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12 July 2005: Whaddya know--I write a nasty entry on Marcus Bales and the very next day he helps me out at New-Poetry. I had posted about my new pair of terms, "vernacular" and "meta-vernacular" poetry, after the Mole joked that I was wrong to think the latter would not be derided the way "burstnorm" has been.
" ... That's not to say I think it will escape the derision of the stasguards, said I. "But they won't be able to say I'm using a term calculated to seem
adventurously avant garde. The new term seems more neutral to me,
and should to others--'other than' vernacular, not 'breaking
convention.'"
"It's not more neutral, though, because you're not using the word as it is
commonly used now," Marcus replied. "You're trying to use it to mean 'other than' rather than 'about'.
"Meta in common use most often means 'about'; in ancient Greek it
meant 'with' most often, though sometimes meant 'change' as in
'metamorphosis'.
"It's often interesting to consider the meta-theory of a given subject or
issue, of course, because the theoretical consideration of its foundations
and methods usually offers some insight into its conclusions or results,
and perhaps there is a good reason to use 'metapoetry' or
'metavernacular' or even 'metavernacular poetry' if we take a
metapoem as a poem about poetry or about itself, or metadiscussion is
a discussion about how the discussion will be conducted, and so on.
'Metavernacular' ought reasonably to mean 'about the vernacular'; one
would expect, on encountering it in the phrase 'metavernacular poetry'
that it meant 'poetry about the vernacular', whatever that might be.
"So you're using 'meta' here in an unusual way if you mean it to mean
what you say: 'other than' rather than 'about'. The term is clearly not
being used as 'meta' is commonly used."
I agreed that Marcus may have been right. "My dictionary," I went on, "says it can mean 'beyond,' which is somewhat unneutrally positive--although in 'metaphysics,' it seems negative--to me, at any rate--because metaphysics is so much less than physics, although 'beyond' it. My dictionary also gives 'more specialized form of,' which would fit. But maybe I should use 'para?'"
That's what I did do, after checking my dictionary. A short time later, James Finnegan posted a note arguing that "burstnorm" was a much better term than "meta-vernacular"--because more "punchy and memorable." Gah. But, as I told him, I'll continue using "burstnorm" for the poetries I have been using it for, just not officially, in my taxonomy. I believe . . . PARAvernacular is the better term there. Accuracy before memorability. (Not that "burstnorm" has proven very memorable, no one using it except stray New-Poetry people making fun of it and/or me.)
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