Claude Royet-Journoud Pt 2

Some thoughts from Claude Royet-Journoud (trans Keith Waldrop) on poetry:



The whole of poetry is preposition.


All writing is built on entropy. The only question is the one of sense, and that is insoluble. Sense has to be caught the moment it develops, while it remains still undetermined.


The trick is to be literal (not metaphorical).


The book “turns” on certain unsettled terms—where the word is searching for definition by the reader.


To found a real on the metaphorical! I prefer surface, the flat, and, frankly, the platitude, since it alone forces the world to answer.


What is written is mute.


Displacing the world, not by changing the world, but by repeating it.


We only “verify” commonplaces.


Form as excess of emotion.


Jack Spicer: Metaphors are not for humans.


“Because they know all the words, they think they know all the verities.” (Joseph Joubert.)


“In fact, to say that beginning is the act by which we begin, is giving a pretty lame explanation.” (Kierkegaard.)


The only “truth,” movement. Movement, not rhythm.


“The real and the true are two different things.” (Robert Bresson.)


“Now it is not the case that everything we say is said with the point entirely clear; more often our mouth speaks by itself.” (Wittgenstein.)