Events conspired to sidetrack my intentions today. Adam Fieled, a young 33, who is trying to define his aesthetic ideology, wrote in a post about the history-centered Jerome McGann: "I can say this: we want to keep the 'base' of what the Lang-Po crew erected, but we want sensation, sex, humanity, emotion, and narrative again." The more I thought about this post, the more I saw/ I am a centrist. Henry Gould has inaugurated The Plumbline School of poetry, a profoundly centrist entity. But as with everything else, there is more than one way to be a centrist, and I do not feel I would feel comfortable outside my own vision. - Have more to say about BAC's strange chart on Thursday past. - Want to see something really strange? Enter the space above my ceiling: 16. rho00283
Saturday, February 7, 2009
07
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Aesthetics
On page 169 of The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, the authors write: Aesthetic judgments tend to be personal, they tend to vary with cultures and with the generations, and philosophical dis- cussions of aesthetics have in recent years tended less toward the dogmatic prescription of what is beautiful than toward discussion of how aesthetic judg- ments operate and function. This book, which I am jaggedly reading, was published by Houghton Mifflin Company Boston and copyrighted in 1981 by Birkhäuser Boston. Back in the early 1960's, when he and I were Jesuit novices at a facility near St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, the late Lawrence Deysach told me: "Math is the greatest art." It may well be this is true; and if it is, it is because beauty can be more easily seen and affirmed in mathematics than in any other art, though music is a close second, or architecture is. Poetry? From my perspective, each poem's about its own aesthetic or interactions of aesthetics. A poem succeeds when it adheres to/radiates what is at the heart of it. So, the strength of its core does matter; but one could argue till time's demise about what constitutes aesthetic strength. Every poetic school is like every school of unlike fish, and what attracts one maker of poems may not attract some other maker of poems. No manner of using words is patently better than any other, but certain manners may be more appropriate for their culture. The culture we in The United States are passing through, and have in one form or another been passing through since this nation's founding? Slippery and slimy. But this is the land of the free, the home of the brave, the melting pot of the world. Exactly. Let the myriads of attention be: indeterminate, determinate; sign, signified; I erased, I raised. And to those who think it is really possible to obliterate ego and authorship, change your names to some number anonymous. When I was old enough to understand, I accepted I am Brian Salchert. That is my label. My passage on this planet requires it. I, however, do not require it for myself, however it may seem I do. I question it. Most of what I've written is old school stuff, one might conclude. Perhaps I'm a carp among rainbow trout; but old school or not, most of what I've written reveals a man at odds with himself. That is my indeterminacy. As to beauty, it seems to have lost whatever relevance. In an empire in decline, a planet inhabited by a sentient species in decline--oh, specific amazing discoveries might yet arise and reverse what is, a hard-edged purposefully ugly poetry could be a saving tonic for (rather than another symptom of) what ails. I make no judgment here. Nescio (I do not know) defines me well. Beauty--also truth--are concepts each human perceives differently at different times. On April 24, 2008 I posted the first entry of a math project I placed the final touch on today/ over at my S H blog. 13 entries. It needed to be, and I am satisfied it is, and how it is. Still, I did not abandon my other interests, and have searched my way to poetry posts helpful to me. One addresses procedural poetry, and another concerns the University of Arizona's Conceptual Poetry Symposium. Nathan Austin's A defense of (procedural) poetry is on his This Cruellest Month blog. The second is an enewsletter from the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona. Both of these-- and of course there are numerous others-- engage poetry aesthetics not to my taste, but of which I feel I should acquire more knowledge. Adrift in/ a drift adrift. Rho00074
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
my noumenon aesthetic
When a noumenon in a womb in my subconscious brain begins to become a noumenon of a different order as it passes into my conscious brain, I do not apply a pre- determined aesthetic to it unless there's a valid reason to; rather, I say to myself: let it come, and let me see. Many, if not most, such mental noumena are not amorphous. Aesthetic qualities abide in them. These qualities may not be familiar ones, but they are (through attentiveness and inspection) discoverable. Sometimes such noumena arrive fully formed, and can be (through the body of the receiver of them) immediately turned into phenomena. At other times, brief to lengthy periods of parenting are required. At yet other times they are shunted aside or eventually abandoned (for whatever reason or no reason). This eclectic trust I have, this openness to the universe does have its dangers, but it also allows the influx of life-enhancing noumena I would not otherwise be blessed by. Therefore, I see myself as being hard to categorize, especially as regards my poem-making. Still, I generally lean toward being conservative, a stance which--along with my solitary bent--I suspect relegates me (in this world as it is) to the status of one who is of little account. I realize my mentioning this highlights a fault in me, but I have written about this so often it hardly matters anymore. My life has taken many goodly and ungoodly turns. There were long periods when I distanced myself from poetry. This is not one of them. Honestly, I am desperately trying to catch up. Right now, though, I need a lunch break. I'm back, but without sufficient energy. Just before returning here, I did an "http" search and/ faster than bird shit/ got a response of nearly 2 billion sites. Ah cyberspace!: the perfect place/ for a flutterby face. --------- See directory2007 in Catmap. See at lime-tree.blogspot.com/2007/08/poem-is-you.html The Poem Is You ------------------------------------ Brian Salchert Thinking Lizard Rho00012
