[New-Poetry] Books a poet should own...

[JforJames at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/22/2006 6:59:31 AM Eastern Standard Time,  jfq at myuw.net 
writes:

Phenomenology is, loosely, an anti-scientific approach to the natural  world 
founded on the lionization of the first person rather than the third  
person. It privileges metaphysics over physics and as such is largely  
speculative and depends on the investment of jargon with special meanings that  
generally divest philosophers working in the  hegel-husserl-heidegger-derrida 
tradition of the ability to say anything  meaningful whatsoever. Even, 
however, accepting the phenomenologist at his  word and taking the inquiry to 
be investigating something real in its claim to  be describing Being as it 
exists "before" or "behind" objects, is what  phenomenological power then 
/is/ is the power to reveal this being? But then  how does metaphor have any 
such power. Metaphor is a kind of relation  between objects, it says "some 
object and some other object are interchangable  in some way." If all that 
this "power" amounts to is the ability to  isolate the essence that all 
things in common have in common, then i fail to  see how the resulting 
phenomenological statement that "all things which  are, in fact ARE." then it 
seems to be that Zwicky is making a big deal out of  something so 
painfully tautological that it's a little bit embarassing  she's bothering to 
say it.



A phenomenon is an experience...hence you could read Zwicky simple as  saying
the "experiential power of both metaphor and thisness....", with Thisness  as 
a nod to 
notions found in Heidegger. If metaphor has any power, and certainly as  
poets we hope it
does, it is not in the "either" object yoked into  
proximity/overlap/comparison. In a sense
metaphor's power has nothing to do with either object, and its  phenomenon 
(powerful
or weak) is a 'third thing', if you 'experience' it as such...and  she does.
Finnegan
 
 
 The phenomenological power of both metaphor and /this/ness derives  from 
> an awareness of an extreme tension between being and time.  /This/ness is 
> the lyric comprehension of this tension; an instant of  time opens to 
> embrace the resonance of all that is; time is present,  but 
> suspended—held in balance. Metaphor, by contrast, is a from of  domestic 
> understanding: wholeness overrides morality, but does not  erase it. The 
> distinction of things remains the foundation of their  resonant 
> connexion. In metaphor, gestalts glitter: those inflected by  being and 
> those inflected by time, flashing back and forth over the  hinge of what 
> is common.
> –Jan Zwicky, Wisdom and Metaphor,  #67
 
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