Abstract
What do we need to appreciate experimental poetry? Is it enough to use our eyes, ears and "verbal understanding", or do we also need information about the context of a particular work? The field of experimental poetry might sometimes be tricky to navigate. On one hand it is filled with different movements, artistic manifestos, and author's methods.
On the other hand, many experimental texts - especially in comparison with "traditional" poetry - utilize very similar formal features, such as a restricted language, distinctive graphic design, non-standard syntax, minimal use of figural expressions or other usual poetic devices. In my paper I will approach experimental poetry with the theory of aesthetic anti-empiricism (Walton, Lamarque, Danto), according to which it is not possible to judge a work of art correctly solely based on evidence given by our senses, in other words by observing the formal features of a work and searching for their interplays and meanings.
What plays a key role in our aesthetic appreciation is the knowledge of the facts related to the provenance of the work, e.g. thoughts, beliefs and intentions of the artist, his connection to some distinctive artistic program, affiliation of the work to a certain category (Walton) etc. To what extend does the knowledge of the provenance related facts change the way we are experiencing a work of literature? Inspired by the cases of indiscernibles - distinguished objects with identical properties - I will examine several experimental texts from the 20th and 21st century which use similar formal methods to different aesthetic purposes leading to different aesthetic experiences.
Attention to the context, in both broad and narrow sense, permit us to make judgements based on different criteria then the formal ones and thus better differentiate between individual works as well as broader tendencies in experimental poetry. At the same time, it permits us to see the history of experimental poetry in a new light.