At 05:33 PM 3/22/02 -0600, you wrote:
>Pierre Joris wrote:
> >
> > > In my opinion, Mr. Lake has provided some of the most acute
> > > analysis on the
> > > degeneracy of contemporary poetry and its causes.
> > >
> > "degeneracy of contemporarty poetry," hmm, sounds like "degenerate art," a,
> > uh, critical, term used in some countries in the thirties.
> > _______________________________________________________________
> >
>
>It sounds like an organic metaphor -- a social order is an organism and
>"decays," degenerates, becomes "decadent."
>
>In tributary social orders (all pre-capitalist class societies) there
>might have been a certain rightness to the organic metaphor.
>
>But capitalism may become increasingly brutal and destructive, but it
>always arises from its own ashes, as fresh and brutal and destructive
>(and as capable of producing good art) as ever. It won't ever die a
>natural death I fear. And it will continue to produce new aesthetic
>forms. The charge of degeneracy shows a lack of imagination in the
>critic.
>
>Carrol

I don't believe Capitalism is natural. It is a mechanism that is fully
steered by very large organizations whose sole purpose is to prevent its
ideology from disappearing. If this were not the case, I would think we may
have seen some 'organic' alternatives by now...