Friday, October 2, 2009

Olson & Creeley, Projective Verse, and Black Mountain philosophy

In his manifesto, From Projective Verse, Charles Olson talks about the kinetics of poetry. From what I gathered, poetry is an exchange of energy, from the source of the poet's inspiration, to the final product of the poem itself, and finally to the reader who must read and gauge his or her own reaction to the poem. The process of poetry, of writing and reading it, is in a constant state of motion; it is an experience.

Charles Olson mentions Creeley, who taught with him at Black Mountain, with the mantra: "Form is never more than an extension of Content". This means that the poem's Content--the words, the metaphors, the Space--can never be separate from the Form--the structure, the rhyme scheme, the punctuation, the spaces, the metonymy, the Time--therefore, it's all married into one thing=the Poem, and even the experience of Reading the Poem, or the Performance of the Poem. Metaphor is a hierarchical marriage of two things: The Girl is a Rose, the Test is a Piece of Cake, the Light bulb is an Idea. One thing is not being compared to the other thing, it actually IS the other thing. Content IS Form, and Form IS content.

Metaphor (Space) and Metonymy (Time) are on a separate axis from one another. Metaphor measures the hierarchical relationship, Metonymy allows for a medium in which the metaphor can be expressed--just as language is expressed with words and speech that unfold over time--and the spark of "Is", which allows for this poem to occur is the breath of life. Space is the Empty Vessel, Time is the River, and the Breath that allows for Speech is the Wind that moves along that Vessel.

This is something I came up with in my philosophy class, and I heard a variation of it in class during the last lecture. It stuck out, and here is my version of it: All things in language are metaphors. A single thing cannot exist without being related to another thing. Otherwise it's not real, or it makes no sense! So: A thing can only be real, once it becomes something else. The becomes=IS. Metaphors exist not only in language, we think in metaphors as well.

Professor Bonilla's definition of Metaphor: "Giving the thing a name, that means something else."
and I believe that we give "the thing" a name that means something else because we can never actually Articulate "The Thing" in the first place. We only get as far as a parabola gets to its limit.

Every Irony requires a metaphor, because EVERYTHING requires a metaphor.

What other philosophical stuff can I get into that pertains to the poetry and Olson's Projective Verse??

Just as "Form is never more than an extension of Content", the two parts of language: Time (Metonymy) and Space (Metaphor), even though they appear to be two perpendicular lines separate from each other, they are STILL on the same plane. No matter what, they are married, and can never be divorced.

Forgive me if this isn't terribly clear, it is just a way to get all of my ideas out. Maybe something will stick out and actually make rational sense!

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