Chokh Raj wrote:
> Pure Poetry
>  
> I knew very well what I meant by these words, but I did not know that 
> they would give rise to such echoes and reactions in the world of 
> lovers of literature. I merely wanted to draw attention to a fact, not 
> to enunciate a theory, still less to define a doctrine and hold as 
> heretics all who did not share it. In my eyes all written works, all 
> works of language, contain certain fragments or recognizable elements, 
> endowed with properties which we are about to examine and which I 
> shall provisionally call /poetic/. Every time words show a /certain 
> deviation /from the most direct, that is, the most /insensible/ 
> expression of thought, every time these deviations foreshadow, as it 
> were, a world of relationships distinct from the purely practical world,
>

    Interesting selection, CR, as per usual. It put me first in mind of 
a joke that McLuhan liked to repeat, that "dictionaries drive words out 
of their senses,"  which  condition is what I take Valery to mean by 
"insensible."  I wonder if that is  what TSE gets at when  he says that 
poetry  (from memory) doesn't work without meanings. It also reminds of 
Auden's statement, that a poet is someone who likes to see words play 
together, not an area of perception I think you'll find in the 
Merriam-Webster. The one thing with which I'd take exception in the 
Valery quote is the word "deviation," as I think that words playing 
together exert more force on us in our day to day lives than we may be 
award; but I suppose that still could exist within a "certain deviation."

Ken A