Ray Briggs is a professor of philosophy at Stanford, and has revealed two books of poetry: “Free Logic” and “Frequent Sexual Fantasies, Ruined,” along with the zine “Trendy American Gods” (in collaboration with artist Anna Zusman). “Free Logic” gained the 2012 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for rising poets in Queensland and was shortlisted for a 2014 Queensland Literary Award.
In dialog with The Every day, Briggs mentioned the connection between poetry and philosophy, the function of politics in arts and rats that masquerade as small canine.
The Stanford Every day (TSD): Your first guide of poetry is titled “Free Logic.” Is there a connection between the logic of poetry and the logic of philosophy?
Ray Briggs (RB): I believe so. I like to jot down loads of poems about philosophy. The title of the guide is as a result of one of many poems is named “Free Logic,” which is a type of logic the place you possibly can introduce dummy or actual names for issues that don’t actually exist. So I wrote a couple of poem about reasoning about issues that don’t exist and lists of issues that don’t exist.
I believe that philosophical puzzles are a extremely nice supply of poetic materials and I believe that poetry helps me to jot down higher philosophy articles as a result of it’s very easy to jot down in a mode that no person desires to learn for those who don’t take into consideration what you’re doing.
TSD: How does that affect present itself in your writing? Are there particular belongings you take note of whereas writing philosophy articles?
RB: I take note of utilizing concrete examples, the cadence of my sentences and the construction of the factor I’m writing. I believe loads of the talents are transferable backwards and forwards between poetry and philosophy.
TSD: Are there any philosophers that you just suppose are particularly poetic, or poets that you just suppose are particularly philosophical?
RB: What will we wish to classify Audre Lorde as? Perhaps each, as a result of she wrote each poetry and essays (which don’t at all times get taught within the philosophy division, however typically do). She’s only a actually good author. I keep in mind some poor man gave a paper on Audre Lorde and he wrote as moderately nicely as any of us do, however needed to embrace block quotes from her which is unlucky for anyone as a result of she writes so significantly better than the common educational. So I believe that she’s type of good at each the poetic abilities and the philosophical abilities.
I additionally like this poet — I’m going to butcher her title — Szymborska? She has a beautiful poem about preferences that I learn quite a bit once I was writing about preferences. It’s only a checklist of issues that she prefers and is type of a self-portrait.
TSD: What work have been you doing on preferences?
RB: I’m fascinated with a bunch of issues. On the time, I used to be engaged on this undertaking about what the connection is between getting what you like and being well-off — so preference-satisfaction theories of nicely being. I believe [the theories] get one thing basically proper however have some apparent issues that must be overcome.
TSD: What are the plain issues?
RB: One apparent drawback is which you can have a choice intuitively as a result of you’ve gotten a mistaken perception. So there’s this instance by Bernard Williams of any individual who desires a glass of gin, and errors a glass of petrol for a glass of gin. And kinds […] the need to drink what’s in that individual glass [although] it appears like that wouldn’t be good for them, and so they solely have the need as a result of they made a mistake.
TSD: Switching gears a bit, do you’ve gotten any poetic initiatives at present within the works?
RB: I really simply completed a collaboration with my buddy Anna Zusman, referred to as “Trendy American Gods.” We visualized ideas that Individuals are fixated on collectively, as if they have been gods in some type of polytheistic pantheon. So she attracts icons of them — I believe she doesn’t actually need them to be icons, I believe footage is what she says — and I write prayers to them.
TSD: What are examples of those gods?
RB: Lets see, so we’ve acquired a god of cultural appropriation and a goddess of political correctness. I insisted on the god of firearms. We’ve additionally acquired a god of terrorism. So that they’re not essentially issues that Individuals suppose are good — they’re all meant to be ambivalent somewhat than all good or all unhealthy. Simply issues which can be vital. So we’ve acquired a god of freedom and a god of consolation and a god of household values and a goddess of fame. There are 26 in all.
TSD: This undertaking sounds somewhat bit political. What do you suppose the roles of politics is in poetry?
RB: Anna and I talked quite a bit concerning the function of artwork and politics and it’s onerous to do political poetry, I believe, since you don’t wish to be didactic and you’ll actually spoil the aesthetics of it. And really having a collaborator was actually good for stopping me from getting didactic, as a result of we disagreed about all types of issues and so it was a dialog, and one of many issues we needed to mannequin was how do you disagree and have a dialog about it that captures either side of the disagreement.
I really actually like poetry as a spot to speak about politics as a result of I’ve discovered that … I can attain [people I can’t talk to otherwise] if we each do artwork, even when we disagree. And it opens up a realm of chance and empathy which can be actually onerous to get for those who’re simply yelling at one another throughout the desk.
TSD: Have you learnt what’s subsequent?
RB: So I do know what’s subsequent with Anna. That is a lot much less political. We have been strolling round sooner or later and small canine and type of spun out this story about rats. There’s type of the city legend of the small canine that seems to be a rat, and we thought what wouldn’t it appear to be from the rat’s perspective? And we talked a couple of household of poor rats, whose solely hope was to ship their little one out to canine ending college to be adopted as a wealthy individual’s canine. We’re going to in all probability make an illustrated zine about that of some form.
TSD: What poem are you most happy with?
RB: I’m nonetheless actually keen on this factor I revealed within the Canadian journal “Arc” referred to as “Questioning Your Masculinity.” As is so usually the case, I wrote it as a result of I discovered one thing on the earth that upset me and needed to course of it. So any individual else on a poetry discussion board … had written what I believed was a extremely unhappy poem about being threatened by his spouse’s skill to parallel park. And I believed, what sort of human being does this? And I needed to jot down one thing about that however I didn’t wish to simply sound indignant, as a result of that bores folks. And I used to be type of unhappy, I used to be type of indignant — I needed the world to ship up one thing higher than that — and so I wrote a sequence of questions on what masculinity is.
And [the questions] have been making it rather more concrete than I believe it really is, so I requested about its colour, and the place you retain it, and its texture and may you educate it to sing. And I’m happy with that as a result of I managed to show this very closed set of feeling that I used to be experiencing into a really open checklist of questions, and there’s not a set of proper solutions presupposed to any of the questions. The reader type of will get to reply them for themself.
Contact Michal Leibowitz at michalgl ‘at’ stanford.edu.
