Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thirteen Assertions




i.

It has been a long time since our culture has deemed poetry necessary. We may be entering such a time again.

ii.

We have at our disposal stunning modes of discourse. We may shortly have little else

iii.

Of all textual modes thus far evolved, poetry is the most efficient shape shifter.

iv.

It is possible for poetry to infiltrate the cellular structure of the body politic, like fine sand sifting into the gears of a clock.

v.

Language is a mental environment. Poetry is its most complete distillation.

vi.

The nervous system of the body politic is a cultural artifact, a species of fiction, but it constantly evolves.

vii.

No assertions here are logically supportable; rather they are incantations, uttered in extremis, out of a desire to create.

viii.

“God” created the universe via the in extremis incantation that is “himself.”

ix.

Everything that is is an expression of that expression.

x.

Poetry, as utterance in extremis, is an emergence, and as such, it represents the core of Being.

xi.

Representation is manifestation. Manifestation is Being.

xii.

The poet in our culture is the entrepreneur of a nonexistent selfhood.

xiii.

It is useless to attempt to apply capitalist models to the conditions within which poetry manifests itself: how much gold is a ghost worth?


[These "assertions" were originally posted on the blog of The Kenyon Review.]

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