meikaMon, Jan 14, 2008 Despite the acid I beg to differ.
As I remember it syntax was a ancient Greek military term, such as one might described the ordering of a phalanx. [ I can't remember where I read it htough :(. ] This metaphor returns to language because the syntax of the phalanx, was the turn of another metaphor, as phalanx means finger. And of course, in many ways, language use is a multitude of fancy ways to point at things, and so carry them into speech.
So then, a syntax, is a working together as an ordering, perhaps barked as a command. It makes every case an imperative.
So the future may not be made by poets at all, or at least, if by poets, only by war poets in a poetry of pure orders, unhindered by the chaos of the battlefield. Of course it's here already, by virtue of wargames.
Poetry will be found in the emergent institutions of the future, for poetry is a making, and a bringing together of things, ordered more by self and selves than on command by some war poet sapper.
Or perhaps I am just a touch sensitive. A trans-emo-brat?
Despite the acid I beg to differ.
As I remember it syntax was a ancient Greek military term, such as one might described the ordering of a phalanx. [ I can't remember where I read it htough :(. ] This metaphor returns to language because the syntax of the phalanx, was the turn of another metaphor, as phalanx means finger. And of course, in many ways, language use is a multitude of fancy ways to point at things, and so carry them into speech.
So then, a syntax, is a working together as an ordering, perhaps barked as a command. It makes every case an imperative.
So the future may not be made by poets at all, or at least, if by poets, only by war poets in a poetry of pure orders, unhindered by the chaos of the battlefield. Of course it's here already, by virtue of wargames.
Shelley said poets were the legislators of the future. But as a failed poet, I say, that Ozymandias is, perhaps, poetry and all its legislations.
Poetry will be found in the emergent institutions of the future, for poetry is a making, and a bringing together of things, ordered more by self and selves than on command by some war poet sapper.
Or perhaps I am just a touch sensitive. A trans-emo-brat?