----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- The imagery of mechanical efficiency and "perfect economy" is intriguing. How might Charles Bernstein's metaphor of a poetic "engine idling" contrast with that? (I'm thinking of Ming-Qian Ma's discussion of that idling image and Bernstein's poetics as "postmodern counter speed.") What would the machinery of a poetics of inefficiency look like? ________________________________________ From: empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au [empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Margaret J Rhee [mr...@uoregon.edu] Sent: Friday, May 05, 2017 1:22 PM To: soft_skinned_space Subject: [-empyre-] A poem is a small (or large) machine
----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- "There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character." I'd like to start a thread about this quote by WCW, that Mike raised here. A friend the Mexican poet Hugo Martinez, remarked we should replace machine with machete. "There must be something hardwired into its machinery--a heartbeat, a pulse--that keeps it breathing." -- Ed Hirsch _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
