william watkin's blog (since 2003)

  Lines insert false time (Ibid. 86)   Are we to take this seriously?  Is there a true time of writing and a false time?    Linguists and certain philosophers of language like Austin and Habermas would lead us to believe that there is a basic level of accepted communication, and agreed upon, non-distorted, good enough environment of intention and reception through which we talk to each other in basic, consensual ways.  One might take blogs as a kind of evidence for this.  If this is true then there is an agreed upon true time of language which is serial, developmental, syllogistic, perhaps progressive.  I say something you say something back and lo! we are human and talking the talk of that.    Yet Silliman is also aware, as a poet and political activist, that the ideal time of language is at least part constructed.  Language poetry would not exist without the Rorty-like assumption that all language is contingent and s...

The line only exists in relation to the before and after (Silliman, Tjanting 93) Again with these quotes. Noticed in my previous post I never got round to dealing with the above in any detail, in fact in not detail at all. Let's take them seriously and somewhat systematically, even though they are not systematic statements of an argument. Still, we are just finding our feet here, or our nounphase's to be more accurate. The line only exists in relation to the before and after. The number three is essential to language. The phrase, line or sentence, depending and which of these units you are dealing with at any one time, and you can be dealing with all three in the poem which makes it so rich, all depend on context for meaning to be broached. This is something we all learned from deSaussure even if his theory of the sign turns out to be a lovely fiction but not much more. The phrase does not mean in an autonomous fashion because its referential field is conti...

The line only exists in relation to the before and after (Silliman, Tjanting 93) Lines insert false time (Ibid. 86) This is another sentence. Space is the same in all directions (Ibid. 82) Margin types its own form. Each sentence is a test (Ibid. 82) Earlier sentences, our old friend. (Ibid. 82) The space was the last letter of the alphabet to be invented (Ibid. 90-1) Again with these quotes. Noticed in my previous post I never got round to dealing with the above in any detail, in fact in not detail at all. Let's take them seriously and somewhat systematically, even though they are not systematic statements of an argument. Still, we are just finding our feet here, or our nounphase's to be more accurate. The line only exists in relation to the before and after. -The number three is essential to language. The phrase, line or sentence, depending and which of these units you are dealing with at any one time, and you can be dealing with all three in the...