The latest collection of “poetry” by Christian Bök. |
From a fascinating article in Seed Magazine:
On May 16 the Zoological Society of London released a report suggesting that since contemporary environmentalism emerged with the declaration of the first Earth Day in 1970, close to one-third of all the wild species on Earth have disappeared. Language conservationists have fared no better: Of the world’s roughly 6,800 languages, fully half — though some experts say closer to 90 percent — are expected to disappear before the end of the century.
It hit me, reading this, that the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E project of divorcing Signifier from Signified may boil down to this: an attempt to disconnect words from reality in to order preserve us as reality sinks into extinction. “So what if Nature is being denatured? We’ve got our cool little codes within codes, a few already inscribed into the DNA of extremophile bacteria.”
How appropriate, eh?
what else are we …. but our memories ?<br />If I REALLY put my Mind to "it" and re:call "her" real name <br />I'll write<br />another book (whose Boks with the two dots over the "O"<br /> &, should I care?) about "what's Her name".<br /><br />I think that we all got lobotomized sometime in the '80's<br />(or got Reagan's
I've a got a great memory, Conrad! It's just short.
Ha ha ha…<br /><br />Vassilis, I didn't even realize I'd said it (that way!). Damn, I'm clever (and you're even cleverer for spotting it first)
<i>Böks,</i> Conrad? I swear I thought you said <i>books.</i>
Joseph,<br /><br />saw this Coleridge quote in Don Share's blog:it seems this rush into extinction, real or literary, has been around for at least a hundred years or so. Note particularly Coleridge's fear that "memory" will be first to go. I think Pope had envisaged the same sort of "will to extinction" in his own "Dunciad" prophesy.<br /><br />This is what