After reading Ch.3 of
Writing Poetry, I have started noticing the philosophical nature of Davidson and Fraser's approach to, analysis of, poetry. The introduction of concepts such as "self" and "other" are interesting because they emerge from the work of Hegelian metaphysics, and more strikingly post-modern and post-structuralist theory. The notion that the "poems reside in the space between what has come before and what has yet to appear" may seem intuitive to some, but that is only because post-structuralist/post-modern theory qua Foucaldian and post-Hegelian thought is so pervasive in the academe and contemporary "common-sense", to borrow Gramsci's term (Writing Poetry, 47). However, if the claim that language should be (is always already) blurred appears controversial, this is perhaps because this insight and approach to the poetic is just that.
The assumption that we should shy away from asserting meaning in reading and writing poetry reminds me of the work of Jeremy Fernando, a contemporary philosopher at the European Graduate School. Fernando's work on relationality and poetry is striking because it asserts that "any relationship must always already carry with it the unknown, and possibly always unknowable" (
On Love and Poetry) In other words, when reading poetry (the other) we should shy from asserting meaning, because this will erase the enigma. It is an effacement of alterity. To put it more finely, since love is blind, to love the poem you must it with eyes close. When approaching the palimpsest of the poetic we should be blind "to not only the subject of the encounter—the self—but also of the very object of that encounter, the “you”—all that can be said is that there is an encounter" (
On Love and Poetry). This applies to the writing and reading process. The figure of the blind Cupid should b always already be the figure of the writer and writer. The Davidsonian is always already the post-structuralist qua post-modern.
Rant complete. Catharsis achieved.
