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!