[New-Poetry] Philosopher/philosopy poems

[jforjames at aol.com]

Tad's post, made me think of a poem I ran across recenlty by Anne Carson....


Outwardly His Life Ran Smoothly 



 

Comparative figures: 1784 Kant owned 550 books, Goethe 2300, Herder 7700. 

 

Windows: Kant had one bedroom window, which he kept shut at all times, to forestall 

insects. The windows of his study faced the garden, on the other side of which was the 

city jail. In summer loud choral singing of the inmates wafted in. Kant asked that the 

singing be done sotto voce and with windows closed. Kant had friends at city hall and 

got his wish. 

 

Tolstoy: Tolstoy thought that if Kant had not smoked so much tobacco The Critique of 

Pure Reason would have been written in language you could understand (in fact he 

smoked one pipe at 5 AM). 

 

Numbering: Kant never ate dinner alone, it exhausts the spirit. Dinner guests, in the 

opinion of the day, should not number more than the Muses nor less than the Graces. 

Kant set six places. 

 

Sensualism: Kant’s favorite dinner was codfish. 

 

Rule Your Nature: Kant breathed only through his nose. 

 

 

 

--Anne Carson

Decreation (Random House, 2006)


-----Original Message-----
From: TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org>
Sent: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 6:19 pm
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Allen Grossman wins 2009 Bollingen


By Allen Grossman 
 
Descartes' Loneliness 
 
(Meditation Three) 
 
Toward evening, the natural light be
comes 
Intelligent and answers, without demur: 
/“Be assured! You are not alone. . . .”/ 
But in fact, toward evening, I am not 
Convinced there /is/ any other except myself 
To whom existence /necessarily/ pertains. 
I also interrogate myself to discover 
Whether I /myself/ possess any power 
By which I can bring it about that I, 
Who now am, shall exist another moment. 
 
Because I am mostly a thinking thing 
And because this precise question is 
Only from that thoughtful part of myself, 
If such a power did reside within me 
I should, I am sure, be conscious of it. . . . 
But I am conscious of no such power. 
And yet, if I myself cannot be 
The cause of that assurance, surely 
It is necessary to conclude that 
I am not alone in the world. There is 
 
some other who is the cause of that idea. 
But if, at last, no such other can be 
found toward evening, do I really have 
sufficient assurance of the existence 
or of any other being at all? For, 
after a most careful search, I have been 
unable to discover the /ground/ of that 
conviction – unless it be imagined a lonely 
workman on a dizzy scaffold unfolds 
a sign at evening and puts his mark to it. 
 
 
jforjames at aol.com wrote: 
> Not sure when this was announced but I just noticed it... 
> 
> http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/bollingen/winner.html 
> 
> The judges also s
aid: "A distinguished teacher of poetics and > literature, Grossman has influenced three generations of American > writers. He has characterized the lyric poet as an individual who, 'by > means of this art, seeks to speak with the utmost seriousness about > the totality of what he experiences,' and Grossman himself has been > refreshingly restless in that pursuit. In /Descartes' Loneliness/, he > achieves a precarious balance between an aspirational vision and close > attention to the world at hand. The poems progress with comic flair, > dramatic inquiry, and, at times, rage, through remembrance toward > understanding. The figure they make is large and difficult, and the > results are wholly singular. Carrying a weight that is rare in > contemporary poetry, their music provides a deep-seated solace to > their stark sentence." 
> 
=
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