3.30.2002

Naming is one kind of language game, is that what you're saying? Makes sense to me. I've always been suspicious of poets & theorists of poetry who name naming as the poet's primary role. In contemporary poetry, this fallacy can be traced back to the wonderful Chilian poet Pablo Neruda, who remarked once (as poets will) that the Latin American poets of the 20th century had an advantage over their North American brothers & sisters because "there are still birds in our forests that do not have names." It's a lovely & romantic notion, but in fact it is ornithologists or local folk who give names to birds, not poets. Poets, of course, will put those names to uses that were perhaps never envisioned by the scientist or hunter.

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