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Post by dianeld on Jan 10, 2023 17:01:37 GMT -5
I'm struggling to pull my thoughts together with this excerpt so this is my first shot at trying to say what I think about just one bit - otherwise I'd be here all day!
QS's question - whether the adjective 'real' adds anything when you speak of 'real life' interests me and makes me want to say no it doesn't because I feel it implies there is only one reality, in a way the one we all seem to think is the benchmark of reality - perhaps I am completely missing the point or over indulging my ideas but I feel this doesn't go far enough. Surely any experience that anyone has is 'real' no matter how unlikely it is or how unacceptable it is to anyone else and can't be confined to those who are creative, playful and imaginative or those who discuss and cogitate. Perhaps we don't need to agree at all, perhaps we can share rather than confine. I'm going top post this before I lose my nerve.
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Post by Denny on Jan 10, 2023 17:30:32 GMT -5
Thank you for posting these resources. I have been puzzling over Western Civ #28 since you first posted it. It eluded me. I needed to refer to The Poethical Wager to begin to make sense of it, which I still have not done. Her discussion of the "swerve" and fractal geometry, plus the zig-zag shape of the poem itself helped me to begin to orient myself. Yet I still did not get much passed seeing this poem as expressing things in the outer world (as opposed to inner, which is explored in None Too Soon), with things (i.e., space) designed, or shaped, intentionally, such as the lawn, and completed such as books returned to the library. None Too Soon resonated with me. Curious that the one imperative is "Don't be scared," in the context of one's own mind, awareness. This poem seems evoke epistemology and questioning what one knows or perhaps tentatively knows. Lest we lose the self in solipsism, the poet shows a world we construct in which we all sometimes dream. But since this supposition is a construct, perhaps it doesn't preclude solipsism. As you can see, I am still flailing within Retallack's world, not really sure where I am. But isn't that part of her project: to disorient the reader and present alternative perception? You sent us a link to a book review that provided a faithful overview of Retallack's book. I have a copy of that review, but I cannot locate your email.
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Post by Denny on Jan 10, 2023 17:44:54 GMT -5
Hi, I'm just trying to get used to responding to posts which is not yet clear to me. At first #28 bothered me cause my understanding was that it was a page from a long piece and I'm still a bit uncomfortable with that approach of detaching a small piece to look at it as if it were a whole in its own terms( which is perhaps like looking at a fractal) but the fact that on a PennSound reading Retallack reads 28 as a free standing piece in its own right gave me confidence in looking at it that way. It's worthwhile to listen to that reading which also contains 29,30,31 & 33
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Post by stacyantoniadis on Jan 10, 2023 17:49:32 GMT -5
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. I really like how you phrased this Prithvijeet.
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adef
ModPo student
Posts: 20
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Post by adef on Jan 10, 2023 17:58:20 GMT -5
Like many others I am finding that coming to Poethics for the first time I am not sure where to start the engagement. Retallack ( and I think Al) would say this uncertainty is the starting point and engaging in the converstion is a demonstration of poethical values.
During today I have been turning a thought experiment around as an imaginative stimulus. So imagine this:
The world is warming up and the polar ice caps are melting. A poeth lives near the north pole on high ground on the circumference of the earth that passes through both poles. The poeth has an alter ego who lives on a low lying island that lies on the circumference of the earth that is the equator. The poeth wishes to communicate to the alter ego how magical snow can be, not least in no two snowflakes having identical patterns of ice crystals.
How can any conversation take place with no common language for snow? Do they need a new language? Do they work at imagining in common? Imagining in common together being like the conversation between JR and her alter ego. That sounds good but doesn't resolve the starting point problem.
Both have an interest in snow not melting away and sea levels swamping small islands. So they agree to travel to meet where the polar circumference crosses the equator. During the journey, the poeth will have experienced warmer climates where there is no snow at all. The alter ego, travelling around the equator doesn't experience much in terms of temperature change and certainly no snow.
The poeth now has a wider range of experience and understanding than the alter ego. He could become a pedagogue but the alter ego won't have that. So they invite each other to imagine what life is like for the other: the poeth to live in a world of un changing warmth and the alter ego to live in a world where the sea turns to ice. They find this act of imagination difficult so to help them they construct together a story. It goes like this:
'The world is warming up and the polar ice caps are melting. A poeth lives.......' Fig1
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Post by stacyantoniadis on Jan 10, 2023 18:01:43 GMT -5
Regarding #4 The Poethical Wager
I am not schooled in philosophy (my disclaimer)
So....the idea that the real world is simple reduces one's perspective to stasis and thus one lives a life of compliance (which I think JR is saying is a fantasy). By embracing the "h" of poethics one is afforded the imagination to participate actively in the complexity of life; to consider a variety of points of view. JR is proposing the link (or blending) of art with the "real" world which requires THIS level of imagination. Dickenson, did she not live in the "real" world through her poethics?
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adef
ModPo student
Posts: 20
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Post by adef on Jan 10, 2023 18:11:56 GMT -5
'During today I have been turning a thought experiment around as an imaginative stimulus'
I am aware that Retallack is suspicious of simplification as a precondition for determining social or scientific rules. However it is an odd feature of the real world that great complexity can arise from very few rules. An example would be that the murmuration of starlings requires only I think 3 rules about distance from the neighbouring bird.
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Post by cat mccredie on Jan 10, 2023 18:48:37 GMT -5
Hi Prof Al, I'm excited we get to have a Zoom call with you, and changed my workdays round so I could join.
My only response to this essay at the moment is QUESTIONS. These are: What was the context in which she wrote the essay, where was 'the conversation' at that point? Why did the essay have a huge influence on a whole generation of poets? What was its influence? I don't expect all the answers but am all ears and fascinated by everyone's responses so far. Can't wait to zoom with you all.
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Post by afilreis on Jan 10, 2023 18:54:21 GMT -5
Hi Prof Al, I'm excited we get to have a Zoom call with you, and changed my workdays round so I could join. My only response to this essay at the moment is QUESTIONS. These are: What was the context in which she wrote the essay, where was 'the conversation' at that point? Why did the essay have a huge influence on a whole generation of poets? What was its influence? I don't expect all the answers but am all ears and fascinated by everyone's responses so far. Can't wait to zoom with you all. See you soon, Cat!
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Post by Laura De Bernardi on Jan 10, 2023 20:05:32 GMT -5
I'd like to join the zoom, but where is the info & link for it? I'm obviously missing how this new forum works? Thanks, Laura
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Post by martin on Jan 11, 2023 5:45:26 GMT -5
I'd like to join the zoom, but where is the info & link for it? I'm obviously missing how this new forum works? Thanks, Laura Same problem! (Hi Al - I like the idea of this forum, but it seems to have limitations. Will you be asking for feedback? It would seem a sensible way forward)
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lidia
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Post by lidia on Jan 11, 2023 5:54:10 GMT -5
It seems to me that Kingsolver is an author exhibiting ethical agency in her choice of heroes, themes and plot lines. She is exposing what's going wrong in the hope of galvanising positive action, as surely as Dickens did. I can understand this kind of artistic ethical agency. But I find Retallacks arguments about 'poethics' obscure. I think she relishes obscurity - the grappling. This is the kind of art she's going for. Complex means mystery - things unfathomable.
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Post by cat mccredie on Jan 11, 2023 6:01:59 GMT -5
Oh no, Laura and Martin! The zoom link was emailed to us.
It was a really illuminating session, and I can now read this essay/extract as being in conversation with the realist literary movement and the modernist response to it.
Some thoughts I formed during the zoom session: we're living at a time when there is no single trustworthy cultural authority, but many of our cultural authorities have proven / are proving untrustworthy. I realised that I have a yearning for a trustworthy cultural authority, but this yearning cannot be fulfilled in this era, and it's better, as I think Retallack is suggesting, that I accept that, lose any fear of this space we are in and just deal with it as the improperly regulated space it is. I think she may also be asserting herself in an experimental way as the only possible trustworthy cultural authority in our era.
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Post by dianeld on Jan 11, 2023 7:07:23 GMT -5
I have been reading this essay and I love it. It appears difficult. The question-and-answer format where she has this alter ego (I did not know that) asks her pointed questions about her ideas is very engaging. The form and structure of the back and forth are so brilliant. I've just started reading the Poethical Wager and agree with you that the conversational format is highly engaging. I read the excerpt first and was baffled despite multiple reads through until I went back to the old study method of skimming. All of a sudden I began to get a feel for what she is saying and the door creaked open a little and that has helped me to settle into the full piece which I doubt would have happened had I come to it cold. I have very little confidence in my understanding of her discussion but in a way I can live with that because her words feel like food and I'm very happy to enjoy the meal she has served up.
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Marti
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Post by Marti on Jan 11, 2023 10:51:22 GMT -5
A conversation with her alter ego, Quinta, may be demonstrating that a change is needed, that perhaps Retallack is beginning to feel somewhat distressed and needs to re-hash her purpose, re-visit the meaning she is trying to convey. Because I get the feeling that Quinta understands the need for minimalist work, to simplify her purpose in writing as being the greater task, but what is her stance on real, on a real life?
Could Retallack be referring to a 'real' in the sense of capturing what it means to write in the twentieth century, in the realism of the time period she had written the work in? That she could already be feeling the shift to twenty-first century? She uses scientific theory and its simplification and exactness as a comparison to minimalism in art and in writing, many times throughout the section. After I read the section on what she had learned from Duchamp and Cage, about the connection between 'art and the nature of attention', realism took on a more complex nature to Retallack, one in which the five senses needed to interpret their surroundings , discern the quite diffuse milieu of the imaginary flame from fantasy. According to D. W. Winnicott, there is a separation between the play of the imagination and the play of fantasy. I think that having conversations with Retallack seems to ground Quinta, after learning about D. W.'s polarity between imagination and fantasy, the word real was challenged yet again. It is almost as if her counter-part is pulling Retallack back asking her to explain the process of her getting there, her process of thought.
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