tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post148426019137615609..comments2024-02-08T05:04:18.484-08:00Comments on J'S THEATER: Blogging Good For You + Houlihan, Harvey & Poetry as/or Conceptual ArtJohn Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-36349878864255132472008-06-14T10:12:00.000-07:002008-06-14T10:12:00.000-07:00My brain exploded, so I have nothing coherent. But...My brain exploded, so I have nothing coherent. But, I'm re-reading Gerald Graff and John Guillory to prepare for teaching in the fall, and I'm struck by the relationship they collectively forge between interpretation (Graff) and institutions (Guillory) as what enable (determine) the value of the literary. I raise this because, of course, the idea of poetry in the 20th C. academy is consecrated by the New Critics (as something that needs interpretation, as I read Graff, and there's a whole mass culture aspect I'm eliding). So that, in fact, poetry in the academy (a very distinct space) has a quasi-metaleptical definition, as that which arises from its need for interpretation, as opposed to any pre-interpretive formal unity, direction, coherence, or figurative and discursive registers.<BR/><BR/>In some vaguely abstract way, I wonder about the role of interpretation in distinguishing between poetry and conceptual art (I'm thinking about Paula Claire in the anthology Out of Everywhere who banishes the alphabet, but calls it poetry). And, in a Guillory sense, about the role of the institution (be it the school or the "poetry establishment" or "non-establishment") in shaping what might or might not be poetry. Of course, I'm also thinking about how the adjective "poetic" both seems to stabilize a referent (which one? what is poetry?) while simultaneously banishing it. Is this, as a brilliant colleague of mine has it, a discussion about "form" that takes it more seriously and abstractly than we tend to? For Kenneth Burke, for instance, form is created in the circuit poetry creates between readers and listeners--so much for the page.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com