is not an idea I would have thought of, but is one I think is worth pondering. When I encountered it, I immediately thought of William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Carlos Williams with their: "The world is too much with us"; "Things are in the saddle"; "No ideas but in things." Could most poets alive during the rise of Industrialism be considered Materialists in spite of whatever intellectual and/or spiritual values they held? In spite of their poetic and/or aesthetic positions? A step back to take in how thoroughly things--especially those "practical" things which by our ingenuities we humans have made and continue to make--have captivated us/ definitely promotes this idea. See William Wordsworth Ralph Waldo Emerson William Carlos Williams but also see Samuel Taylor Coleridge and then go to this Joshua Corey post: 6/18 It is his idea, and it seems to have arisen out of his thoughts about Ammons, whose works he has been reading; and out of his concurrent thoughts about Ashbery. This post is heavy with conclusions I, for one, had never entertained. However, if his general thesis is accepted, most schools of poets since the Romantics could easily be Materialists. bl00356
Monday, June 22, 2009
from Romanticism to Materialism
Sunday, June 21, 2009
This Summer Solstice Father's Day
is a day of new beginnings for me. In the physical progenitorial sense, I am not a father, and it is doubtful I ever will be or even want to be. What then? Sometimes how one sees one's spirit becomes reflected in one's body. Even though I have been forgiven, I had let my outer body gather the dust and dirt of years. Today, partly as the result of my new GP's insistence, I began the move toward the proper care of that organ. Am also in the process of making more changes toward the betterment of my inner body since she gave me permission to do that which I thought I ought not do. Are you enjoying my post-avant indirectness? If you are not, you need to get with it as I can't promise anything. It's all in the flow, and I cannot know how that flow will go. Yes, I do already feel better but the road ahead is long and treacherous. Those of you who are fathers, I hope this day has been, and continues to be, kind to you. - Ditched at last my old home page and made Google my home page. Google is a spider you know, and we authors are arcane delicacies. - Have upped my water intake, mostly by diluting my nutrition drinks more. - J J Gallaher posted a rant against accessible poetry which is drawing rebuttals from recent commentors at Poetry Foundation's Harriet--am really not certain, it may be from only one commentor at PFH. If it isn't difficult it is isn't art, JJ contendeth. Bet you can't find where I hid the egg. bl00355
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Kyphotic Hermit pause
which may become permanent. 32 posts are at Kyphotic Hermit. Here is a link list: - 1. Y 2. sort of an intro 3. doing time at iowa 4. Julia Vinograd 5. aesthetic openness 6. poem reading 7. Mr. Reginald Shepherd 8. somewhat likeable but inconsequential 9. my routine for visiting blogs 10. poets are conduits 11. sullen grey 12. i cannot be consoled 13. sometimes i think 14. disheveled life 15. in remembrance 16. theme variation 17. i cant stand being human 18. K. Silem Mohammad on Flarf 19. James Wright, James Wright, Robert Bly 20. Denise Low's Blog 21. their conversation continues 22. twenty influences on my writing 23. toward morning while 24. cover scans plus five poems 25. post-industrial world and poetry 26. John Latta post for today 27. Stephen Burt Elliptical 28. regarding Burt's New Thing 29. coteries, categories, individuals 30. ragged publication list 31. Eliot, O'Hara, Radiohead connection 32. Brands by Dave Oliphant bl00354
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Reading book by Owen Barfield 2
See bl00343 May 22, 2009. From chapter VIII The Making of Meaning (II) p. 138 [6] When we start explaining the language of famous scientists as examples of 'poetic diction', it may well seem that the ordinary meaning of that literary phrase has been inflated beyond the bounds of reason. Never- theless such an extension was necessary, in order to make clear its real nature. Nor has it been waste of time, if it has convinced a single person who needed convincing, how essentially parochial is the fashionable distinction between Poetry and Science as modes of experience. . . . the rational principle must be strongly developed in the great poet. - p. 139 [6] If the poetic is unduly ascendant, behold the mystic or the madman, unable to grasp the reality of percepts at all--being still resting, as it were, in the bosom of gods or demons--not yet man, man in the fullness of his stature, at all. But if the passive, logistic, prosaic principle predominates, then the man becomes--what? the collector, the man who cannot grasp the reality of anything but percepts. And here at last a real distinction between poet and scientist, or rather between poetaster and pedant, does arise. - pp. 140-141 [7] Provided, then, that we do not look too far back into the past (i.e. beyond the point at which the 'given' meaning of a word first began to yield place to the 'created' meaning) language does indeed appear historically as an endless process of metaphor transforming itself into meaning. Seeking for material in which to incarnate its last inspiration, imagination seizes on a suitable word or phrase, uses it as a metaphor, and so creates a meaning. The progress is from Meaning, through inspiration to imagination, and from imagination, through metaphor, to meaning; inspiration grasping the hitherto unapprehended, and imagination relating it to the already known. bl00353
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Topical
Over at Money Rho are financial links. Two of the moment are J. H. Kunstler's post too stupid to survive in which he provides information about the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), an organization I had not heard of but plan to become familiar with. www.cnu.org - The other is Karl Denninger's post for today. Also, this evening President Obama is expected to announce the granting of some benefits to same-sex partners who are federally employed. bl00352
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
mostly silly stuff
Get off computer stool. Go directly to toilet. Do not take a side trip. Do not save/ joke for today. - Gorgeous George fell in a gorge, and now the gorge is gorgeous, George. - As I told a security guard one night in Gainesville: I used to be a slut for the FBI. - Brina had a little goat. She used to grab it by the throat. But when the goat grew big and strong, Brina left the goat alone. Then one day the old goat died. Poor Brina, she was mystified. - So I've been having trouble getting to the hidden places on my blogs, and trouble connecting to AOL, and trouble getting comments to show on other blogs; et, et, et, et. Well--not that I hadn't seen this before-- come to find out from Google: Your browser has cookies disabled. This time it hit me, and so I minimized out and went to my browser's advanced settings and removed the check mark from the request to clear temporary files each time my browser is not being used. It hadn't occurred to me until today that clearing the temporary files also meant cookies would be cleared. bl00351
Monday, June 15, 2009
recent things done
Beginning early last Wednesday and ending several minutes before noon on Sunday, a long-avoided necessary internal project was essentially completed. The upshot of that, however, remains an unknown. That it's done is joy enough. - Just completed a secondary project which had been ongoing for some time but which was halted while the more substantial project held me. - It is now 3:33 PM and I have a knotty post pertaining to haiku you might enjoy: it is Bill Knott's looking for the no-center - Still having connection problems with AOL but I think they may have begun the day I dowloaded and installed IE8. Definitely, IE8 is more security-oriented than IE7. If Google Chrome has a recovery feature, I may well try using it. I did open a Google Mail account, but I prefer AOL's email services/ even though I won't be using them as extensively as I had been. - Wish I could say I am done re-imagining past events in my life, especially those wherein I made disastrous choices, but--. bl00350
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
autobio stuff
Have begun a piece entitled "A Life Litany" that already has an ending but that might become rather long. It has four-line stanzas with the fourth line/ the same three words. In a way it's a test of how much a reader can take. - Placed a comment beneath post kh00031. Everyone who reads this should go there and read that. - Am having problems in my recent posts section. So either I will delete it altogether or change it to a list. - My sister took me out today to pick up a book, Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought, at the library we frequent; then to return an improperly packaged item to a specific Wal-Mart, where we also bought a few things; and then to a specific QT for gas; and then back to here, where my sister put together one of the things we bought. - With a spattering of lightning and thunder, threatening weather passed through here earlier this evening, but it didn't deliver. bl00349
Sunday, June 7, 2009
just considering
No doubt the Bald Eagle is a beautiful national symbol but while the Industrial Age passes/ I think we should temporarily let the Crow be our national bird. - I have been posting my quirky song lyrics at a rapid pace as of late. They come as and when they come. I have no overriding plan. If you want to snatch one or more, go ahead. Feel free to mess with any of them in your own space. - Visited Adam Fieled's Stoning the Devil yesterday. Left a comment. May link to that post of his at my K H today. - If William Michaelian and Joseph Hutchison wish to continue their recent crow project, my encumbrance need not be part of it. I will do whatever I do/ as an aside to what they do. That is why I didn't post "Rhetorical" in a comment on William's blog. I was merely riffing. - My body is in hesitation mode again, but I've been and will be eating 4 ounces of probiotic yogurt every day. Am also trying to get myself to get out and walk for at least ten minutes daily, and I am making other changes. - Although I first came online in April of 2000, I am not of the Net Generation as Don Tapscott puts it, and so I lack the confidence and skills NGers have. I learn what I need to, id est, when I am ready to learn what I need to or am forced to. - I live moment to moment, my ongoing as an ashable human primarily dependent on the will of God. I am not out to prove myself better than or even = to any other human. bl00348
Friday, June 5, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Edge sends THIRD CULTURE emails
to me. Today's features a streaming video talk: "The Impending Demise of the University" by Don Tapscott. You can access it at this URL: www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge288.html bl00346
