L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry is properly named because its practitioners used the manipulative nature of language, specifically through criticism, both formal and informal, to turn poetry from its correct nature as prosody (that is, the music of language) and metaphor into prose spaced on a page--robbed of power, metaphor, and currency.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
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GM, check out this contest: it's the Richard Wilbur prize. It's for formal verse, plus -- the judge is David Middleton, who is Christian and writes in formal verse AND is a southerner (Louisiana). There's a lil' bit mroe info at Poets & Writers, contests (online).
http://english.evansville.edu/evansvillepress/therichardwilburaward.pdf
Check it out, and see if you can submit something.
LANGUAGE came out of an evolution of thought arising from Kant. Kant argued that we have innate characteristics of the mind that allow us to process perceptions. These regulators had to do with space and time, morals, and beauty.
Wittgenstein wondered if the parameters of the regulation couldn't be moved, that is, that they were software rather than hardware, to update the terminology.
Language poets assume it's software, and then proceed to move the parameters around to change the way we perceive things.
This is manipulation for political porpoises, of course, and is just jibber jabber finally, since the theory on which it's based isn't true.
Experience precedes understanding, and can fundamentally change understanding. When my daughter was baptized I didn't go there expecting to be with God. When I was, it changed my life.
I suppose you would say that in the beginning was the Word. But the Word was Poetry, not political manipulation.
But then we're back to square one, again.
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