"After I posted, I thought of Aleksandra's posts that talk about the process-oriented, braided 'poetics' of Balinese drama versus the less process-oriented poetics of Aristotle and much of western literature. Certainly writers involved in digital media have wrestled with the apparent disjunction between the structure of western narratives and drama, on the one hand, and the more process-oriented possibilities of new media. It may be that the sort of thing you and Aleksandra note--that useful paradigms for dramatic, process-oriented art exist (as in Balinese drama)--could be useful to writers and others. Interesting that the 'braided process' approach is not only of drama but song and dance...Greek theatre also had these elements...it seems likely that the roots of Greek drama go back to religious rites/rituals (so much work done on that matter by the 'Cambridge anthropologists' Jane Harrison et all)."

"I wonder if you know when the Balinesians acquired writing? Much later than their dramatic form? It would be natural for writing to be strongly influential on form emerging from cultures that have writing."

"I'm currently reading one of the better books I've encountered in a long time, called Snow by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Though there are conventional progressions between chapters in the narrative, you can pick it up at any point and its interesting to read from there. That's a fairly 'simple' poetics, in a sense, but difficult to achieve: excellence at every point. I suppose it doesn't hurt that the main character is a poet."

"The approach is hinted at in the first paragraph of chapter one (titled The Journey to Kars). "The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow." A wonderful introduction to the character's poetics--and the novelist's. Poetics as what we mediate experience and language with. - ja http://subtle.net/empyre"

(http://vispo.com | empyre forum | empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au | http://www.subtle.net/empyre )

:: note :: . . . thoughtful forum discussion . . . subscribed on&off to this forum for years now . . . each month a new topic . . . layers & layers of ideas storm and turmoil blindingly. . . blizzard . . . whiteout . . . after the saturated hope & after all branched off fate . . . would call the thing he felt inside him the silence of whiteout . . .