Arranging a Marriage between Beauty and the Beast

Presentation prepared for the
Schule für Dichtung in Wien / School of Poetry in Vienna
(Vienna, 13th September 1993)
This paper constitutes an unusual opportunity to venture where few care to tread. It therefore calls for special attention to the structure of the presentation. This is organized in three major parts. This first part might be thought of as a meta-reflection about the challenges of presenting the theme. The second is the core content, whose structure is reviewed in the first. The third part contains the many detailed notes to underpin the arguments and suggest future lines of enquiry. These have been removed from the other parts to facilitate presentation and comprehension of the basic points and their interrelationship. The second part could be read independently of the first. [complete PDF version]

Summary [PDF version]

Part I: Possibilities of a marriage between Beauty and the Beast [PDF version]

1. Prospects for an arranged marriage (18k)
1. Similarities between poetry-making and policy-making
2. Viability of a marriage
3. Urgency
4. Creating a new nexus
5. Challenge of the marriage
6. Differences between poetry-making and policy-making
7. A marriage of opposites
8. Need for recognition of limitations
9. Overtures and inversions

2. Overtures of the Beast (9k)
1. Military and sporting events
2. Corporations
3. Politics
4. Work
5. Advertising
6. Religion
7. Sciences
8. Education and training mnemonics

3. Overtures of Beauty (22k)
1. Challenge to the subculture
2. Isolation from public life
3. Institutionalization of poetry
4. Why poetry matters
5. Poetry and corporate life
6. Poetry in a divided world
7. Liberation poetry
8. Product or process: the challenge of how?

4. Voice of the Matchmaker (36k)
1. Quality vs Complexity
2. Autopoiesis and self-organization
3. Systems of knowledge: Techne vs Episteme
4. Cycles and Phasing
5. Cognitive function and metaphor
6. Organizational science in a postmodern context
7. Metaphor and policy-making
8. Mathematics and poetry
9. Poetics of scientific hypothesis formation
10. What is meta for?
11. Therapeutic metaphors
12. Light of the mind
13. Articulation of policy guidelines in poetic form
14. Complementarity
15. Interwoven alternatives: resonance hybrids

Part II: Mutual Entrainment [PDF version]

1. Poetic configuration of policy guidelines (16k)
1. Thematic choice
2. Appropriateness
3. Imagination and originality
4. Challenge
5. Insight capture and control
6. Acknowledging / Honouring / Dignifying
7. Coherence and integrity
8. Energy holding / Enthralling
9. Focus
10. Resonance and relevance
11. Rhythm and pacing
12. Image-building
13. Metaphor

2. Poesis: Enhancement of policy through key poetic insights (37k)
1. Poetic language
2. Multiple meanings
3. Hidden effects of syntax
4. Perspectives-orientation and context creation
5. Metaphor and enhanced perspective
6. Liberating images and comprehension
7. Evoking imaginative involvement
8. Handling complexities beyond ordinary language
9. Handling contradictions
10. Modelling patterns of relationship
11. Suggestive associations
12. Higher forms of order
13. Avoidance of polarization into excess detail or over-generalization
14. Meter and rhythm
15. From explication to motivation
16. Interlocking lines of significance
17. Creative confrontation of differences
18. Integrative comprehension
19. Challenging paradigms
20. Working with polarizations and irrationality
21. Poetic discourse as a metaphor of future policy-making

1. VISION of a poetic policy GROUP INITIATIVE (6k)
1. New modes of discourse
2. Templates, keystones and catalysts
3. Envisaging meetings of the future
4. Styles of aesthetic and policy endeavour

2. PROPOSAL for an exploratory INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (12k)
1. Preamble
2. Considerations of scope
3. Considerations of focus: vital distinctions
4. Practical steps
5. Comment

3. Envisioning the policy-making experience of the future (16k)
1. Paradigmatic courtship
2. Language creation
3. New forms
4. Engagement of attention
5. Mnemonic features
6. Beyond text to multi-media
7. Learning from harmony
8. Musical organization
9. Cyclic organization of policies and programmes
10. Adaptation of musical notation
11. Differences and dissonances
12. Group creativity

4. Cultivating new conceptual languages (17k)
1. Language cultivation
2. Pattern and configuration
3. "Deep epistemology"
4. Examples of language development
5. Influence of peotry
6. Criteria for selection of metaphors
1. Adequate to capture the variety of options
2. Opening options
3. Recognition of limitations
4. Dynamic system of complementary metaphors
5. Recursive nature of metaphors selected

5. Policy discourse through metaphor (8k)
• Guidelines 1 to 7

6. Inventing reality: "talking it up" through configured imagery (9k)
1. "Talking it up"
2. Creating more complex realities
3. Succumbing to illusions
4. Invented realities
5. Dependence on a single metaphor
6. Dialogue experiments
7. Need for further experiment

7. Magic, miracles and image-building (19k)
1. Magic as an interface between poetry and policy-making
2. Image-building, policy-making and science
3. How is magic to be understood?
4. Sharing metaphors towards transformation
5. Worldviews and transformations
6. Magical arts
7. Spell-casting
8. Guided visualization
9. Ritual pattern-making
10. Magical perversions

8. Future role of multi-media technology (9k)
1. Multi-media environments
2. Multiplicity of alternate representations
3. Collective "composition"
4. Conceptual bridge-building through "morphing"
5. Virtual reality
6. Transformative moments enabled by computer

Part IV: Clues towards Transformative Congressing [PDF version]

1. Comment
2. Envisioning the perfect meeting
3. Integrative failure
4. Integrative skills
5. Meeting focus: a description
6. Meeting focus: a checklist

Part V: Bibliographical References and Notes [PDF version]

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