The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics - Gerald L. Bruns
In this book, Bruns tries to justify three theses. "The first is that poetry is made of language but is not a use of it - that is, poetry is made of words but not what we use words to produce: meanings, concepts, propositions, descriptions, narratives, expressions of feelings, and so on." Second, "poetry is not necessarily made of words but is rooted in, and in fact already fully formed by, sounds produced by the human voice." And, third, "poetry does not occupy a realm of its own. It is not a purely differentiated species confined to a merely aesthetic, neutral, or disengaged dimension of human culture. Rather, precisely in virtue of its materiality, poetry enjoys a special ontological relation with ordinary things of the world."
What I appreciate most about Bruns and this book is his anthropological approach towards the subject of poetry. Instead of regarding poetry as some literary form, he studies his subject as if it were a remote tribe of indigenous people, assuming nothing about them, but simply observing them, trying to understand their understanding of themselves. By the end of the book, one wonders what is not poetry. I also like the CD that's included with the book. It has tracks by Steve McCaffery and John Cage, among others. Listening to the CD helps sharpen the points Bruns make in the book.
I don't think I'll look at poetry in the same way again.
