Re: [New-Poetry] the ethics of attention in Derek Walcott’s Omeros.

[Chris Stroffolino]

Are you referring to his terminology?

I can be fascinated by how different people seem to be saying  
basically the "same thing" with different vocabularies.
While I personally don't get too into that particular style of  
vocabulary (and those allusions Heidegger Levinas)
"an encounter located in attention, in immediate proximity"--
for perhaps wrongly of me I've a prejudice against the connotational  
style--
I like translating such specialized languages into other ways of  
speaking...
for instance, what he's saying is kinda like "Negative capability"
(or that Keats phrase "irritable groping after certainty" or is it  
"certainties?"
"the ability to live in doubt...")
Perhaps it's a more 'common' and therefore 'less subtle' way--
or, one could hair-split and get deeply into the differences between
what Heidegger or Levinas meant and what Keats meant, or what you or  
I could mean,
but words like "doubt" "groping" "seizing" "possessing" "attention"  
and such....
It doesn't really bug me, unless the writer starts acting like
1) the idea originated in Heidegger or Levinas
or 2) that H or L (or whoever) provide an explanatory grid that the  
poem (by Walcott or whoever) needs
when it's really just a matter of analogy...
(it reminds me of when a famous literary critic was asked whether  
he'd consider doing a Freudian reading
of Shakespeare, and he replied, it would be better, more interesting,  
profound, to do a Shakespearian reading of Freud..."
Or, one could take that further and do, say, a George Carlinian  
reading of a Shakespearian reading of Freud, etc....

This probably doesn't clarify anything about the relationships  
between "criticism" and "poetry" to anybody else but myself, so I'll  
stop...now!

C
On Dec 10, 2007, at 4:54 PM, rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu wrote:

> Quoting jforjames at aol.com:
>
>>
>>
> http://luc8.wordpress.com/work/dissertation/omeros-poetry-proximity- 
> and-the-ethics-of-attention/omeros-and-attention/
>>
>> way-making
>> Omeros and Attention
>> Posted by luc8 on November 3rd, 2007
>> Nearing what is Human:
>> Poetry, proximity and the ethics of attention in Derek Walcott’s  
>> Omeros.
>>
>>
>> In what follows I will be focusing on the work of St Lucian poet  
>> Derek
>> Walcott. In a reading of the opening passage of his epic Omeros, I  
>> will focus
>> on the notion of attention, constituted by Heideggerian notions of  
>> nearness,
>> care, and letting-be. I will be seeking ways in which these poems  
>> undergo,
>> and impose upon us a pre-rational encounter similar to that  
>> suggested by
>> Levinas - an encounter located in attention, in immediate  
>> proximity, but with
>> the additional movement of letting-be, or what Heidegger referred  
>> to as
>> Gelassenheit: the act of nearing without seizing or possessing.
>
> Say whaaaaaat????
>
> Richard W. Wilsnack
> rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu
>
>
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