I am not alone

[twelveoone]

Ira Sadoff: "Neo-Formalism: A Dangerous Nostalgia"
I didn't say this it's an excerpt:


The best poets of our age, and of any age, use all the vehicles of craft to create a dramatized, inclusive experience. And that inclusiveness, which makes simultaneous and integrated the pleasures of language and culture -- indeed, language as culture -- is a far better measure than meter for poetic talent.

...nor am I empty

I'm just chock full of somethin'

 

[bronzeage]

There should be an award for creative literary nomemclature.

"Neo-Formalism" is such a clever term. Much better than Post modern deconstructive collectivist pan-anarcho-syndicalism.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

what the fumf did u both just say?

 

[bronzeage]

what the fumf did u both just say?

Here's my best try at an explanation:

In the early days of modern Natural Science and Zoology(1700-1900), a lot of the basic knowledge of molecular biology was still unknown. We just didn't know much about how things worked, so most science was centered on the appearance of things. This was the golden age of classification. Classification requires a system and lots and lots of names. Every time someone caught a beetle of a different color, it's place in the family tree of beetles was established and it got a new name. No one had any idea why the beetle was of a different color, or what difference it made.

The same state of affairs still exists in academic literature. If a scholar wants to write about writing, the essential thing is to place the writing somewhere on the tree and name it. This works just as well in art, too. To most sensible people, "modern" means right now, but if the label sticks, then tomorrow, "modern" will be yesterday. To solve this problem, we now have "post modern", which means something that happens after right now. If that is not confusing enough, consider that all the "Pre-Raphaelite" paintings were created 328 years after Raphael died.

I have always contended, there is no money in writing poetry, but one can make a good living writing about poets.

 

[twelveoone]

Here's my best try at an explanation:

In the early days of modern Natural Science and Zoology(1700-1900), a lot of the basic knowledge of molecular biology was still unknown. We just didn't know much about how things worked, so most science was centered on the appearance of things. This was the golden age of classification. Classification requires a system and lots and lots of names. Every time someone caught a beetle of a different color, it's place in the family tree of beetles was established and it got a new name. No one had any idea why the beetle was of a different color, or what difference it made.

The same state of affairs still exists in academic literature. If a scholar wants to write about writing, the essential thing is to place the writing somewhere on the tree and name it. This works just as well in art, too. To most sensible people, "modern" means right now, but if the label sticks, then tomorrow, "modern" will be yesterday. To solve this problem, we now have "post modern", which means something that happens after right now. If that is not confusing enough, consider that all the "Pre-Raphaelite" paintings were created 328 years after Raphael died.

I have always contended, there is no money in writing poetry, but one can make a good living writing about poets.

An interesting take at Linnaean taxonomy appears in Lakoff's
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind

I'll address it tomorrow
if tomorrow quits running away

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I reserve the right at my age not to have to worry my head about weird classifications, it's one of the perks of old age along with tripping up yobs on busses and letting the dog out when they sit on my wall. I think I've turned into my mother and even my mirror agrees