Archive for November 24, 2009

Author’s Subtext: Poetry and Pornography

2
November 24, 2009
by in APN

Writing this article was prompted by dialogue with a friend who recalled our earlier dialogues wherein we both agreed that there was no way to speak literally to these foundational issues regarding culture, outside of poetry.  Her note included the following;

“To me inclusionality is a feeling of being in the flow; as you say, it’s the Tao – and the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.  … You or I (I forget which of us it was) once said that poetry was the only thing to get the Tao across – and probably haiku at that.  Because real poetry sidles up on it sideways instead of trying to describe it exactly.  That’s why your images of geese and fish and stormclouds and even cars on the freeway work, and mathematical or other descriptions don’t.”

But, at the same time, poetry can be pretty ambiguous, and even though most people love it, the world of the poetic and the world of rational prose go on unreconciled.

My thought was that there needs to be some ‘reconciliation’ here, (more…)

Poetry and Pornography: Inversion that elicits perversion

2
November 24, 2009
by in APN

What could the link possibly be between ‘poetry’ and ‘pornography’?

Imagine that ten different people were asked to make a movie that portrayed life in a small mountain village.  What variants on this theme might emerge, and why?

‘Life’ is a four-letter word that can take on many different meanings; i.e. we can impute many different meanings to this little choo-choo train of abstract symbols that mean nothing in themselves, with the engine ‘L’ pulling them along and the caboose ‘e’ pulling up the rear.

Should we start the film with a helicopter shot of the morning sun lighting up the peaks of the mountains (majestic classical music in the background, with horns and tympanums, perhaps a soprano voice), the morning light descending down the verdant slopes to lift away the darkness that obscures, to reveal the village nesting comfortably in the mothering embrace of the nurturing landscape.  In this ‘framing’ there is the sense that (more…)

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