Subject: Re: Percy and Triads
From: Ken Armstrong (ab997@SEORF.OHIOU.EDU)
Date: Wed Oct 20 1999 - 21:19:58 EDT
> Robert G Eckert wrote:
> >
> > Ken Armstrong
> >
> > The_Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ tells us, "With regard to human
> evolution
> > Wallace differed from Darwin in affirming that man's mental powers,
> To say that language is more than emotion is not to say that emotion is
> not involved in language.
> When poets express their thoughts in sonnets, they are most certainly
> drawing upon their emotions. And it goes way deeper than that. The life
> impulse expressed by the poet is quite basic. Each of the poets'
> individual cells is contributing the symbiotic orchestra of their being
> as they attempt that most sublime connection to insure the continuation
> of their life force.
I must and happily and gratefully do take your word for the possible
role of reticular function, but I'm not sure about the connection between
poets and any continuation of the life force in their cells or the life
impulse in their poetry. I'm not for it or against it; I just don't
understand it yet. Some definition might make it clearer. I am reminded of
T. S. Eliot's statement in his essay on Matthew Arnold, who had made a
claim for what poetry "at bottom" is. Eliot's gentle refutation was that
"the bottom is a long way down" and that poetry could probably not be
contained by Arnold's "consolation and stay." The caution being that it is
difficult to say, postitively, what poetry is. Eliot's own many passes at
it illustrate the difficulty.
> However, the LANGUAGE, the system of words, that the poet utilizes has
> resulted by means of a process that simply can not be explained by means
> of the principles of natural selection.
Amen to that. McLuhan was fond of saying that language itself is
the greatest work of art, dwarfing what any individual artist can
hope to produce. (Nikki--poets in tune with that undertanding of language
must be up to something more than "getting chicks." Let's leave something
for the roosters to do...)
I don't quite remember how my name got at the top of this post...but want
to assure my fellow veteran Percy lister, Jim Piat, that no strong arm
tactics were involved, nor indeed harmed, in the production of this post,
for then it would be merely cant (think not that you have ken when you
have cant, and so on)..
As John Ciardi was wont to say, and can be heard saying again, echoing from
beyond the grave through the halls of NPR: Good words to you all.
Ken Armstrong
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