A Dialogic History Of Poetics

Do you remember, my dear,
That you loved poetry so much
That you hated all theory?

Once you challenged me:
"Where shall we begin?
With morality and mimesis,
Or tragedy and catharsis?
I was sheepish: "Anyway,
The Greeks had no sense of the lyric."

But you persisted: "So tell me.
Why should poetry instruct or delight?
Are theories of Sublimity or Beauty
More important than poetry?"
I tried to distract you:
"Aristotle, Horace, Longinus and Kant
Are extinct, my dear! Talk about
Saussure, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan.
Anyway, are we talking about poetry or love?"

You were irritated: "In love
AS WELL AS poetry,
It's futile to weigh spontaneity
Against decorum, or overflow
Against recollection."
I wanted you to notice my tranquillity:
“Let’s not forget that
Poetry as well as love depends
On how willingly we suspend our disbelief.”

Now you were perturbed: “No point
In showing off your metaphysical wit.
Theory is nothing
But the theoreticians’ conceit.
They’ve neither a sense of tradition,
Nor any individual talent.”
I protested mildly: “But can you deny
That poets possess negative capability?”

“How can you reduce my lyricism
To an objective correlative?
How can I be reduced to a mere catalyst,
And all the dead poets merely to tradition?
Why should I be accused of committing
Fallacies and heresies when I have no intention
Of affecting you with a paraphrase?”
Your voice was shrill, and you’d started choking.

I tried to explain: “My dear, it’s the critics
And not you, who’s being accused
Of the fallacies and the heresies.
You are intrinsic; they are extrinsic.”
I was still trying to humour you:
“You know, theory after ‘sixties,
French theory, I mean, is supposed to be
Much more interesting. It’s about
Arbitrariness, decentering and absence; and about
Madness, power and agenda; it’s about
A readerly construction of a writerly text!”

But you were furious:
“Damn your metaphors and metonymies,
Your illocutions and perlocutions!
Hell with your dialogism and carnivalism;
Your intertextualities and defamiliarization,
Your critiquing and problematization,
Your misprisions and anxieties of influence,
Your valorization and post-colonial decanonization.
What with your construction of
Marxism that’s compatible with formalism,
And your Psychoanalysis without dreams,
I can never forgive you for your
Murderous deconstruction of the author.
You are the killers of poetry.”

I resorted to my final line of defence:
“Theory is no longer a patriarchal prerogative;
It’s now a site for the biology of femalehood,
The sociology of femininity, and
The radicalism of feminism!”

But you really had the last word :
“That’s smart! But don’t you see, my dear,
That your theory is really about
NOT having any theory?”

TOP