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Post by Paul K on Jan 10, 2023 0:38:58 GMT -5
Dear friends in reading,
My father, the son of a philosophy professor and Quaker mystic, was four years old when he saw his father die of a heart attack while washing dishes. Later, as a young man, he collected and published another volume of his father's writings, and wrote and published his biography. But he soon felt impatient with the Quaker idea that God would guide him, speak to him, reveal to him what he should do with his life. Eventually he decided God was "an insufficient metaphor," that he had ideas about what needed to be done, and he would do them. He spent his career in human services, working with college students and inner city youth, developing alternatives to the juvenile justice system, and overseeing Baltimore City's work to support AIDS, tuberculosis and STD patients. In his retirement, my father returned to active participation in a Quaker meeting, but his ideas didn't change. My father died a few years ago after a decade of Parkinson's Disease.
By way of very partial introduction, that is the man who taught me that, whatever value the Quaker testimonies of truth and simplicity had, life was complex and an honest life that looked at reality had to be at peace with uncertainty and ambiguity. So, whether through familiarity with a certain amount of philosophical language or this teaching, I resonated with this dialogue.
Favorite quotations:
Certain kinds of art help us live with nourishment and pleasure in the real world, connect us with it in ways nothing else can, by shifting our attention to formally framed material conditions in ingenious ways. [That is, by shifting our attention to the artist's (provisional, crafted) framing of life.]
[T]he ability to play, that is, engage with the material world outside our minds via the active imagination is our way of participating in the real... This imaginative vitality, this connectedness with the world, is present in anyone who thrives on curiosity, puzzling, conjecture.
f you can no longer pretend that all things are fundamentally simple or elegant, a poetics thickened by an h launches an exploration of art's significance as, not just about, a form of living in the real world.
-Paul
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Post by sophianaz on Jan 10, 2023 1:17:42 GMT -5
I loved the rhetorical framing of this piece, how JR and QS don’t see “ I to I” So as I understand it, Poethics is poetry ( and art) that puts itself in “the thick of things “ a chaotic and unpredictable field of existence, where anything can ( or cannot) happen and so it is an intersection of chance and agency.
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Post by cat mccredie on Jan 10, 2023 5:30:13 GMT -5
Dear friends in reading,
My father, the son of a philosophy professor and Quaker mystic, was four years old when he saw his father die of a heart attack while washing dishes. Later, as a young man, he collected and published another volume of his father's writings, and wrote and published his biography. But he soon felt impatient with the Quaker idea that God would guide him, speak to him, reveal to him what he should do with his life. Eventually he decided God was "an insufficient metaphor," that he had ideas about what needed to be done, and he would do them. He spent his career in human services, working with college students and inner city youth, developing alternatives to the juvenile justice system, and overseeing Baltimore City's work to support AIDS, tuberculosis and STD patients. In his retirement, my father returned to active participation in a Quaker meeting, but his ideas didn't change. My father died a few years ago after a decade of Parkinson's Disease.
By way of very partial introduction, that is the man who taught me that, whatever value the Quaker testimonies of truth and simplicity had, life was complex and an honest life that looked at reality had to be at peace with uncertainty and ambiguity. So, whether through familiarity with a certain amount of philosophical language or this teaching, I resonated with this dialogue.
Favorite quotations:
Certain kinds of art help us live with nourishment and pleasure in the real world, connect us with it in ways nothing else can, by shifting our attention to formally framed material conditions in ingenious ways. [That is, by shifting our attention to the artist's (provisional, crafted) framing of life.]
[T]he ability to play, that is, engage with the material world outside our minds via the active imagination is our way of participating in the real... This imaginative vitality, this connectedness with the world, is present in anyone who thrives on curiosity, puzzling, conjecture.
f you can no longer pretend that all things are fundamentally simple or elegant, a poetics thickened by an h launches an exploration of art's significance as, not just about, a form of living in the real world.
-Paul
I'm in awe of the critique of God as an "insufficient metaphor" |
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Post by Prithvijeet Sinha on Jan 10, 2023 5:54:02 GMT -5
Ms.Retallack continues to expand our knowledge of the written and spoken word with her oeuvre. In THE POETHICAL WAGER, she 'plays' with the word poetics, adding an extra h to it to turn it into a more dynamic and robust POETHICS, adding a serrated edge to the way we discuss art and its myriad permutations.
In a rhetorical engagement with her alter ego Quinta/ Q.S., she is letting the ethics of enquiry inform worldviews with insights that are practical. For both her selves here, the transition of a word rests not just on an extra letter for emphasis but in extricating all forms of art from undue academic posturing. Of course, any undertaking that challenges the established form of language and presentation knowingly winks at the brickbats it is bound to receive from naysayers. Ms. Retallack knows that all too well and her portfolio of reinvention attests to that knowledge. In her idea of ethical agency , it informs values that endear, open up knots in an age of saturation and suggests ways in which works and words affect culture at large.
The distinguishing factor here between poetics and poethics is in the manner of complexity and clarity embedded within language itself. The latter shouldn't dumb down discourses and the former shouldn't be used as an excuse for crusty erudition. A point of clarity, seeking conveyance of ideas and better understanding gets afoot here in this brief extract.
The pivot then shifts to how circumstances of life beget complex turning and jumping-off points; the vertigo of life derives from complexity in the diurnal. So language and our daily expression must not shy away from holding a mirror to real-life in general. Naturalism, realism , the idea of fact and fiction is broached to enable a viewpoint that's neutral and doesn't rest in polarities or bald distinctions without meaningful import. Ms. Retallack is correct to pinpoint that 'complex realism' and other artifices of realism are worlds apart in their meaning, intent and share in the larger linguistic framework. Nobody is saying that seeking complexity for the sake of it is necessary in any way. Again in the same breath, it is advisable to simplify everything down to a translucent residue so that all good efforts, conscientiousness and calligraphy that constitutes art disappears in service of rank imagery that is vapid and lurid, cold and unaffected, as we see in popular culture and the noise that is social media. A balance and tipping of the scales is hence pertinent to effect a conducive discourse regarding art, language and the manner of delineating simplicity and lucidity without sacrificing the nuances of our complex human values embedded in expression.
Even a minimalist work's texture is quoted to point at the nuances that we need to acknowledge in the poetics of life without the politics of simplification and crude cultural centres intervening without any concrete resolution.
In a nutshell, reality springs from a deep connection with the everyday. Art is ultimately a reflection, oftentimes a refraction and not to be misconstrued as a diversion from the diurnal. Art begets the imagination and the material world in a synthesis and is not to be a form of stasis or a superficial take on fantasy.
Fantasy, after all, evinces a panorama of allegories, phantasmagorias and dreamworlds where the speech patterns, emotions and pursuits reach for the same acknowledgement of real-world crises and patterns. So it's a heightened form of reality. Language serves the same purpose: to be rooted in reality in all permutations and use metaphors, symbolism et al in order to enhance the said and the unsaid. Art springs forth from such a healthy amalgamation. The poetics of our world is in such a balanced register, never overreaching for polarized concepts.
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Post by Prithvijeet Sinha on Jan 10, 2023 6:00:24 GMT -5
Ms.Retallack continues to expand our knowledge of the written and spoken word with her oeuvre. In THE POETHICAL WAGER, she 'plays' with the word poetics, adding an extra h to it to turn it into a more dynamic and robust POETHICS, adding a serrated edge to the way we discuss art and its myriad permutations. In a rhetorical engagement with her alter ego Quinta/ Q.S., she is letting the ethics of enquiry inform worldviews with insights that are practical. For both her selves here, the transition of a word rests not just on an extra letter for emphasis but in extricating all forms of art from undue academic posturing. Of course, any undertaking that challenges the established form of language and presentation knowingly winks at the brickbats it is bound to receive from naysayers. Ms. Retallack knows that all too well and her portfolio of reinvention attests to that knowledge. In her idea of ethical agency , it informs values that endear, open up knots in an age of saturation and suggests ways in which works and words affect culture at large. The distinguishing factor here between poetics and poethics is in the manner of complexity and clarity embedded within language itself. The latter shouldn't dumb down discourses and the former shouldn't be used as an excuse for crusty erudition. A point of clarity, seeking conveyance of ideas and better understanding gets afoot here in this brief extract. The pivot then shifts to how circumstances of life beget complex turning and jumping-off points; the vertigo of life derives from complexity in the diurnal. So language and our daily expression must not shy away from holding a mirror to real-life in general. Naturalism, realism , the idea of fact and fiction is broached to enable a viewpoint that's neutral and doesn't rest in polarities or bald distinctions without meaningful import. Ms. Retallack is correct to pinpoint that 'complex realism' and other artifices of realism are worlds apart in their meaning, intent and share in the larger linguistic framework. Nobody is saying that seeking complexity for the sake of it is necessary in any way. Again in the same breath, it is advisable not to simplify everything down to a translucent residue so that all good efforts, conscientiousness and calligraphy that constitutes art disappears in service of rank imagery that is vapid and lurid, cold and unaffected, as we see in popular culture and the noise that is social media. A balance and tipping of the scales is hence pertinent to effect a conducive discourse regarding art, language and the manner of delineating simplicity and lucidity without sacrificing the nuances of our complex human values embedded in expression. Even a minimalist work's texture is quoted to point at the nuances that we need to acknowledge in the poetics of life without the politics of simplification and crude cultural centres intervening without any concrete resolution. In a nutshell, reality springs from a deep connection with the everyday. Art is ultimately a reflection, oftentimes a refraction and not to be misconstrued as a diversion from the diurnal. Art begets the imagination and the material world in a synthesis and is not to be a form of stasis or a superficial take on fantasy. Fantasy, after all, evinces a panorama of allegories, phantasmagorias and dreamworlds where the speech patterns, emotions and pursuits reach for the same acknowledgement of real-world crises and patterns. So it's a heightened form of reality. Language serves the same purpose: to be rooted in reality in all permutations and use metaphors, symbolism et al in order to enhance the said and the unsaid. Art springs forth from such a healthy amalgamation. The poetics of our world is in such a balanced register, never overreaching for polarized concepts. |
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lfm
Community TA 
Posts: 9
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Post by lfm on Jan 10, 2023 11:27:18 GMT -5
I loved the rhetorical framing of this piece, how JR and QS don’t see “ I to I” So as I understand it, Poethics is poetry ( and art) that puts itself in “the thick of things “ a chaotic and unpredictable field of existence, where anything can ( or cannot) happen and so it is an intersection of chance and agency. Sophia, I didn’t appreciate this framing you point out when it appeared in the first of our poems, but I see now that this dialogue is essential to Retallack’s experience of emerging new perspectives. |
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soni
ModPo student
Posts: 5
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Post by soni on Jan 10, 2023 12:41:49 GMT -5
The part of the piece that I connected to most powerfully was Retallack's discussion of the theory of play, the necessity of play and the distinction between real and fantasy.
As she writes.... "the ability to play, engage with the material world outside our minds via the active imagination, is our way of participating in the real" ......as opposed to the... " inward trajectory and stasis of fantasy."
After reading that, I was reminded of Emerson's Transcendentalism, Barthes's Word Play, and myself hitting a forehand winner "in the zone," playing tennis.
Those moments where we lose ourselves in deliberate concentration of the stuff we love to do, instead of mindless scrolling and wishing we were somewhere else.
"playing" with this text.... a democratic pursuit......an act of imagination
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Post by Vijaya Maddali on Jan 10, 2023 13:03:54 GMT -5
One of my favorite quotes is where JR asks artists, particularly poets " Resist pressures to regress, deny, escape, transcend. Pop culture and religion do that well enough on their own." I loved this quote because it came after a dense portion of JR talking about the world being "at a threshold of untold possibilities" This sentence made so much sense to me. I am about to go to India, and I am bracing myself for learning infinite patience with relatives who belong to religious communities, friends who have suddenly turned superstitious. I will have to reserve my judgements. But what is significant is that she distinguishes all that separates art and poetry from popular culture. One has to engage with the world - the contemporary world, the messy world with one's imagination. But to do this is not to reduce the complex to simplistic binaries. That is what popular culture does- give us palatable bites mixed with sugary fantasy.
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Post by vijaya on Jan 10, 2023 13:22:37 GMT -5
The part of the piece that I connected to most powerfully was Retallack's discussion of the theory of play, the necessity of play and the distinction between real and fantasy. As she writes.... "the ability to play, engage with the material world outside our minds via the active imagination, is our way of participating in the real" ......as opposed to the... " inward trajectory and stasis of fantasy." After reading that, I was reminded of Emerson's Transcendentalism, Barthes's Word Play, and myself hitting a forehand winner "in the zone," playing tennis. Those moments where we lose ourselves in deliberate concentration of the stuff we love to do, instead of mindless scrolling and wishing we were somewhere else. "playing" with this text.... a democratic pursuit......an act of imagination Yes, Soni. That was one of my favorite parts too. She talks of how children have this ability and how inventors and explorers are also capable of this curiosity and wonder and we call them 'child-like'. One of the reasons why the times I was doing the symposium mode and also visiting my grandsons were just paradise for me! When I was hanging out with the boys I was looking at the world through their eyes and in Mod Po we are paying attention as we close read each poem |
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Post by vijaya on Jan 10, 2023 13:43:44 GMT -5
There were many phrases or fragments I enjoyed here, starting with the reference to the letter "h" in "poethics" as an "accursed Aitch"! This made me smile. And seems to point to Retallack's positioning of this as a poetic project -- poetry, or at least some forms of it, pay attention to the sounds of letters and words more so than prose does. The "accursed Aitch" also made me smile because my partner is from Newfoundland, where traditional accents often drop in an "Aitch" here and there... saying "I gots me bag of hodds and hends" rather than "I've got my bag of odds and ends" is one real-life example he has often pointed to or recounted. Or "hice" rather than "ice". It's interesting for me to consider, to this extent, how Retallack's "poethics" are still kind of explicitly written from an American academic norm of language, even as they push against that American academic norm of language. In some other dialects and subcultures, perhaps ones more so-called "marginal" or "working-class" in relative to Retallack's Ivy League-ish academic environs, "poethics" might be the "correct" way to say "poetics" in the first place...? In any case, I do think that perhaps what I miss out most in my laptop-centric life is that sense of the sensory. It's not the materiality that is missing, necessarily, but the wider range of sensory that Retallack also points to. Leah, I chose two portions from your post. The first one is about the 'h' in Poethics. It is such an interesting observation about JR using academic language 'even as they push back against the American academic norm of language' Would love Al to talk about that. And secondly, you talk of missing the sense of sensory. I agree, people opt out of even talking on the phone and sending text messages. The voice has so much to convey. And besides, the deep satisfaction of even a 5-minute conversation on the phone is far more enriching than a text message. |
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Elisabeth Frischauf
Guest
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Post by Elisabeth Frischauf on Jan 10, 2023 15:03:38 GMT -5
I have carefully read everyone's reply up to this post and deeply appreciate all of them to help me deepen my journey into this work. I've learned what aitch/haitch is. And I've been inspired to write more haiku from absorbing the Gestalt I get from JR and Gertrude Stein. Here they are: oy māj to JR and GS
tick tock cuckoo clock
sit, fret empty flowing rot
dribble, stuck knock (k)not
complicate simple
expand word spiral, collapse
the deepest hole forms
from the (h)ole a-rise
bruised? cleansed? brain damaged? changed--
a whirling dervish
magical major
top-topoi-ic-graphy-lap
tap tough way to live |
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Post by Paul K on Jan 10, 2023 15:28:09 GMT -5
In our selection from "The Poethical Wager," Retallack talks of "real" entering her vocabulary--for emphasis, for revising old ways of thinking, and as complex, in distinction from realisms that aim at a simplification.
Reflect back to "How to Do Things with Words": real is not a normal word at all (there is not just one way of being "not a pig")
A theme of "How to Do Things with Words," after a number of readings (and reading my fellow readers' comments) is that words are not used just as statements to be evaluated for their truth. They have intentions that mean more or beyond statements. They are expressive (fuck), relational (dude), dismissive (phooey), romantic... They are part of reality, not just reflective of it. Not too surprising, really.
-Paul
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Post by Colin Powers on Jan 10, 2023 15:47:54 GMT -5
What I'm drawing from this is a distinction between ethos and theoretics, of Poetics and "poethics." A marriage of artistic ethos with imagination and play. A clarifying of the meaning of "fantasy" as a means of engagement rather than a means of escape. The "real" is not fixed but instead more prone to change than the imaginary, maybe. Reality suffers from representation while fantasy is a generator for reinvention. Art as a tool for keeping pace rather than a clutter of rules and definitions, or a clambering after history. Of course we are always wrestling with the irony that keeping pace and reading all of this puts us in a sedentary situation at our desks or pinned under a laptop on our beds... for the love of the game, I suppose.
It's clear to me after these readings--especially this one---that Retallack relies on play (in formatting, in syntax) to counteract the trappings of academic and theoretic discourse, which is also part of the architecture here, no doubt.
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lidia
ModPo student
Posts: 24
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Post by lidia on Jan 10, 2023 15:50:56 GMT -5
It's interesting to me that JR is discussing the same issues which concern a historian whom I admire. 'Simple stories are dangerous'. Propaganda, for instance works to simplify. Life is complex and to mythologize it, or reduce it to models is just that - a reduction. Engagement with 'real stories' is difficult because to form those puzzling questions you have to unlearn and not to expect gratification - it's a prickly business. 'You have to watch the film without the voiceover' and expect multiplicity.
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Post by Darcy on Jan 10, 2023 16:00:01 GMT -5
After listening to the Poem Talk episode, I'm still stymied. To me, it's steeped in philosophy. I do love her concept of "poethics" and the value she places on play. In a sense, that's exactly what she's doing here, playing with words - and our minds.
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