How, as a poet, do you describe something as recalcitrantly material as an orange? When you "express" it juice shoots out and stains your hand: language leaves a residue - and good writing has to deal with that sticky remainder, that stain, and come to terms with the fact that it can never fully deal with it. Ponge's poetry is literature's great riposte to totalitarianism - in thought, aesthetics and, by extension, politics.
Link: Tom McCarthy's top 10 modernists | Top 10s | Guardian Unlimited Books.
Comments