Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S18-S21, March‐April 2022.

Fabi and Goldberg raised important considerations regarding both research and funding priorities in the field of bioethics and, in particular, the field’s misalignment with social justice. W...

El siguiente texto aborda la poesía de Carlos Fajardo Fajardo, cuya obra sólida, rigurosa y de estupenda factura, lo sitúa entre uno de los poetas más representativos de la actual poesía colombiana. El texto muestra las constantes poéticas de Fajardo, sus propuestas estéticas e influencias, rastreando la sugerente lucidez y la exquisita sensibilidad que habitan en sus poemas.

In 2009 the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil established a conflict resolution mechanism to help rural communities address their grievances against palm oil companies that are RSPO members. This article presents the broadest ever comprehensive assessment of the use and effectiveness of the RSPO conflict resolution mechanism, providing both overviews and in-depth analysis. Our central question is: to what extent does the RSPO conflict resolution mechanism offer an accessible, fair and effective tool for communities in Indonesia to resolve conflicts with (...) companies? Our aim is not only to provide a ‘reality check’ of this mechanism but also to contribute to the wider debate on how communities can seek access to justice when engaged in intractable conflicts with palm oil companies. For data collection, we took three steps. First, we used our own database of 150 conflicts between communities and companies in Indonesia. We identified 64 conflicts that involved RSPO member companies, of which 17 prompted communities to convey their grievances to the RSPO’s conflict resolution mechanism. Second, we used the database of the RSPO, which handled 85 complaints against companies in Indonesia in the period 2009–2020. Third, we conducted fieldwork, in total, about 6 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews on three conflicts involving RSPO companies to identify mechanisms leading to both failed and successful instances of conflict resolution. For our assessment, we used three criteria to assess the conflict resolution mechanism of the RSPO: accessibility, procedural justice, and the outcomes of the process. We conclude that—on all counts—the conflict resolution mechanism is biased in favor of companies. The result of these biases is that the actual capacity of the RSPO’s mechanism to provide a meaningful remedy for rural communities’ grievances remains very limited. This unequal access to justice sustains conflicts between companies and communities over land. (shrink)

Esta investigación da cuenta de cómo ha sido expresada, interpretada y fundada poéticamente la ciudad colombiana durante el siglo XX en las obras de los poetas colombianos Luis Vidales (Suenan Timbres), Rogelio Echavarría (El Transeúnte) y Juan Manuel Roca (Luna de ciegos y Los ladrones nocturnos). Indaga cómo estos tres poetas colombianos han fundado ciudades como textos escriturales y levantado cartografías simbólicas citadinas; realiza una interpretación de los universos de sus poéticas, de las constelaciones simbólicas que asume el poema como (...) universo del lenguaje, el cual construye topologías imaginarias sobre la ciudad, revelando arquetipos fundamentales, presentes en la poesía urbana colombiana. (shrink)

Suenan timbres, by the Colombian poet Luis Vidales, is an urbanely rural work. The fact that flowers, spiders, cats and landscapes are found in these short poems-vignettes –all of which are a reflection of a city in the process of modernization–; confirms how interested was the author in the idea that his poetic project could erode the barrier separating the cultural and natural spheres. Bearing this in mind, the article attempts to show that the intersubjective dialogue between the two (...) spheres is not peaceful, balanced or horizontal. On the contrary, the article, through a philosophical analysis based on the ideas of ecocriticism, seeks to reveal that underlying this dialogue, there is the desire of modern men to dominate, control and subdue nature to the laws and rule of culture. (shrink)

In the second half of the 20th century, Latin American poetry has had to deal with representing the phenomenon of forced disappearance in its various poetic productions. Some of those have incubated in the Central American civil wars, the dictatorial regimes of the Southern Cone and even in countries with supposed democratic stability such as Mexico and Colombia. Memorial de Ayotzinapa, by the Mexican poet Mario Bojórquez, and Carta de las mujeres de este país, by the Colombian poet (...) and activist Fredy Yezzed, experiment with the discursive forms of the long poem and the letter poem, respectively, to construct collective memories around a phenomenon that continues to take lives to this day. Bojórquez's text is concerned with constructing a testimony, apparently in situ, of the disappearance of the forty-three Mexican teacher trainees; Yezzed's work, for its part, refrains from referring to a specific event or place in order to provide a more complete testimony of the Colombian armed conflict, nearly seventy years old. The article analyzes the forms of the text, the subjects and their spaces of enunciation, as well as the memory strategies that are seen in both works. Thus, the testimonial status of poetry is confirmed, sometimes overshadowed by genres such as the novel and the short story. (shrink)

In pre-Columbian times, the Zenu Indians established drainage systems in the wetlands of the Colombian Caribbean that enabled them to exploit this rich ecosystem in a sustained manner. Modern inhabitants of the region are, however, exposed to a regimen of periodic flooding that limits their productive activities. In addition, they are surrounded by large cattle ranches that occupy almost all the land and are responsible for the disappearance of forests that sustain the wild fauna. These peasants employ a classification (...) system for the fauna that favors the criterion of habitat over that of morphology to distinguish categories of animals. Secondary forest animals inspire carnival dances, folk tales, poetry, and songs, while insects and other invertebrates are barely represented in the oral tradition. Fishing provides the principal source of protein for many families, but there are no mechanisms to control the use of large nets that exhaust the resource. The capture of reptiles such as iguanas, turtles, and crocodilians is intensive and is not based on studies that determine the state of the populations and the impact of hunting activities. The author draws attention to the need to take into account local representations of animals in programs aimed at conserving the wetlands and their fauna. She discusses the popular nomenclature, knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs regarding the fauna of a wetland region of the Colombian Caribbean to assist in the design of programs for the sustainable exploitation of the resources of this ecosystem, vital to the survival of local fishermen and peasants. (shrink)

Objective Our study sought to (1) describe the practices and preferences of Colombian adolescents in accessing sexual and reproductive health services: accompanied versus alone; (2) compare actual practices with stated preferences; and (3) determine age and gender differences regarding the practice and these stated preferences. -/- Methods 812 participants aged 11–24 years old answered a survey in two Profamilia clinics in the cities of Medellin and Cali in Colombia. A cross-sectional analysis was performed to compare participants’ answers based on (...) the variables of gender and age. -/- Results A quarter of participants visited the clinic alone (25.4%). Females were more likely to go alone in comparison to males (26.3% vs 14.1%; p = 0.031), and older participants went alone more often than younger participants (p < 0.001). Most participants – 72.7% (95 %CI: 69.3–75.9) – expressed a preference in being accompanied to the clinic, and more than 90% had their preferences met. The preferences of older participants were, however, less likely to be met than those of younger participants (p < 0.001), notably, because they predominantly wanted to be accompanied. -/- Conclusion Contemporary public health and bioethics literature advocates in favor of developing health services that better meet the preferences of adolescents. The present research highlights an apparent blind spot related to the role that others (e.g., parents, friends, partners) can or should play in accompanying adolescent patients when they access sexual and reproductive health services. Respecting adolescents’ preferences, and hence their autonomy, is not simply a matter of ensuring freedom from constraints (e.g., their right and ability to go alone). Rather, it should also consider the liberty to choose whether to be accompanied when accessing SHRS and by whom. (shrink)

Despite having essential health needs regarding sexual and reproductive health services (SRHS), young people (e.g., adolescents) in many countries show low use of such services. The World Health Organization advocates fostering young people’s autonomy to access health services to address this global health problem. However, there are gaps in the literature to understand how young people’s autonomy can be fostered to access SRHS. In 2019–2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 45 young people aged 14–23 years old in Colombia to explore (...) how they might wish to have their autonomy fostered in accessing SRHS. Research in different cultural contexts has shown that young people generally do not wish to discuss sex with their parents. By contrast, most of our participants expressed a strong wish for the ability to talk openly with their parents about their sexual and reproductive health. One of the main complaints of these young people was that their parents lacked the necessary knowledge to help them make informed decisions related to their sexual and reproductive health (e.g., choosing a contraceptive option). As a potential solution, participants were enthusiastic about initiatives that could provide parents with comprehensive sex education to assist young people in making informed choices for their sexual and reproductive health, including how to access SRHS. (shrink)

There are conceptual and ethical challenges to defining adolescents’ autonomy to access health care, and these can lead to health care norms and practices that could be maladjusted to the needs and preferences of adolescents. Particularly sensitive is access to sexual and reproductive health care services (SRHS). Yet, while there has been substantial conceptual work to conceptualize autonomy (e.g., as independence), there is a lack of empirical research that documents the perceptions of adolescents regarding on how they access or wish (...) to access health care services. The main objectives of this research were to (a) understand how adolescents in Colombia interpret the concept of “autonomy,” (b) describe how these adolescents articulate their autonomy (i.e., preferences) in accessing SRHS, and (c) analyze the ethical issues emerging from these data. Forty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants aged 14 to 23 years old in the Departments of Antioquia and Valle del Cauca in Colombia. Our study showed that participants’ understanding of autonomy was context-based and highly dependent on personal experiences, and these influenced their choice in how to access SRHS. Seen through the ethical lens of a reproductive justice framework, our results highlight the unequal opportunities for adolescents in terms of autonomy to access SRHS. (shrink)

The views on the acceptability of physician-assisted suicide of lay people in a Latin American country, Colombia, have been examined. In July 2019–January 2020, 134 lay people in Bogota judged the acceptability of physician-assisted suicide in 48 realistic scenarios composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient's age, the level of incurability of the illness, the type of suffering, and the patient's request for physician-assisted suicide. In all scenarios, the patients were women receiving the best possible care. The ratings (...) were subjected to cluster analysis and analyses of variance. Three qualitatively different positions were found: Never Acceptable, Depends on the Patient's Request, and Always Acceptable. The only important factor in increasing acceptability among people not systematically opposed was the patient's request to have her life ended. The young age of some patients did not affect participants’ positions. These empirical findings suggest that most Colombian lay people are not categorically for or against physician-assisted suicide, but judge its degree of acceptability as a function of patients’ requests and other circumstances. (shrink)

Technological advances in the information and knowledge society have influenced and transformed economic, social and educational dynamics. Currently there are many digital gaps related to the access to technology, lack of digital literacy and social use. These gaps vary based on the population ages and become more notorious in elders. This digital illiteracy is making all technological developments of the XXI Century to be underused, not making possible to take advantage of all the possibilities that they offer to our society, (...) in this case, to Colombia. This study aims at analyzing the penetration level and use of handheld digital devices, especially the cellular phone, in adult population, based on the 2016 national survey of life quality in Colombia, elaborated by Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística-DANE, specifically on the module of ownership and use of ICT goods. Results of four age groups are compared: 32 years or under, from 33 to 45, from 46 to 59, and over 60. The total sample is 37047 inhabitants of the Colombian territory, grouped by regions (Antioquia, Bogota, Caribbean, Eastern Central, Orinoquia, Amazonia, Pacific, San Andres, and Valle del Cauca). Data have been analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistical procedures, contingency tables analysis, and logistic regression, in order to identify and know the effect of age on the level of penetration and use of handheld digital devices when comparing results in young adults and older ones. Findings show that young adults use these technologies in a greater proportion when comparing to older adults, showing a significant correlation between age and the increase of the digital gaps of access and social use of handheld digital devices. Even when characteristics like country regions, level of education, and the urban or rural setting are taking into account, the probability of obtaining penetration and use of handheld digital devices decreases significantly when attaining old age. (shrink)

This text, commissioned by the OSUN Global Observatory of Academic Freedom, discusses how the concept of academic freedom is codified in Colombian Law and regulations of public and private higher education institutions. It also explores common conceptions of academic freedom among Colombian scholars, as well as commonly observed threats to it.

Poetry and philosophy can be seen as coming into competition in various ways in Plato’s Symposium. This confrontation notwithstanding, poetry and philosophy appear in this dialogue as cooperative rivals that are fundamentally at peace with each other.

This paper speaks across the divide between feminist theorists and praxis-oriented gender experts to argue for a more enabling reading of postcolonial feminist critiques of gender and development. Drawing on the activism of Afro-Colombian women in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia – most especially Matamba y Guasá, a network of black women's organizations from the state of Cauca – it brings attention to the independent ability of women in these locations to reflect and act on their own realities and (...) claims. (shrink)

Recent studies reveal that violence significantly contributes to explaining individual’s facial preferences. Women who feel at higher risk of violence prefer less-masculine male faces. Given the importance of violence, we explore its influence on people’s preferences for a different physical trait. Masculinity correlates positively with male strength and weight or body mass index. In fact, masculinity and BMI tend to load on the same component of trait perception. Therefore we predicted that individuals’ perceptions of danger from violence will relate to (...) preferences for facial cues to low-BMI. In two studies in Colombia, men and women from Bogota, Medellin, and surrounding communities were shown pairs of faces transformed to epitomize the shape correlates of men with high or low-BMI. The images were of European, Salvadoran, or Colombian men. Participants were asked to choose the face they considered most attractive. Subsequently, participants answered a survey about their health, media access, education level, and experiences/perceptions of violence in study 1 and about specific types of violence in study 2. Results from both studies showed that women who experienced/perceived higher levels of violence preferred faces of low-BMI Salvadoran men. Preferences for low-BMI facial cues were significantly explained by violence, even after controlling for all other variables. These results may reflect women’s strategy to avoid male partners capable of inflicting harm. (shrink)

Why is there a long-standing debate about paraphrase in poetry? Everyone agrees that paraphrase can be useful; everyone agrees that paraphrase is no substitute for the poem itself. What is there to disagree about? Perhaps this: whether paraphrase can specify everything that counts as a contribution to the meaning of a poem. There are, we say, two ways to take the question; on one way of taking it, the answer is that paraphrase cannot. Does this entail that there is (...) meaning mysteriously locked in a poem, meaning that cannot be represented in any way other than via the poem itself? If that were so it would have profound implications for poetry’s capacity to convey insight. We suggest reasons for thinking that the entailment does not hold. Throughout, we connect the traditional debate over paraphrase, which has largely been conducted within the fields of philosophy and literary theory, with recent empirically oriented thinking about the communicability of meaning, represented by work in pragmatics. We end with a suggestion about what is to count as belonging to meaning, and what as merely among the things that determine meaning. (shrink)

Contains the _Poetics _ and the first twelve chapters of the_ Rhetoric_, Book III.

_Political Poetry across the Centuries_ aims to give a concise yet wide ranging overview of political poetry from antiquity to the immediate past spanning from Europe to East Asia.

This essay focuses on Günther Anders’s engagement with (political) poetry. I draw on published material and unpublished source texts from the Anders Nachlass to track how Anders arrives at his own writing style and mode of address through his sustained engagement with poetry. Anders’s philosophical prose and exoteric use of language is shaped by multifaceted reflections on (political) poetry and by the tension between ‘political poetry’ and ‘lyrical action’. I first elaborate on Anders's reading of Brecht (...) in the early 1930s, and then turn to the poetry and reflections on poetics that were written during his long exile in the US (1936–50). It is from this basis that I consider Anders’s categorical and programmatic turn away from poetry from the mid-1940s onwards. What emerges from my discussion is that engagements with literature, and with poetry in particular, were not a marginal activity for Anders but reflect a broad, life-long interest in (predominantly) classical and contemporary poetry, resulting in reflections on poetics and his own extensive poetic praxis. (shrink)

Why have poets played such an important role for contemporary philosophers? How can poetry link philosophy and political theory? How do formal considerations intersect with philosophical approaches? These essays seek to establish a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Each essay contributes to our understanding of the relationships between theory and lived experience while providing new insight into important poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Victor Hugo, and others. The broad range of metaphysical, phenomenological, aesthetic, and ethical approaches (...) announce important new paths for a reinvigorated study of lyric poetry in the decades to come. (shrink)

Taking his cue from Wallace Steven's claim that poetry now replaces religion as “life's redemption” and Heidegger's insistence that “the distinction between ‘theoretical’ and ‘poetical’ cannot be applied to philosophical texts”, Richard Rorty celebrated the poetic potential of philosophy. In this prologue, Christopher Norris pays Rorty the compliment of taking his views on the nature and importance of poetry seriously enough to offer an engaging commentary on Rorty's work in poetic form.

In the Netherlands, the poet Herman Gorter is mostly known as the author of the neo-romantic poem May and the “sensitivistic” Poems, but internationally he became famous as a propagandist of radical Marxism: the author of influential brochures and of an “open letter” to comrade W.I. Lenin in 1920. During the 1890s, Gorter became increasingly dissatisfied with his poetry, considering it as ego-centric, disinterested and “bourgeois”, unconnected with what was happening in the real world. He wanted to put his (...) poetry on a scientific footing, notably by endorsing a dialectical materialist worldview. In the communist society he envisioned, science would become poetry and poetry would become science. In his opus magnum Pan, two terms are rather prominent, namely heelal and kristal. These signifiers not only reflect important themes, but also two friendships which began around 1900, namely with prominent astronomer and marxist Anton Pannekoek and with Ada Prins, the first woman in the Netherlands who acquired a PhD in chemistry, specialised in liquid crystal research. Whereas Ada Prins is mostly remembered as one of Gorter’s secret lovers, she was first and foremost his educated guide into the complex and enigmatic world of twentieth-century chemistry research. Liquid crystal chemistry became an important source of inspiration for Gorter’s work and the main objective of this paper is to demonstrate her influence on Gorter’s Pan as a scientific poem After presenting the two heroes of this paper, and their work in poetry and chemistry respectively, I will analyse the role of liquid crystals in Herman Gorter’s Pan, highlighting important connections with Ada Prins’ research into liquid crystal chemistry. (shrink)

The paper aims at reconstructing the influence of Simonides on a contiguous series of Horatian poems . The starting point is provided by the discovery of new Simonidean fragments published by Peter Parsons and by Martin West in 1992. But the research casts a wider net, including the influence of Theocritus on Horace-and of Simonides on Theoocritus-and the simultaneous and competing presence of Pindar and Simonides in late Horatian lyric. The influence of Simonides is seen in specific textual pointers-e.g., a (...) simile on the death of Achilles in 4.6, the idea of caducity in 4.7-as well as in the composite role-model of Simonides, the immortalizing poet, the flexible praise-singer. Some wider questions are put in perspective: As for Horace's approach to the poetic tradition, the Roman poet is able to glance across whole genealogies of models, without necessarily making a choice, but making the invocation of several predecessors, already linked in a tradition, relevant to his new text. "Odes" 4.7, for instance, features a dialogue of Horace, Homer, Mimnermus and Simonides. The oscillation in modern criticism between an "Alexandrian" and a "classicizing" Horace could be better explained by constructing a complex model of intertextuality: "Pindar" plus "the Pindar in Callimachus"; "Simonides" plus "the Simonides in Theocritus." The dominating influence of Pindar in Book IV could be a part of a richer picture of influence, now difficult to reconstruct since all we have is the four Pindaric books of epinicia, not necessarily the only widely read choral lyric in antiquity. The reuse of early-classical praise poetry includes references to social constructs and cultural models of patronage, gift exchange, and poetic addressee: they are important in Augustan lyric precisely because they are felt as distant and impossible to recreate, and become a part of Horace's deft and often ironical negotiations with the problem of being a lyric poet in Augustan Rome. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, the poet Herman Gorter is mostly known as the author of the neo-romantic poem May and the “sensitivistic” Poems, but internationally he became famous as a propagandist of radical Marxism: the author of influential brochures and of an “open letter” to comrade W.I. Lenin in 1920. During the 1890s, Gorter became increasingly dissatisfied with his poetry, considering it as ego-centric, disinterested and “bourgeois”, unconnected with what was happening in the real world. He wanted to put his (...) poetry on a scientific footing, notably by endorsing a dialectical materialist worldview. In the communist society he envisioned, science would become poetry and poetry would become science. In his opus magnum Pan, two terms are rather prominent, namely heelal and kristal. These signifiers not only reflect important themes, but also two friendships which began around 1900, namely with prominent astronomer and marxist Anton Pannekoek and with Ada Prins, the first woman in the Netherlands who acquired a PhD in chemistry, specialised in liquid crystal research. Whereas Ada Prins is mostly remembered as one of Gorter’s secret lovers, she was first and foremost his educated guide into the complex and enigmatic world of twentieth-century chemistry research. Liquid crystal chemistry became an important source of inspiration for Gorter’s work and the main objective of this paper is to demonstrate her influence on Gorter’s Pan as a scientific poem After presenting the two heroes of this paper, and their work in poetry and chemistry respectively, I will analyse the role of liquid crystals in Herman Gorter’s Pan, highlighting important connections with Ada Prins’ research into liquid crystal chemistry. (shrink)

Do poems provide “scripts” for reader’s thoughts? Kendall Walton’s account of poets as thoughtwriters, in which poems can serve to express readers’ thoughts without positing an expressive thinker in the poem, is considered from various angles. While it seems a minimal expressive thinker needs to be posited, this leaves open other questions about poems as the stuff of thought. Can poems be fully thought, and do readers take ownership of the thinking that poetry prompts? Elizabeth Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses” (...) is discussed as a poem that allows the reader a chance to separate aspects of content and control of thought. (shrink)

This paper reads Republic 583b-608b as a single, continuous line of argument. First, Socrates distinguishes real from apparent pleasure and argues that justice is more pleasant than injustice. Next, he describes how pleasures nourish the soul. This line of argument continues into the second discussion of poetry: tragic pleasures are mixed pleasures in the soul that seem greater than they are; indulging them nourishes appetite and corrupts the soul. The paper argues that Plato has a novel account of the (...) ‘paradox of tragedy’, and that the Republic and Philebus contain complementary discussions of tragic and comic pleasure. (shrink)

"Collects Martin Heidegger's pivotal writings on art, its role in human life and culture, and its relationship to thinking and truth"--Publisher description.

Bruns lucidly depicts the distinctions and convergences between these two lines of thought by examining the works of Mallarme, Flaubert, Joyce, Beckett, and ...

I Shall begin by a distinction which will limit my subject. I propose to speak only of beautiful poetry and beautiful prose, or if the phrase be preferred, artistic poetry and prose. The distinction I wish to draw is between art and craft, between making a competent and useful thing which exactly fits its purpose and making it beautifully, between technical skill and artistry, between good workmanship and design and that touch of rareness which makes not merely good (...) but fine and lovely. The boundaries are difficult to draw. For much craft is also beautiful, and the craftsman is always in doing his best, striving to be an artist and often succeeding. But they are not the same things. Mere technical skill will not make a work beautiful but only correct, and on the other hand art may possess beauty, even if not of the highest order; though it fails in skill, the conception in some degree makes up for the defect of skill, as for instance much primitive Italian painting or Greek sculpture, which is defective in drawing or modelling and yet beautiful. Now a large part, perhaps the greater part, of what is called art is not art at all, but craft, good correct painting or drawing or sculpture; pleasing, but not pleasing with the pleasure or even rapture which beauty gives. It is so with prose and poetry. Many poems are not poetry, though written in impeccable verse, and long poems are always apt to drop in places into what is only not called prose because it is metrical. By far the greatest part of prose is merely good workmanlike writing, and in no sense art. I am not intending to depreciate craft, and still less the value and difficulty of attaining it. (shrink)

The role genetic inheritance plays in the way human beings look and behave is a question about the biology of human sexual reproduction, one that scientists connected with the Human Genome Project dashed to answer before the close of the twentieth century. This is also a question about politics, and, it turns out, poetry, because, as the example of Lucretius shows, poetry is an ancient tool for the popularization of science. "Popularization" is a good word for successful efforts (...) to communicate elite science to non-scientists in non-technical languages and media. According to prominent sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, "sexual dominance is a human universal." He meant, of course, that men dominate women. Like sociobiology, genetic science is freighted with politics, including gender politics. Scientists have gender perspectives that may color what they "see" in nature. As the late Susan Okin Miller suggested in an unpublished paper tracing the detrimental impact of Aristotle's teleology on Western thought, scientists accustomed to thinking that men naturally dominate women might interpret genetic discoveries accordingly. Biologists have good, scientific reasons to fight the effects of bias. One must be critical of how scientists and popularizers of science, like "Genome" author Matt Ridley, frame truth and theory. Ridley's "battle of the sexes" metaphor and others have a doubtful place in serious explanations of science. (shrink)

The strong word and stance issue only from a strict will, a will that dares the error of reading all of reality as a text, and all prior texts as openings for its own totalizing and unique interpretations. Strong poets present themselves as looking for truth in the world, searching in reality and in tradition, but such a stance, as Nietzsche said, remains under the mastery of desire, of instinctual drives. So, in effect, the strong poet wants pleasure and not (...) truth; he wants what Nietzsche named as "the belief in truth and the pleasurable effects of this belief." No strong poet can admit that Nietzsche was accurate in this insight, and no critic need fear that any strong poet will accept and so be hurt by demystification. The concern of this book, as of my earlier studies in poetic misprision, is only with strong poets, which in this series of chapters is exemplified by the major sequence of High Romantic British and American poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Emerson, Whitman, and Stevens, but also throughout by two of the strongest poets in the European Romantic tradition: Nietzsche and Freud. By "poet" I therefore do not mean only verse-writer, as the instance of Emerson also should make clear. Harold Bloom is DeVane Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. This article is the first chapter of his new book, Poetry and Repression, to be published by the Yale University Press. The book completes a tetralogy, of which the earlier volumes are The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, and Kabbalah and Criticism. See also: "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3; "The Poet as Elaborator: Analytical Psychology as a Critical Paradigm" by David D. Cooper in Vol. 6, No. 1. (shrink)

Poetry evokes mental imagery in its readers. But how is mental imagery precisely related to poetry? This article provides a systematic treatment. It clarifies two roles of mental imagery in relation to poetry—as an effect generated by poetry and as an efficient means for understanding and appreciating poetry. The article also relates mental imagery to the discussion on the ‘heresy of paraphrase’. It argues against the orthodox view that the imagistic effects of poetry cannot (...) be captured by prosaic paraphrase, but points to features of poetry that can shape aspects of mental imagery that are liable to be lost in paraphrase. (shrink)

There is a wide gap, at any rate in the English-speaking world, between the people whose business it is to talk about the nature of poetry and those who are concerned with the critical analysis of language. Although both subjects are legitimate topics for philosophical discussion, there are few philosophers who combine a deep and effective interest in aesthetics with a concern in the problems of linguistic analysis. The analytical philosopher is only too ready to relegate poetry to (...) the field of “emotive” meaning; and, although “emotive” is a convenient term for marking off aspects of meaning with which the scientist is not concerned, it is also a means for keeping questions closed which ought to be opened. For it conceals the enormous differences which exist between various nonscientific uses of language. It does this behind an implicit suggestion that, since “emotions” are the province of the psychologist, any sort of inquiry into these uses of language will be merely a psychological inquiry. Poetry, of course, falls into this category of non-scientific uses of language, and a few psycho-analysts have accepted the commitment to discuss it; but on the whole its discussion is left to a very small band of aestheticians and a very large fraternity of literary critics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Poetry And MetaphysicsJoseph BottumIWe ought to begin with what is true: things stand over against us—over against philosophers, over against poets, over against us all. The sheer existence of a thing, the mute unspeakable “it” of it, is as impossible of being thought as it is of being said. Things confront us, always other; the other has no other face.Of course, the problem with trying to begin this (...) way is that language shies as soon as we begin. By existence, we mean the this (utmost concreteness, utmost particularity), while words speak of ideas, verba mentis, thoughts, abstractions. Philosophers and poets alike hear the swindle when we use the most abstract language—“being,” “thing,” “existent,” “this”—to speak of what is most concrete, the most general to speak the most particular. It is precisely because “Being” sounds so generic that Aristotle must insist Being is no genus. 1And skittish thought shies here as well. Just as language throws us when we come to speak the real, so thought slips sideways and refuses when we come to that same hurdle in the thing. What advance is made when the unthinkable is recognized as unthinkable? We certainly hold no infinite thought when we understand we cannot think the infinite; we do not grasp our death by understanding we cannot imagine being dead. So we miss somehow the thing and catch instead our thinking when we suppose unthinkability belongs to the unthinkable thing. Only in misdirection can we point to that with which we must begin. Logic might have warned us: there can be no answer to the question “What is this?” when what we mean by this is what is left when all the whats are stripped away. But our resistance to the real is not merely from the sort of logical contradiction that makes square circles or mountains without [End Page 214] valleys impossible to think. Though we know it is wrong to take resisting as an intention of the thing, nonetheless behind the passion that is our own being resisted we feel what seems to be an action of the other: the something-there for which thought itself does not account.We know, in other words, that existence is not a form, but we can only think existence as though it were some sort of form—the attempt to describe which leads us further and further from the existence we are trying to describe. Language is insufferable. Through the window I see my neighbor Mr. Wheeler over there across the lawn, raking while his daughters fill the dark green plastic bags with leaves. Between us and the real, a gap persists—though “persists” is not the word I need; we lack the words to posit a negation. The Wheelers have a birch tree in their yard, with half its strangely splayed yellow leaves still clinging on. The twigs and branches all point up; the leaves and autumn catkins all hang down like tatters that on the indifferent tree, turned inward for the winter, no longer notices. The stiff curls of parchment bark, the black scars in the white along the trunk, the—all of this is failure. I cannot create with words the tree, the unspeakable angle, color, shape, the overwhelming all-at-once thingness of it here now, existence. Reaching out with words to touch the tree, I am betrayed: the word “tree” barely stirs, “birch” just begins stretching out, but every word beyond them either breaks the thing apart to smaller things (the scarred trunk, the yellow leaves) or breaks off in abstraction.The failure of language to speak the real is a failure of language. My capacity to call it a failure, however, comes not from language but from my conviction (while I see the birch) that the real exists. “There are two principles which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them,” writes David Hume, “that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences.” 2 Because we encounter no things that are what they are, no existing essences, the sheer existence of a... (shrink)

In the tenth book of the Republic, Plato famously writes: "There is an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy." In this essay I reflect upon this "quarrel" through an analysis of a passage from Dante's Inferno. I conclude by suggesting that, when employed well, poetry and philosophy complement each other in helping us reflect upon the deep issues of life. (This paper was originally presented at the 19th Annual Conference of Association for Core Texts and Courses) .

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Poetry, Community, Movement: A Conversation*Charles Bernstein (bio), Ann Lauterbach (bio), Jonathan Monroe (bio), and Bob Perelman (bio)1JM: What remains at stake in the long-standing and still tenacious distinction in Western culture between making arguments and making metaphors, between “poetry” and “philosophy”? What is the investment in holding onto this dichotomy?AL: There’s a familiar split in the notion of what a creative act is. That split, in our (...) culture, involves an idea of creativity as being natural and expressive: a poet has no need to have thought about anything in order to make a poem; the enemy is the analytical. This is a long-standing divisive space, certainly within the academy but also in the culture at large.JM: Over the past thirty years or so that space became institutionalized to greater and lesser degrees within the academy in the United States in the familiar tensions that came to exist in many universities between Creative Writing programs and programs in literary theory. Although both kinds of programs acquired substantial institutional power at a roughly similar pace, they’ve often seemed to move along parallel tracks that communicated with each other poorly or at cross-purposes. How do you see their prospects developing midway through the nineties?CB: Let me come at this in a different way. I think there’s enormous value in poets teaching literature in graduate as well as undergraduate programs. We need to have many different perspectives and methodologies in the classroom. For example, it can be a value that we have diametrically opposite perspectives on many of these questions. What particularly interests me as a model for teaching is having the active involvement of contemporary poets in both undergraduate and graduate classes teaching literature in what I would prefer to call “Creative Reading” rather than “Creative Writing” classes.JM: When you say, “We tend to view things from diametrically opposed perspectives,” who is the “we” you’re referring to?CB: Well, the category of “poets” in and of itself is too broad. There is no single perspective of poetry any more than there is a perspective of philosophy or theory. Poets themselves often have diametrically opposed perspectives on these very issues we’re talking about. So there isn’t a perspective of poetry. Poets as a group don’t bring any one thing. As a class in and of itself, it’s just too general. [End Page 196]BP: It seems as though such distinctions are actually playing to an external audience like in the film Dead Poets’ Society, where the artist is this glamorous figure, an outsider.AL: Somewhere in this complicated, or not so complicated, or simplistic view, there may be a reading of reading. Poets who read theory, for example, might be said to read it differently than theorists read poetry, in other words for different ends.BP: That’s true.AL: It is true. And that in itself is interesting. I read a lot of theory but not to theoretical ends.JM: What does that mean, “not to theoretical ends”?AL: I read theory not in order to produce theory. I read theory to produce a way of thinking about poetry, if you see what I mean. So far anyway, I’m not interested in becoming a theoretician of poetry, but I’m very interested in what theory has to say, what it gives me.JM: What kinds of communities are being drawn together or held apart under the words “philosophy” and “poetry”? When you write, Bob, in “The Marginalization of Poetry,” about what you call “overgenred” writing, what happens to the “poetic”?BP: At the end of the poem, quoting from Glas, I wrote, and I still feel this is true, that Derrida is very responsive to philosophic decorum and that my use of his words are in the service of something very different. When I use the word “poetic” there, I’m using it not as a noun but as an adjective. If something is “poetic,” in that sense, I’d worry that it’s trying to be beautiful in old-fashioned ways, not responsive to theory, that it wants to be self-expressive and... (shrink)

There are indications of a positive trend in education. International comparative investigations on academic achievement (Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA) and longitudinal studies on life courses prove the need for and the importance of children’s high intellectual knowledge. At the same time, new research initiatives and projects comply with the demand that aesthetic/cultural education1 be “more” than a marginal complement to intellectual education and instead be “fundamental for thinking and acting.”2 Aesthetic education is to provide soft skills, to shape (...) children’s characters, and to improve their social competences, representing “the Other of school.”3 The text below deals with poetry for .. (shrink)