Meadows redux!

[I wrote to Deborah M to say I was making a very odd association between her work and that of Robert Penn Warren, whom I remember hearing in my undergrad days through his old-school southern accent and the gauze of whiskey, no doubt. Penn Warren was fond of writing poems in which large concepts appeared, like Time and History, in the midst of falcons and eagles, with all the verbs seeming to come at the end, germanically. I was saying to DM that I found her approach to including Abstractions more effective than I remember his being. I think it has something to do with her method. She wrote back as follows:]

DAM:

The danger, of course, is how much idea-type language or even lag. of philosophy can be included in a poem. A friend, Myles, always wants to warn me against it, thinks I shoud read more of the London TLS and see how Brits do theory without ever touching a word of it--why is that desireable, I'm not sure. One of the risky poems your students comments on is using something like "cultural gifts" in a poem--your student generously read it as ironic, which it is, and could appreciate it, but--is it a grand failure? does it add a lot of pressure and scarify beauty that must be taken on in a post-Holocaust time? does it fail in being misunderstood? maybe it fails. maybe it only scars. I took a turn to adding even more pressure on using analytic type language (fractured though) in the more recent Irigarary and Delueze piece, maybe that fails, too, I don't know but it seems awfully important to see what is "poetic" language and what is usually excluded and to trouble those categories, see what's there.