rationalism and poetry: friends or foes?

----- Original Message -----
> by Ron Koertge
>
> "Even Ornaments of Speech Are Forms of Deceit."
> - History of the Royal Society>
>
> It's 1667. Reason is everywhere, saving
> for the future, ordering a small glass of wine.
> Cause, arm in arm with Effect, strolls by
> in sturdy shoes.
>
> Of course, there are those who venture> out under cover of darkness
to buy a bag
> of metaphors or even some personification> from Italy, primo and
uncut.
>
> But for the most part, poets like Roderigo
> stroll the boulevards in their normal hats.
> When he thinks of his beloved, he opens
> his notebook with a flourish.
>
> "Your lips," he writes, "are like
> lips."

That's fucking hysterical. Those Puritans -- er, we Puritans? -- were so suspicious of slippery language.

Of course, his linkage of Reason, realism and rationalism to less-figurative speech is bunk. Most great advancements in literature have been advancements of realism, contemporaenous with similar scientific and political lurches forward. Gk lit; Dante; Chaucer; Shakespeare; Flaubert; all advances in realism over predecessors. Romantics too. Modernists too: new world, new seeing. "The Waste Land" -- cubism -- is a realist advance, a reaction to the myth of superficial representation. The light of Reason shines broadly on the arts and sciences. Historically, rationalist thought has promoted art and artistic experimentation; irrationality and dogmatism have been the consistent enemies of metaphor. It wasn't the rationalists who closed the London theatres, but the Roundheads. The Royal Society's campaign against ornamental speech parallels similar oppositions in great literature: Shakes over Marlowe, Donne over Pope, Wordsworth, Arnold, Pound, Eliot.

Furthermore, it's unreasonable to apply the standards of scientific rhetoric to poetry. Rationalists see them as different realms, with different rhetorics; dogmatists, on the other hand, being literal-minded, tend to break down or, better put, are too stupid to see such distinctions. Thus, milk cartons with pictures of cows on them cannot be imported into Afghanistan.

In fact, secular rationalists have ardently promoted poetry -- figured speech -- art and culture -- as the necessary, only and saving grace of mankind (as opposed to religion). Aristotle did; the neoclassical humanists did; as did their 19c descendants (cf. Matthew Arnold, "Culture & Anarchy").

The underlying phenomenon Ron's really complaining about is unsophisticated, literalist groupthink: in short, dogmatic thinking. All philosophies dissolve into dogma in the mainstream; rationalism tends to do so less than its alternatives because its fundamental premises are experimentation and falsifiability. All literary breakthroughs are anti-dogmatic, and Reason is by definition anti-dogmatic; when its follwers become dogmatic, they cease to be reasonable.

Interestingly, scientific "truths" are by definition metaphors: gravitational theories, Newtonian or Einsteinian, are theories which always approach but cannot ever fully describe reality. Non-rationalists, particularly in the transcendental tradition (e.g. Protestants, Dissenters, Puritans), claim the right to apprehend utlimate reality directly. This is the ultimate literalism.

Artists who pick on rationalism don't understand it; they bite the hand that feeds them. Ron's poem deconstructs itself: the lines "'Your lips,' he writes, 'are like / lips'," intentionally or not, resonates with Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose ...," and constitutes the same sort of radically slippery speech, the figurativeness of which is multiplied by its apparent, but ultimately paradoxical, literalism. Her lips are like "lips"? The word lips? The word on the page? The referent? Lips generally? The Platonic, ideal set of Lips? Even more interestingly, it's not her lips that are like anything; it's the word "lips" that he writes in his notebook. Literally speaking, this is a very clever tautology: her "lips," as a word written in his notebook, are indeed very much like the word "lips" written in his poem: the same arbitrary sign in a semotic system.

The understanding of language as an ultimately arbitrary, radically metaphorical sign-system is a notion bequeathed to us by the rationalist tradition -- the same tradition that understands that all "truths" are fungible and theoretical. It's also the perspective which makes it possible to see this poem as a clever, slippery work of art, as opposed to a merely cute grouse.

the dangers of delegation

> To the most creative people I know ... My Mom is going to start selling
> her cookies (Ginger Snaps, Chocolate Snaps, and Lemon Snaps, and > maybe
others), but she and her partner (my aunt Joani) are struggling to > come up
with a name for the cookie company. They need a snappy > name, something that
sounds good. She's looking for any and all suggestions. > > My Mom: Shel
Kasmir, (her full name is Sharon Elaine Kasmir)> My Aunt: Joan Ford, goes by
Joani> > Even a bad suggestion can lead to a good idea.> > thanks
mucho,>

Step back from the mic; I'm all about pastry patois.

You want something hip, something yesterday in an ironic, tomorrow sort of way, something Baudrillard. How about "Shogun Sam's Sushi Saloon." It's perfect. See how it calls attention to itself in its self-conscious failure to "refer"? Reference is so 90s. "Naming." I mean, who are we kidding. Ourselves! And the customer! Get it? Eat your heart out, Frederic Jameson! Work with me here. See the ad. Vegas skyline. Fly-through: the towers of Manhattan, Giza, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj. Zoom in on Shogun Sam's sign: a Miso bowl, filled with mini-chocolate-chip breakfast cereal, with crossed shotguns sticking into it like chopsticks.

A shade too metaphysically conceited? All right. Staying edge, but twisting up the metonymic dial: let's go with the tech angle. Hold on to your Blackberries: how about "The Internet Explorer Turn-On-Cookies Option Cookie Company." What do you mean, trademark issue? How can they register "explorer"? What, is Vasco de Gama a controlled intellectual property now? OK, OK. But it's a shame. I was liking the whole conflated erotica-stock-options subtext.

How about the "Suburban Alcoholic Toss Your Cookie Company"? Come on, ads are all about reverse psych these days. What is this, Ogilvy on Advertising? OK, OK. Look, let's just seed those neural clouds and have a brainstorm session, here.

North Dallas Comparatively Bready PralinesSnaps, Straps & Latex ChapsMary-Anne Bends But Ginger SnapsSnap-Happy (proceeds benefit battered women's shelter -- charity angle, guys)Ali's Snap-Happy Punch-Drunk ConfectionsThe Spice MomsC Is For EucharistJoani and Shel's Reform Passover DelightsJoani and Shel's Flouridated Water CrackersJoani and Shel's Postmodern Easter Matzoh

Lemme have another Balzacian 50 cups of coffee and get back to you.

Get rich quick!

When are you having a baby? Everyone's having babies. It's very au courant. All the e-trade and Apple ads are targeted at 30-year-olds with babies. I think an e-commerce site selling babies could do very well, even in this market. Think of the customer base. Every time you see a Pilot, a Game Boy or a Tamagotchi, that's a sale. But you say, those are VIRTUAL babies. REAL babies are a bigger commitment. They won't sell as well. But that's just the brilliance of it. Our website won't sell WHITE babies, silly! The supply is miniscule and the cost of labor is exorbitant. Anyway, we don't want to incur the capital costs of production -- at least not up front. There's already an installed base of suppliers -- you've got it -- overseas adoption agencies. We'd just be baby-aggregators -- middlemen, or midwives, if you prefer. And the key selling point -- we'd have to be subtle about it in our ads, so we don't incur the wrath of the SPCA -- but the selling point, obviously, is that since they're not little WHITE babies, you don't have to feel guilty about returning it when you're done playing with it. See? THIS is the value-added service that the adoption agencies don't provide. THIS is our selling point: buyback (after depreciation). The great thing about this is that it doesn't matter what color the baby is when it's a BABY. Why, even recalcitrant racist troglodytes think little colored babies are as cute as any other kind. Even cuter! So you can see, it's a sure thing.

But the best part is this: we have THREE revenue streams! First, poor benighted mothers in the dark corners of the uncivilized world PAY US to take their baby and place it with a nice American family. Yes. But this would be our smallest revenue stream, and we'd probably lose money -- we'd have to set up indenture arrangements, you know, and it might not be worth the cost of the paperwork. SECOND, we take in revenue from American parents buying our adorable little moppets. In the first five years of the business model, this is our principal revenue stream. But our THIRD revenue stream is the best of all. We buy it back, at a fraction of the price -- when it finally has some production value! Our customers are paying US so that THEY can make ALL the major investments in the baby. They're not just taking the vast majority of the depreciation -- they're actually selling it for a loss, just when it starts having labor value! We'd buy them back and put them to work. Anything, really. Children's hands are perfect for the sort of delicate manufacturing that yields good profit. And when they got to be 12 or 13, we'd have them start producing their own babies. That way, we could control our own supply! I figure that by the time we retire, we'll have been able to eliminate overseas production entirely.

We're gonna be rich, Mary! I like this idea so much, I'm gonna post it on my website right now.