If I can add my little pinch of salt.  Ultimately what matters is the work --
I think we can find some general agreement in that.  Personally I don't care
about analyses by those whose insights don't result in significant work.  If
what Carlo Parcelli has posted is representative of Paul Lake's work, then
his analysis is not validated by the poetry that results from it.  I prefer
Pound's method, which was to use his understanding of his art to guide the
poetry that his understanding produced.  To conclude that a particular poetry
is degenerate, and then produce nothing better than what is criticized,
speaks to the imaginative and introspective failure of that analysis.

joe....

In a message dated 03/22/2002 5:17:46 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> I'd like that dispensation too. And I petition to listen to Elliott Carter
> and
> Albert Ayler on Thursdays before noon. Not to mention that any distinction
> between a 'static' Cartesianism and a time 'dynamic' fractal geometry or
> chaos/complexity is cosmetic. The foundation for both is a mathematics
> fundamentally commutative (e.g. time indifferent) that requires the
> cinematic
> formalism of moving backward and forward through time to work. In other
> words
> its a strictly mathematical time and does not commute to the arts except as
> a
> conceit. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry thoughtlessly appropriated the hermetic
> symbol
> of the eternal light of the mathematical sciences and for this they have
> paid an
> horrific price.
>
> And then you have the question of immortal scientific discoveries
> succumbing to
> historically dependent time in their own right (see Feyerabend); e.g. their
> 'historicity' (see Heidegger). CP
>
> Tim Bray wrote:
>
> > At 02:56 PM 22/03/02 -0500, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> > >In my opinion, Mr. Lake has provided some of the most acute analysis on
> the
> > >degeneracy of contemporary poetry and its causes.
> >
> > Elegantly written but... it seems profoundly misguided to make
> > arguments along the lines that one artistic form is absolutely or
> > even generally superior to another.  If it moves it moves you,
> > if it doesn't it doesn't; the argument from form may be helpful
> > in understanding the why of it, but telling people what *should*
> > move them just feels pretentious and high-handed.  I am reminded
> > of my parents, back in the 60s, telling me that popular music
> > was all trash because eminent musicologists said so.  I shut
> > up but thought of Galileo's muttered "and still they move".
> >
> > Not to mention that, as with many attempts to find parallels
> > between art and science, the arguments from science are
> > technically illiterate (yes, apparently you can drop the names
> > of Fibonacci and Mandelbrot and still not understand what
> > "linear" really means).  Yes, the study of emergent phenomena
> > is interesting, and human intelligence is one of the most striking
> > examples, but human intelligence occasionally emits free verse, and
> > free verse occasionally moves me.  On this basis I should
> > apologize for my degeneracy?  If I like sonnets too does that
> > grant absolution?  Could I be given a dispensation to like
> > free verse (and Ornette Coleman and James Joyce) on alternate
> > Wednesdays? -Tim
>