Monday, February 02, 2004

still on (still and (still and lists))

don't really know much about the habit of keeping lists other than:

lists do not promote order out of disorder;
lists do still the noise of disorder;
the habit of keeping lists promotes a character who keeps lists, who records moments and objects;
list-makers do not create a telos for everyday life, rather they point to objects at a specific time;
objects, events, people, or places listed are still there in spite of the list or possibly recollectable because of a list but nothing more than able to be un-forgotten;
simply put: listing is not learning merely recording;
using lists in verse, then, is a way to bring the everyday as it is recorded into the field of a text;
using lists in prose is often frowned upon for exactly this reason;
the myth is that an author of prose creates text out of nothing;
the list is a rebuke to this excessive approach to prose;
lists stick out like a sore thumb and remain, still, in spite of criticism;
lists more resemble history than hagiography;
critics will interpret, as they please, the significance of a list in Joyce's Ulysses or Thoreau's Walden nevertheless their lists remain solidly what they always have been;
this is the beauty in Olson's Maximus Poems : his lists outlast all his quirks and ours;
the items within lists substantiate lists as landmarks or monuments;
lists are, in other words, observed not created. . .

Send email with your poetics of the list. I will compile and post--to get to the bottom of this [ ].

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