Considering the confusion about where "poetic qualities" are found, [Stanley] Fish is clear that they arise not from the something "in" the text, but from the "developing tendencies of history" that - in his example - are unfolding under guidance in a university classroom. Fish writes: "It is not that the presence of poetic qualities compels a certain kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities... definitions of poetry are recipes, by directing readers as to what to look for in a poem, they instruct them in ways of looking that will produce what they expect to see." The poem which, due to grammar, due to ideology, due to capitalism, always appears to be a thing, is really best understood as a cultural process, as a way of paying attention that arises collectively.
- Donato Mancini, in interview with editor Daniel Zomparelli in Poetry is Dead #2.
2 comments:
"the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities..."
Yes.
Thank you Stanley Fish.
Yes, Stanley, thank you for the specious argument. What this does not take into account is that some pieces of text (e.g. a skilfully composed poem) summon the paying of a certain kind of attention far more readily than others (e.g. a take-out menu). And that a classroom is not a necessary site for such attention being paid.
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