Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 To Learn to Know a Thing : The Practice of Attention in Rilkean-Levertovian Poetics
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In the early 1950s UK-born US poet Denise Levertov transcribed a passage from The Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1946) into her ‘Green Notebook’ a personal anthology of ‘brief essential texts’ (Levertov, 1973, p. 43). She labelled the passage ‘If a thing is to speak to you’. The excerpt was one of several from Rilke’s letters that would remain significant to Levertov across a near five-decade career. This article uses distributed mind theory to reflect on the role of the ‘thing’ in Rilkean-Levertovian poetics. Drawing primarily on Menary’s Cognitive Integration framework (2007a), it considers the role of two particular artefacts (things) – an idiosyncratic index created by Levertov to the Selected Letters and the aforementioned Green Notebook – in the development of Levertov’s cognitive character (Menary, 2012a). In so doing, it frames the Rilke-Levertov relationship as an example of enculturated cognition (Menary, 2015). In addition, it looks specifically at the role of Rilke’s Ding or thing poetics in this particular example of enculturation; that is, the influence of Rilke’s engagement with ‘things’ in the development of Levertov’s objectivist-inflected poetics of presence.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon TEXT Special Issue Writing through Things 2 : The Thing as Writing Prompt no. 63 October 2021 23374773 2021 periodical issue 'When writers start thinking about their relationship to things, ideas grow. When we put the call out for papers for this theme, we were so overwhelmed by the response that it became two special issues rather than one – the ideas, and enthusiasm, had grown beyond the bounds of an individual issue.' (Introduction) 2021
Last amended 3 Nov 2021 11:44:18
https://textjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/29717-to-learn-to-know-a-thing-the-practice-of-attention-in-rilkean-levertovian-poetics To Learn to Know a Thing : The Practice of Attention in Rilkean-Levertovian Poeticssmall AustLit logo TEXT Special Issue
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