Description:
But "Thud" denies its essence as phenomenological in several self conscious bits. "Thud" labels itself as a "deconstruction," a "lengthy explanation and context for its [the poem's] composition." Thud also explains: "s/he is in the business of being, not for-giving, or for giving, or forgiving. Big play here on forgive."
What to do? Back to the thing itself of this course, what is it we call phenomenological description? It is an uncovering of a phenomenon, of thud, a dull sound (that a reading that "The last poem" makes). "Thud" re-creates the dull in part by showing what the poem says in prose, a form of expression implicitly here more dull. It also asks the reader which thud is better, the thud that is the "deconstruction" or the thud heard/felt by experiencing the poem? This gets at the noesis, how one experiences the what.*
It is as if the writer has admitted feeling and has asked the reader of this piece: Don't you feel that same thud as you did when reading the poem (thud being just one of the many possible variations of experiencing these things)? Thus have we discovered a description of a phenomenon in two parts, not just mental image/experience but also how that is experienced.
Hold the excitement.
Before pursuing this line, that asking a rhetorical question is more of theory construction than description, we need to set a boundary. The parts do make up the whole, but the whole is not the parts; the grains of sand is not the beach. And (I argue) that it is the beach or larger segments of the beach that we refer to when saying anything like phenomenology is (as) writing, writing is (as) phenomenology.
Read "Thud" as a gloss of "The last poem." If your response is the same as this percipient's, that of the voice's or writer's, "Thud" uncovers what belongs to a felt thud, what constitutes it. "Thud" attends to how the sound/feeling is given in experience. It clarifies, in the main, and does not explain.
I will not push the thesis too far. It is perhaps too radical a notion to equate phenomenology and writing and vice versa. Or this is what I am feeling--that is, experiencing in this moment. We need more exemplars, or something. And writing as phenomenology may be a nuanced notion.
To be continued.
_____
*There used to be several good glossaries of phenomenological terms on the Web. I can't find one today. I will post a link when I find a suitable one. Apologies.
1 a : an act of describing; specifically : discourse intended to give a mental image of something experienced (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/description)Based on this authority, "Thud" seems to be what is in the consciousness of the percipient, that being--in part--the same as the poem itself. After all, the bulk of "Thud" is the poem rendered in prose form, something like a series of paraphrases.
But "Thud" denies its essence as phenomenological in several self conscious bits. "Thud" labels itself as a "deconstruction," a "lengthy explanation and context for its [the poem's] composition." Thud also explains: "s/he is in the business of being, not for-giving, or for giving, or forgiving. Big play here on forgive."
What to do? Back to the thing itself of this course, what is it we call phenomenological description? It is an uncovering of a phenomenon, of thud, a dull sound (that a reading that "The last poem" makes). "Thud" re-creates the dull in part by showing what the poem says in prose, a form of expression implicitly here more dull. It also asks the reader which thud is better, the thud that is the "deconstruction" or the thud heard/felt by experiencing the poem? This gets at the noesis, how one experiences the what.*
It is as if the writer has admitted feeling and has asked the reader of this piece: Don't you feel that same thud as you did when reading the poem (thud being just one of the many possible variations of experiencing these things)? Thus have we discovered a description of a phenomenon in two parts, not just mental image/experience but also how that is experienced.
Hold the excitement.
Before pursuing this line, that asking a rhetorical question is more of theory construction than description, we need to set a boundary. The parts do make up the whole, but the whole is not the parts; the grains of sand is not the beach. And (I argue) that it is the beach or larger segments of the beach that we refer to when saying anything like phenomenology is (as) writing, writing is (as) phenomenology.
Read "Thud" as a gloss of "The last poem." If your response is the same as this percipient's, that of the voice's or writer's, "Thud" uncovers what belongs to a felt thud, what constitutes it. "Thud" attends to how the sound/feeling is given in experience. It clarifies, in the main, and does not explain.
I will not push the thesis too far. It is perhaps too radical a notion to equate phenomenology and writing and vice versa. Or this is what I am feeling--that is, experiencing in this moment. We need more exemplars, or something. And writing as phenomenology may be a nuanced notion.
To be continued.
_____
*There used to be several good glossaries of phenomenological terms on the Web. I can't find one today. I will post a link when I find a suitable one. Apologies.
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