Philosophy wouldn't seem to lead naturally to poetry, but it can if you find the right philosopher. For Cincinnati-based poet Matt Hart - who will be reading from his work on Saturday at Rozz-Tox along with poets from the Quad Cities edition of the national journal Locuspoint - it was the 20th Century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Hart fell in love with poetry as an undergraduate at Ball State University, but he studied philosophy. Pursing a graduate degree in the subject at Ohio University, though, "I really bought Wittgenstein hook, line, and sinker. As a result, I quit doing philosophy. One of his main ideas is that philosophy is a sort of mental illness; if you understand him, you quit doing it."
And Wittgenstein offered an alternative to philosophy's relentless rational argument, writing that "philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry."
