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Kamarck, Edward (ed.) / Arts in society: the arts and the black revolution
(1968)
Yates, Peter
Book reviews: the question of "stasis", pp. 333-343
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Page 343
meter has been chronological time, measured by the stopwatch. Latterly he has been trying to rid himself of time entirely. Thus the ways of thought which make up his writings - he disdains the term, philosophy - and his craftsmanship go separate paths. As a craftsman he works step by step; each composition a step forward from the last. As a thinker he bounds from enthusiasm to enthusiasm and can forget completely the enthusiasm of an earlier season. So in his best writing he projects each sentence as a direct statement, seldom with inversion, as he learned from Gertrude Stein, while soaring among the clouds - mushrooms to Zen to Meister Eckhart - of his personal empyrean. Claiming to rely on chance for many of his compositions, music, lecture, writing, he prepares carefully the material with which chance must work. His best writings belong with the poets. When he strains to write, he ornaments, goes wrong. His ear for sounds and words is wonderful, in the real meaning of that word, though he claims he has not the ear of a musician. I have heard him, surprised by the rich shriek of a table leg scraping floor and by a Couperin Saraband played on a meantone-tuned harpsichord, cry out in pleasure. The easy control and modulation of his voice when lecturing or performing should be a model for poets. Reading him one enters not the austerity verging on asceticism in which he lives but the universe of unbounded discovery, wonder, and excitement he urges on all mankind. is going on. One of the principal duties of a critic, from time to time, is to beat the hell out of what is going on. Any critic should refuse to be a patsy for the current. They have to talk about all these people; but a poem's made, not for the public. Too many words, too many images: words, images, metaphors of poetry. The information about temperament and tuning in this article was learned during many years of association with the late Wesley Kuhnle, whose History of Tuning, recorded on tape with a multitude of comparative examples, will I hope soon be published as a text with records. Complete sets of these tapes are at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and Washington University, St. Louis, (original version) and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, and Long Beach State College, Long Beach, California (final version). Apart from improved levels, the differences between the two sets are not great. Addenda: Returning for a moment to The New Amercan Arts, which I have neglected: the chief purpose of these critics seems to be to tell what - 343 . - . . . - . - - . - . . . .. - e - - . - . .. - . - - . - . . - e - - - . - . .. - . - - . -
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