Discussions that contain words like these are a good example of why I find it hard (if not impossible) to remain engaged in most discussion communities:
“Such discussions (about what’s a visual poem, what’s not) are like pinhead-angel discussions to the intellectually comatose, but for those involved they sensitize one to degrees of verbality and visuality, and the nuances each can be used to express, just as pinhead-angel discussions open one to sensitivity to the entire continuum of magnitudes, and quantities, and what reality most fundamentally is. But, hey, go with passive wonder–it’s way easier than active understanding.”
Everything is interesting to someone. If we want to speak on that level, then talking about counting angels on the heads of pins never makes any sense. But assuming the more popular uses of such expressions– intended to signify a serious lack of interest to the individual—then the choices aren’t a binary of the intellectually comatose vs. those hanging on every word of a discussion.
I’m not particularly interested in creating a taxonomy of visual poetry, just as I’m not interested in variations of rap/hip-hop lyrics, Catalonian landscape painting, or Hummel figurines. That’s nothing like being intellectually comatose (though such characterizations are part and parcel of the speaker’s bag of rhetorical tricks, seeking always to position himself as a marginalized martyr at the hands of rednecks and rubes). I’m interested in different things. If people want to have long discussions about what a visual poem is or is not and then what category or label best fits this poem or that, more power to them. That doesn’t make the rest of us intellectually comatose.
Plus, wtf is wrong with simply enjoying something, with open, receptive (“passive” has a negative connotation, which is of course why the almost-always negative speaker I quoted from used it) wonder? This is where the idea of “angel-counting” becomes relevant. I can’t (and don’t need to) become an expert in every kind of art that I am interested in. I enjoy many kinds of art—I have no pretense or desire to becoming an expert in most of them. In many cases, arguments about what is or isn’t an X or Y are, for me, useless. They don’t enhance my appreciation, they are tedious, and in the end there is never any agreed-upon resolution. In fact, the manner in which they distract me and take time away from engaging personally with a piece of art might even be damaging. Resolution isn’t always necessary, of course, but the conversations themselves aren’t always necessary either.
I like your stance, I myself would rather be in “wonder” than in “reason.” I’d rather understand than learn.