Beverly Dahlen and Leslie Scalapino

I stumbled on a book of Beverly Dahlen's _A Reading 1-7_.



So far, I am really enjoying it. I just finished reading Leslie Scalapino's:

1) Way

2) How Phenomena Appear to Unfold

3) New Time.



I've also listened to the Kenning cd of Scalapino reading Way quite a few times. For some reason I hear Scalapino's voice when I am reading Dahlen. The sentence constructions feel similar. The "how" of it (meaning the syntax etc.).



I realize Scalapino is swimming through Buddhist philosophy and Dahlen seems to swim through (among many things) feminist psychoanalysis, but I wonder why their sentence structures and my reading (overlaying) of voice connects them as intimates?



I don't get the same sense of similarity in "voice" with Susan Howe or Bernadette Mayer.



I don't know enough (I never do) to know if there are some philosophical connections (and epistemological methods) that Scalapino and Dahlen hold in common?



I am also wondering how to select what to read. I read bits of theory, but cannot sustain a full blown reading project of say Jameson or Marx. I read bits at a time. I keep coming back to poetry (most times the critical lyric). Don't know why my mind cannot sustain long periods of theory/philosophy any more.



Sometimes I worry I don't have enough grounding in continental philosophy to write "good" poems (Derrida etc.)



On the one hand: "You don't need theory to write poetry"

On the other hand: "The critical and creative are not opposites."



The two hands don't cancel each other out. But I wonder if getting my philosophy "second-hand" via poetics is the same as getting it closer to "first-hand" via texts written by full-fledged philosophers?



In other words, is there a fundamental difference between "using" the philosophy of Wittgenstein and reading the philosophy of Wittgenstein?



If you "use" a philosophy is it possible to misappropriate it? If so, how can we know when we are misappropriating the language/ideas of a philosopher if language creates ideas as much (or more) than ideas are translated into language?



In other words, is misappropriating different (ethically) than mistranslating? If translating is more than a one to one correspondence (i.e. context) are all misappropriations also a mistranslation?



I do like the word Way. I travel from the bottom of the Y up to the forked path. I do this many times a day. Contrary to the pseudo wisdom of Mr. Frost. I hate FROST!