can there be TRUTH, where reality is inviolate and absolute. or is it only a series of small truths, protean and ever-changing definitions. i used to think that an action was in itself immutable, that however it is interpreted, defined and redefined, that the action is upon a higher plane, and is therefore a truth with a capital t.

so is it the failure of language, and by extension poetry, because it is not objective, it is always seeking new definitions. that language cannot by it very nature represent, much less be, an objective reality, the truth. i think it strange that certain phrases, strings of words, can be, and are, trademarked because of the author(s) of those texts are adepts in the pitch and sale of goods, services, etc. etc. ah capitalism!

and yet, poetry, whether its books sell or no (mostly no), resists the market, of a certain pitch. but we engage a bit of the tactics of the hard sell when we write and publish under our own names. marketing, but not for moolah, smolien, greenbacks etc. etc.

for whom do poets write

for whom does the bell toll, que pasa?

i think it odd to rail against capitalist structures when i use its products and services. the software i use on my computer, and the programming used to build this blog, the servers doing the hosting and connecting ad infinitum.

and yet
and yet

senor keats reminded us that truth is beauty, beauty truth. does that still apply now?

does truth, again, behave, like an organism so that it exists whether we care or for it or no, do we create it as we move along.

* * *

moving along, check out new zealand poet richard taylor's blog. i'm a bit of a lurker of listservs, and i really dug taylor's posts at buffalo poetics.

and read the latest uk journal pores 4, which tackles a host of questions regarding experimental poetics, reading and capitalism.

word up