[Milton-L] Fetishizing Greatness, was Re: Is Paradise Lost

[James Rovira]

The games aren't interrelated, Larry: the narrow definitions make
possible the wider applications.  No one's saying the word "poem"
means only one thing.

Jim R

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Dr. Larry Gorman <larry at eastwest.edu> wrote:
> But that isn't the point.  The point is that we talk about poetry and
> prose as single things because we have single words for them and we tend
> to think that therefore they have a single meaning.  But there are a
> variety of languages games in which we use the words.  In language game
> A poetry refers to metered verse and we say that writing free verse is
> like playing tennis without a net.  In language game B we make what we
> call a poem out of a note we left to our wife after we got home late and
> ate the plums left in the fridge.  In language game C we note that
> passages from Moby Dick are really poems in disguise.  All of these
> games make sense, and when someone else plays by other rules than ours
> we can get all snarky and self-righteous because we know what it means
> to write poetry, and those ignorant fools obviously don't.
>