During these troubled times, the wars raging in Gaza and Ukraine, when our hearts are broken and we feel so helpless against the constant slaughter, what do we turn to for solace?
Thanks for keeping the light shining on the "shadow work" of poetry and poets. Poetry makes nothing happen, it survives (Auden - so many forget the last 2 words of his). Your post brought to mind many "ars poeticas" written by innumerable poets - statements about why they write poetry. I'll have to make a collection and post about this. It's a tough gig, being a poet. I know, now 40 years in. Poetry isn't a commodity and have value (as Paz so well articulates), it is why it is often trivialized and always at the margins of a society's culture (way behind non-fiction, art, pop music etc ...). In the vein of your post I highly recommend Milosz's Ars Poetica, it speaks for my own reasons that I persist in writing poetry ... the last 2 stanzas in particular. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49455/ars-poetica-56d22b8f31558
Thanks, David, totally agree. Milosz's second to last stanza is the one that speaks loudest to me.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
I also love Neruda's poem "Poetry," which is the one I almost used in this post, instead of my Corona one. Have you read Jane Hirshfield's None Gates: Entering the Mid of Poetry? Great stuff.
I'm not a big fan of Neruda, in my young days yes. I got schooled by my Josef Skvorescky (one writer who should have won a Nobel). At their house having coffee and Czech cookies and brought the name Neruda up. Josef went off on a tirade - he's usually a very calm man. Neruda's Stalin worship is unforgiveable but especially to Skvorescky who suffered so. I will look up Hirshfield, not aware of her writing. But I have a long list of this genre - for another post!
Yes, Neruda has a bad rep, with the womanizing as well. But I still love his poetry, or much of it. A lot of poets and writers and artists whose work I admire are not people I would have liked if I'd met them.
Well, we can have a debate about that, there are two sides to it. For years, I believed as yourself but no longer. I don't think one in terms of poetry, can divorce the person from their words, ideas. Otherwise, the humanity, the integrity and authenticity is lost - poetry becomes mere wordsmithery, magic encantation. It loses its blood and blood really is its soul. I don't think you have to admire a writer/poet - but you need to respect them and the life they live. However you define and determine that.
I hear you, and it makes sense. Except some of the poetry that moves me, that seems true in the deepest sense of the word, I've found in writers whose personal lives were a mess, or behaved in ways, or had political beliefs that I found troubling. Wallace Stevens is one, Neruda another, Hemingway, Picasso . . . I could go on. The art or poetry that moves me, that seems "true," could never come from mere wordsmithing, but a deeper felt-sense of something, from a purer part of themselves, perhaps, or from that which appears to write through us when we are in touch with something greater than ourselves. Our founding fathers owned slaves and bedded them. Yet what they created is something truly admirable and worthwhile despite that. The words they wrote rung true to that age and to this, despite their faults.
Oh I guess I should have been clearer. I don't care about the private thoughts, personal life and doings of an artist. Life is messy. We work with what we've got. That's the path they tread. But when they use their art to make statements on issues - then they are open to be judged publicly for their beliefs, actions, as the public figure of a writer, artist, poet. That's my line.
Thanks for keeping the light shining on the "shadow work" of poetry and poets. Poetry makes nothing happen, it survives (Auden - so many forget the last 2 words of his). Your post brought to mind many "ars poeticas" written by innumerable poets - statements about why they write poetry. I'll have to make a collection and post about this. It's a tough gig, being a poet. I know, now 40 years in. Poetry isn't a commodity and have value (as Paz so well articulates), it is why it is often trivialized and always at the margins of a society's culture (way behind non-fiction, art, pop music etc ...). In the vein of your post I highly recommend Milosz's Ars Poetica, it speaks for my own reasons that I persist in writing poetry ... the last 2 stanzas in particular. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49455/ars-poetica-56d22b8f31558
Thanks, David, totally agree. Milosz's second to last stanza is the one that speaks loudest to me.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
I also love Neruda's poem "Poetry," which is the one I almost used in this post, instead of my Corona one. Have you read Jane Hirshfield's None Gates: Entering the Mid of Poetry? Great stuff.
I'm not a big fan of Neruda, in my young days yes. I got schooled by my Josef Skvorescky (one writer who should have won a Nobel). At their house having coffee and Czech cookies and brought the name Neruda up. Josef went off on a tirade - he's usually a very calm man. Neruda's Stalin worship is unforgiveable but especially to Skvorescky who suffered so. I will look up Hirshfield, not aware of her writing. But I have a long list of this genre - for another post!
Yes, Neruda has a bad rep, with the womanizing as well. But I still love his poetry, or much of it. A lot of poets and writers and artists whose work I admire are not people I would have liked if I'd met them.
Well, we can have a debate about that, there are two sides to it. For years, I believed as yourself but no longer. I don't think one in terms of poetry, can divorce the person from their words, ideas. Otherwise, the humanity, the integrity and authenticity is lost - poetry becomes mere wordsmithery, magic encantation. It loses its blood and blood really is its soul. I don't think you have to admire a writer/poet - but you need to respect them and the life they live. However you define and determine that.
I hear you, and it makes sense. Except some of the poetry that moves me, that seems true in the deepest sense of the word, I've found in writers whose personal lives were a mess, or behaved in ways, or had political beliefs that I found troubling. Wallace Stevens is one, Neruda another, Hemingway, Picasso . . . I could go on. The art or poetry that moves me, that seems "true," could never come from mere wordsmithing, but a deeper felt-sense of something, from a purer part of themselves, perhaps, or from that which appears to write through us when we are in touch with something greater than ourselves. Our founding fathers owned slaves and bedded them. Yet what they created is something truly admirable and worthwhile despite that. The words they wrote rung true to that age and to this, despite their faults.
Oh I guess I should have been clearer. I don't care about the private thoughts, personal life and doings of an artist. Life is messy. We work with what we've got. That's the path they tread. But when they use their art to make statements on issues - then they are open to be judged publicly for their beliefs, actions, as the public figure of a writer, artist, poet. That's my line.