John Currie

I loved revisiting Keats after these many years and still find his language and cadences somewhat contemporary, I know I may be alone in this but I suppose I try to take all his "phrases of the time" as simply that; I try not to see them as impediments.

I would offer the analogy of what might be called "spoken word" poetry as distinctly the same type of archaic old language. That style, nearly a generation old now in its popular form, strikes me the same way that Keats strikes some in class, as language from a particular time, somehow stuck there. Yet the dressing of spoken word is more accessible so therefore, easier to relate to.

I was invited to read at the Poet's Cafe as part of fiction series in 1990 and was amazed how quickly that scene became a metaphor for modern poetics, as somehow more current that say, Keats, perhaps. Not long after that, I was fortunate to have lunch with Rita Dove, the poet laureate at that time. We discussed how to update the old man's club so to speak and make it necessary(for history is,no matter it flaws) and she pointed out that these writers were the radicals of their day. Since then I found myself as a teacher, at times reading, Robert Burns, in vernacular, to groups of city kids and making it meaningful.

I am always struck that modernity for lack of a better word, is a striving after the new, in context. Keats deals with all we do and will do. If some of the lexicon is out of reach on a first reading, that makes sense. But in the act of imagination, we can and do make it real, current, relevant.

It was also a bit of nostalgia for me to read as I was once a young man(this also hard to believe), with flowing brown locks, studying theater in the mid 80's. I studied speech and diction as a kid from New Jersey might need to do to improve or polish some of my local sounds. We spent many days reading Keats, Shelly, and what have you with a speech teacher born just after the turn of the century. It was a realization how everything old gets new again, to paraphrase.

The issues of consciousness that are raised in these poems are timeless, even if, the words are stuck in time(a bit).

That personal report aside, to deal with Steen, which by (un?)conscious action, came to me late in this week's work, if I have to confess. I do and must.
As was discussed in class, there were some easily misunderstood frameworks in the construction of what is seemingly a soundly plausible, useful argument.

In his italicized intro to his argument, Steen proposes that "The study of aesthetics within an evolutionary framework has focused on the appetite for beauty as an engine for driving adaptive behavior in habitat and mate choice." He continues and proposes "instead that aesthetic experience is its own goal, in the sense that the experience implicitly provides adaptively useful information for purposes of self-construction. Without bringing in a larger history of this argument, it would be hard to disagree with either position, however some level of assumption doesn't seem like a natural selection.

Looking at aspects of this idea, Steen says: " Current work in evolutionary theory is animated by the seductive promise of a functional explanation for every key human trait. Yet the variety and complexity of the aesthetic impulse, along with its myriad expressions, may make us conclude, very sensibly, that reality simply overflows our theories." This last idea, that reality, in its many patterns, is beyond our ability to theorize about it. This is strong and true idea.

There is an old existential joke, whose set-up I forget but whose punch line so to speak, is that if you found out the meaning of life, you'd be dead. What we don't know will always overshadow what we do, I hope. Anything more might just be sophistry or a soap opera of fantastic belief. However, it is curious that even in his parry at current work, he defines the argument by the "impulse" of "variety and complexity." Is his use of impulse, i.e. instinct a wrench in the engine of his point?

Steen writes that evolutionary aesthetics fails to "provide a credible framework for understanding the surprising range of aesthetics." Outside of staying with the confines of Darwinian natural selection, there is no new answer to species adaptation generally. Steen seeks "an explanation that honors beauty itself as a resource, without seeing it as a proxy for something else." This sounds "honorable" yet somehow loses me logically.

Firstly I agree that this is fertile ground for discussion and understanding, but I also argue that aesthetic knowledge functions in an evolutionary context if we examine the knowledge of beauty. If we, as Steen argues, use beauty as a tool for self construction, isn't that then, to a degree, an adaptive choice. What is the interaction of instinct and imagination? It seems to me, (and you might prove this at any cocktail party) that more knowledge of aesthetics, beauty, art, becomes an adaptation that makes an individual more attractive to a mate and can, at least theoretically aid one on making an income and therefore access to better living choices; this related to the organism making choices to increase the chance for survival. Over time, this has lead to changes in brain structure and complexity.

It may take smarter students than I to unpack Steen's argument, but I found it frustrating in that I agree with many of his points, but left the reading disappointed as the contradictions that appear like so many selective adaptations don't get formally dealt with. Still much ground to till, many seeds to sow.

Then again, we are only looking at a small aspect of a larger work, but, that's life, that's what people say. We only ever see a small piece of anything at any given time. Or did I miss something?