Literarisches Events (in and around Lawrence KS)

  • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. Lawrence. Thursday, September 11, 7:00 p.m., Spooner Hall, KU Campus.
  • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. Lawrence. Friday, September 19, 7:00 p.m. Lawrence Public Library. Sponsored by Raven Bookstore.
  • DENNIS ETZEL, JR. & RACHEL CROSS. Lawrence. Thursday, September 25, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.
  • TONY TRIGILIO. Lawrence. Thursday, Oct. 2, 4:00 p.m., English Room, Kansas Union, KU Campus. FREE.
  • CALEB PUCKETT & JUSTIN RUNGE. Lawrence. Thursday, October 16, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.
  • BEN LERNER. Kansas City, MO. Thursday, October 23, 7:00 p.m., Epperson Auditorium, Vanderslice Hall on the KCAI campus, 4415 Warwick Blvd.
  • KRISTIN LOCKRIDGE & ROBERT DAY. Lawrence. Thursday, December 4, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Evidence? Paraphrase?

So much History (as in "history books") is paraphrase. If it's done well, it's turned into a gripping (absorptive) tale (I'm finishing up Master of the Senate, Robert Caro's monumental [see?] study of LBJs years as Majority Leader). It's not fictionalizing events, exactly, but it smooths out and sutures over the actors' phenomenological bumps and gaps. That's where I think poetry (or "poetry" as indeterminate, inter-generic space) comes in. Poets don't have to (and can't) get dressed up in a suit to give papers to the AHA.

A colleague of mine holds that "information is the death of art" (or was it "enemy" of art - implying a struggle, which would be more interesting?). Is evidence the same thing as information? Can something be evidence of itself? I should have this figured out by now . . . or do like the Pragmatists and just declare epistemology irrelevant. But evidence alone becomes pure context - in which case, we're back in the Giscombe, Rumble (and Robbe-Grillet) landscape.

Throw me a bone, here . . .