reminds me
hey, i'm reading lyn hejinian's essay 'reason' this morning...wanted to post this bc it reminds me of critiques/support of 'make it new'...also just raises some interesting questions. also note the muted but scenic pound-bashing.
--To value the new was, of course, a widely held and explicit tenet of modernist aesthetics, as in Pound's often cited comment, "Make it new." Viktor Shklovsky's more thoughtful, more self-reflexive, and better-analyzed aphorism, "In order to restore to us the perception of life, to make a stone stony, there exists that which we call art" takes the behest further, making newness not an end in itself but a strategy employed for the sake of the enhancement of experience - and as an affirmation of life. "Only the creation of new forms of art can restore to man sensation of the world, can resurrect things and kill pessimism." Shklovsky goes on, of course, to elaborate a now-familiar set of devices intended to restore palpability to things - retardation, roughening, etc. - that are major elements (and, in ways that can be taken as troubling, even the stock in trade) of so-called innovative poetry to this day (almost a century later). Contemporary poets - myself among them - have embraced this project. Comments variously repeating or attempting to extend Shklovsky's proposition appear throughout my teaching notebooks:
"Language is one of the principal forms our curiosity takes.
The language of poetry is a language of inquiry.
Poetry takes as its premise that language (all language) is a medium for experiencing experience. It provides us with the consciousness of consciousness.....
.....
Imagine saying that at one stage of life, one's artistic goal is to provide experience (new or revivified, restored to palpability) and at another (later) it is to provide the joy of that experience."
well, that's that. good morrow to you (y'all). i am eagerly anticipating some pictures of the new cow-face.
--To value the new was, of course, a widely held and explicit tenet of modernist aesthetics, as in Pound's often cited comment, "Make it new." Viktor Shklovsky's more thoughtful, more self-reflexive, and better-analyzed aphorism, "In order to restore to us the perception of life, to make a stone stony, there exists that which we call art" takes the behest further, making newness not an end in itself but a strategy employed for the sake of the enhancement of experience - and as an affirmation of life. "Only the creation of new forms of art can restore to man sensation of the world, can resurrect things and kill pessimism." Shklovsky goes on, of course, to elaborate a now-familiar set of devices intended to restore palpability to things - retardation, roughening, etc. - that are major elements (and, in ways that can be taken as troubling, even the stock in trade) of so-called innovative poetry to this day (almost a century later). Contemporary poets - myself among them - have embraced this project. Comments variously repeating or attempting to extend Shklovsky's proposition appear throughout my teaching notebooks:
"Language is one of the principal forms our curiosity takes.
The language of poetry is a language of inquiry.
Poetry takes as its premise that language (all language) is a medium for experiencing experience. It provides us with the consciousness of consciousness.....
.....
Imagine saying that at one stage of life, one's artistic goal is to provide experience (new or revivified, restored to palpability) and at another (later) it is to provide the joy of that experience."
well, that's that. good morrow to you (y'all). i am eagerly anticipating some pictures of the new cow-face.
posted by Lauren | 8:52 AM
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