Modal "echolalia"

Philosophizing remains a popular endeavor in the poetry world, but only so long as it's a poetic sort of philosophizing (Nietszche, Heidegger) and not complicated, logic-y stuff that involves formulations like ◊∃xφ→∃x◊φ¹. Since Anglo-American philosophy has been dominated by the latter sort of thinking for decades, it's no surprise most poets don't go in for it.

The Politics of Poetry
by David Orr
POETRY July/August 2008²

I could have sworn:

        that if it's possible
               there's something that's a unicorn,
        then there's something
               that's possibly a unicorn

        ( with single horn
          his forehead adorn )

—Would this leave possibly any poet forlorn?



for read write poem prompt #49: mission, echolalia
____________________
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/actualism/#ContCons
   and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/actualism/#Worlds
   (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_modality)

The poem above contains a "poetization" of the ("echolalic") "formulation" in the Orr quotation. A point (against Orr's statement) is that even the arcana of modal logics and possible worlds is not that divorced from poetry. Another is that if one were to point to the philosopher closest to poetry, it might be Wittgenstein.

2. reader responses (POETRY October 2008)

•     •     •    •

(Perhaps the most famous modal "echolalia" would be: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?)

Update

(October 25, 2008) Since posting this, this flikr group came to my attention: Robocop on a Unicorn