mike hauser's been posting some very good shit on his blog lately. including this piece regarding accessibiltiy and readability of texts. if i read mike correctly he makes the correlation between the written text as not being as visceral experience as say a piece of music is a heavily emotive [my word, mike uses the word 'visceral'] experience.

i agree with mike regarding the power of music. all of us have been to a concert and probably were caught up with the crowd so that it becomes a collective, mesmerizing event. music is critical to my life as a man and writer. but i don't agree with mike regarding the relative coldness of poetry, esp. in its written form.

i've been deeply moved by texts. i recall the high i got when i discovered the pleasures of caffeine and the intoxicating deliriums of rimbaud at the same time. the first poem that deeply moved me, and made me want to become a poet, was john berryman's sonnet 'i lift'. i was talking about jean genet with jonathan hayes on the phone last weekend. and i told hayes that genet was a profound, early influence, and that reading and rereading his novel a thief's journal is a profound pleasure. a pleasure that makes me feel lucky to be alive, want to have sex and eat a great meal and drink enough beer to get seriously fucked up. even if i didn't understand the texts i read, such as hart crane and rene char in my early 20s or tom raworth in my mid 30s, the poems deeply moved me to the point where i'd get goosebumps from joy, which is the condition i think mike means regarding the fissions of bodily pleasure one gets from music rather than getting that same pleasure from poems.

and that is in essence my poetics: deep, lasting, abiding pleasure. why else bother if you don't enjoy it at the first intensity. poetry is not comcommitant with life, it becomes, with discipline, life. and that life, even when facing death, is the greatest pleasure and joy. i say that knowing full well the horrors of our worlds.

but don't take my word on the pleasures of the text. take for example the cliches we use regarding music and poetry.

e.g. when someone executes a beautiful play say in football or any other sport, or to mix metaphors if we see a beautiful man or woman walking down the street, we call it: poetry in motion.

when we listen to a piece of music that moves us, or a film or play, we call it: pure poetry.

when a writer, sculptor, athlete, scientist, filmmaker etc. etc. displays genius we call that person: a poet.

contrast that to how we esteem music.

when a person expresses a vain, naive hope we call that: whistling in the dark.

and

when a person appears to be shrewd and purchased a highly valued item or service on the cheap, we call that: bought for a song.