)
>et al. It seems to me that if you are not aware of these underlying forces
>and
>their infuence, the poetry generated is going to be derivative of this
>influence
>without having any understanding with which to form a dialectic. I don't
>begin Tale
>of the Tribe with Hegel out of Kant just to be beating my gums. Its the
>limitations
>of the scientific epistemology of perception and the grounds upon which
>those
>limitations and their consequences effect everyday existence.
>
>I would contend that contemproary poet's are largely 'consumers' of an
>epistemology
>that they don't understand much less have the ability to critique. As for
>readers:
>as far as overall numbers are concerned my percentile is not much lower
>than
>Pound's or Olson's. To the naked eye the needle seems to be resting at the
>bottom.
>Carlo Parcelli
>
>P.S. I apologize in advance for any grammatical or spelling errors in my
>email.
>
>
>Tim Romano wrote:
>
> > Epic demands that exposition be subordinated to dramatic human action.
>The
> > epic poet can make extensive use of speeches and narrative, killing the
> > birds of exposition and character revelation with one stone. In offering
> > the poet the freedom to put words into the mouths of characters and into
> > the mouth of an omniscient narrator, the genre gives the poet the tools
> > necessary to expound a theme and to create a drama.  Within those
>narrative
> > limitations, the modern epic poet might well be able to create a
>dramatic
> > narrative that showed how statistical probabilities have come to affect
>the
> > quality of life as lived by the man in the street. But the audience
>ought
> > not be expected to have --or be willing to acquire-- an actuary's
>knowledge
> > in order to understand that theme. There is rarely if ever a need for
>any
> > abstruse technicality, raw and undigested, itself to become the subject
> > matter of the poem; when that happens, the artist is not making a poem
>but
> > passing an owl-pellet.
> > Tim Romano
> >
> > Carlo Parcelli wrote:
> >
> > >[...]
> > >Nash's work is tremendously influential and has broad application.
>Nash's work
> > >along with Heisenberg's, Bohr's, Pitts' (another good melodrama) and
> > >McCulloch's, Watson's and Crick's, von Neumann's, Turing's, Weiner's,
> > >Shannon's
> > >and dozens of others forms the theoretical and practical bedrock of our
>daily
> > >lives. Can the consumer of 'epics' only explore this as melodrama,
>ghosted
> > >forces that make self-interest possible, or in simple allegories of
>good and
> > >evil? If not through the Cantos, Maximus, "A" etc., how else would such
>an
> > >ambitious and risky poetics proceed? Carlo Parcelli


Mr Romano

Your "notes" are on target, and well-taken.

I would only add that the percentage of poets/writers
who "think before they speak" is probably about
the same in the General Population.

So, for every Pound or Joyce, we will inevitably have
99 Frosts or Sandburgs.

And I don't suppose it's ever been much different,
whether in Sumeria or Soho --

the One Percent leap forward, dragging the many minds
kicking and screaming along behind them.

Thanks for the Thoughts

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