No Ledge

a dedicated poem from

Mark Young (gamma ways)

**********************

time March's on

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 01:32:04 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <[log in to unmask]>
From: Nick Piombino <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Start an Argument on the Buffalo List
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Blaming the blogosphere for what is lacking on the poetics list is an old tradition,(old in internet-time) and sounds to these old poet's ears like a cry of pain. This is not unusual from Mr. Sondheim, whose precision of perception is not the least bit
lost on a great number of poets, despite its many fascinating, complex camouflages.

What a poet needs, especially a long distance marathon poetry runner, is response. Some say there is never enough response for an artist, and that might be true, especially for those who crave the energizing, potentially infinitely expanding cycle of signal and response between artist and audience.

It may sadden, alarm and confuse some to hear, given its tawdry, tinny surfaces, that this is exactly what is delighting and challenging many writers in Blogland. But the cycle (of signal land response), that is occurring in this situation is unlike any that has ever existed before, in the world of letters, it seems to me, and is not at all subsumed under the model shaped by the cycle of argument and debate, the taste for which is no doubt being stimulated (for some) by the pathetically tired old
clichéd debates now going on in the mostly false and fraudulent US election process: another kind of Academy Award ceremony that is not even funny anymore.

Though many realize all of this movie academy and election academy sturm and drang is almost completely devoid of meaning (not significance, of course), does not prevent the emergence of the mentally stimulating, imagination-
appetizing aspects of the spectacle of debate, an ancient mode of provoking the discovery and identification of greatness. But this election process is the clearest proof of Guy Debord's theories anybody could ever want to see. The Society of the Spectacle is beyond crisis; it is moribund.

Can I wonder aloud if this argument and debate method of exchanging knowledge and inducing change, discovering truth, and uncovering greatness is totally bankrupt? What might replace it? What could replace it?

Something is happening in Blogland and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

affectionate regards to my list friends and literary comrades,
Nick Piombino