This is great. Thank you and congratulations on the poetry publication.
Perloff's death this year is a great loss. Your notes on her book remind me of Sir Christopher Ricks' lecture about Eliot's 'auditory imagination': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkcrQ09YdU&t=3s
Yes, Perloff quotes Eliot on the auditory imagination. He really makes a "sound before sense" argument, which I'm sympathetic to. I'd like to write on it sometime, maybe when I'm old and have written many more poems. Interesting how Eliot's thoughts on this evolved: To some extent, his first essay on Milton is a complaint about the elevating of sound over fresh language/images.
Excellent, illuminating piece. What also strikes me as crucial to Guernica’s power is that it was black, white, and grey, allowing the wrenching, disrupting drawings to be prominent.
Thanks so much for this insightful analysis of these works. It’s interesting that people who aren't visual artists (but nonetheless artists) can feel so outside of what is, to all artists, a mysterious process. So much of any works is an alchemical process that happens in the act of making; ideally, it is felt or conducted (the artist, a conduit) as opposed to an intellectual process. Intellectual discourse on the best works is more of a reverse engineering, and guesswork, even on the part of the marker.
This writing is on fire. Grateful to have discovered this ‘stack and will be going back through the archives…
Thanks, Derek. Hope you'll share with friends.
This is great. Thank you and congratulations on the poetry publication.
Perloff's death this year is a great loss. Your notes on her book remind me of Sir Christopher Ricks' lecture about Eliot's 'auditory imagination': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkcrQ09YdU&t=3s
Yes, Perloff quotes Eliot on the auditory imagination. He really makes a "sound before sense" argument, which I'm sympathetic to. I'd like to write on it sometime, maybe when I'm old and have written many more poems. Interesting how Eliot's thoughts on this evolved: To some extent, his first essay on Milton is a complaint about the elevating of sound over fresh language/images.
So common for a poet's poetry to violate the terms of his criticism..!
Another appreciation of Perloff: her essay "Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?" had a deep impact on me. https://www.jstor.org/stable/468795
Excellent, illuminating piece. What also strikes me as crucial to Guernica’s power is that it was black, white, and grey, allowing the wrenching, disrupting drawings to be prominent.
This was really excellent
Wonderful exploration of the artistic process. I particularly enjoyed seeing the Eliot poem before and after. Blanched vs. glitter!
Thanks so much for this insightful analysis of these works. It’s interesting that people who aren't visual artists (but nonetheless artists) can feel so outside of what is, to all artists, a mysterious process. So much of any works is an alchemical process that happens in the act of making; ideally, it is felt or conducted (the artist, a conduit) as opposed to an intellectual process. Intellectual discourse on the best works is more of a reverse engineering, and guesswork, even on the part of the marker.