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The Virtual World

Poetry, the imagination, and the creative life.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cody Walker blogs about the Comic Imagination over at the Kenyon Review:

On Saturday I moderated a panel on “The Comic Imagination” at New York’s Philoctetes Center. Panelists included Lewis Black, Jim Holt, Bruce McCall, and Tami Sagher. I’ll write more about the panel in my next post (after, as the refs say, a review of the tape) — but I wanted to first post a few thoughts on spring and comedy.

In Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Northrop Frye proposes correspondences between the literary genres (or, if you prefer, the archetypal narratives) and the seasons. Romance is assigned to summer, tragedy to fall, satire to winter, and comedy to spring. It all makes wonderful sense: summer is the season of road trips and romance, of dragon- and skirt-chasing. In fall, we watch the leaves drop — or we would, if we hadn’t already gouged out our eyes (after, you know, sleeping with our mother, and worse). The chilly satire of winter serves to clear away the fallen brush (or Bush?), preparing the way for springtime, for comedy. And with comedy comes a spirit of renewal, of hope. It’s the time of roses and tulips.


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Posted by Peter at 7:24 AM
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Poetry can communicate before it is understood. ~T. S. Eliot

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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ Plato

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A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~ Salman Rushdie

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Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~ Novalis

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Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty. — Carolyn Forche

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Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. — Denis Diderot

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Sometimes something wants to be said, sometimes a way of saying wants to be used. — Paul Valéry

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