Re: Pablo Neruda and Paulo Leminski - on artifacts and

Jay Lemke (jllbc who-is-at cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Sun, 09 Aug 1998 22:58:33 -0400

I smiled at the paradoxes of Leminski, and was strongly moved by Neruda's
appreciation of the stains of use on a real world.

What he asks about poetry, we might perhaps also ask about science. What is
the price of our cleanliness? of our fetish for neat, pristine data and
above all conclusions?

Most here believe that data should be dirty, soiled with the messiness of
real-world activities, rather than autoclaved in the laboratory. But what
about conclusions, arguments? what about the norms of our discourse? what
about our poetry?

What price do we pay for its neatness? for staking out the gamefields of
academic argumentation with neat foul-lines and unsmudged scoresheets? for
defining our working activity by a goal, by pervasive orientation to an
object of desire -- the neat conclusion, the well-defined generalization,
the precise description, the proven point? can such things tell us what we
need to know about a world that is as Neruda describes it, rich with
meaning and interest insofar as it is impure, untidy, stained ... through
use, through wear ... the signs of use are the signs we seek, the guides to
using, to activity, to what people really do in and with the world (and of
what it does to us) ... but perhaps they are just not tidy enough to be
welcome in our bourgeois homes??

Time to get a little dirt on the carpet? JAY.

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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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