There's a reason why we grab on to those friends of ours who are similar in the writing sense to us. They help us make some real break throughs and connections.
So, here I was talking about Patrick Dunagan's quote in h ngm n about "intent being bogie numero uno" (see previous post) and then I said something like "not being intent on one thing or another but listening to what's going on and feeling your way through to what's really right for the moment" when it comes to making art of any kind. Then JUST NOW while I was thinking about all of that, I remembered THESE from "Fictive Certainties":
"[so-and so's poetry] arise along lines not of self-imposed necessity but of a psychic need..."
"[W]hen I speak of form I mean not something the poet gives to things but something he receives from things"
"in my poetics I let go of striving to claim some authenticity for the poem in itself and give its authority over into a universal authenticity that arises from the store of human experience acknowledged in the language that gives whatever depth to my own experience, a feel of form acknowledged in its inception to be no more than a feel (38)."
Then, also, something else I read about, regarding Willem de Kooning, in the Creeley essay I just mentioned two posts ago:
"Calvin Tompkins recalls that, '[d]oubt, uncertainty, contradiction, the emphasis on becoming rather than being, on process rather than completion, on the journey rather than the arrival -- this is the intellectual climate of de Kooning's Abstract Expressionism, and of one whole area of modern art as well' (Post= to Neo- 135)..."
So, the next time someone tries to tell YOU about a poem of one kind or another "succeeding" because of some "aim, emphasis and goal" being one thing or another, you just point them in this blog post's direction with all my gathering of salient quotes from admirable creators of art things and say, "phooey". 'Cause really it's like I said in the beginning here, it's not about "okay, I'm here to write a poem about Sundays eating cheese and crackers at my nana's house" but just going about trying to put something down and letting the better, meta part of your brain -- or maybe the opposite: the quiet, more basic part of your being -- or both of those (and not your silly middle mind) make a thing. To feel rather than make, create rather than produce.
Whooo-eee. I'm spent from all that thinking. Ha ha ha...
So, here I was talking about Patrick Dunagan's quote in h ngm n about "intent being bogie numero uno" (see previous post) and then I said something like "not being intent on one thing or another but listening to what's going on and feeling your way through to what's really right for the moment" when it comes to making art of any kind. Then JUST NOW while I was thinking about all of that, I remembered THESE from "Fictive Certainties":
"[so-and so's poetry] arise along lines not of self-imposed necessity but of a psychic need..."
"[W]hen I speak of form I mean not something the poet gives to things but something he receives from things"
"in my poetics I let go of striving to claim some authenticity for the poem in itself and give its authority over into a universal authenticity that arises from the store of human experience acknowledged in the language that gives whatever depth to my own experience, a feel of form acknowledged in its inception to be no more than a feel (38)."
Then, also, something else I read about, regarding Willem de Kooning, in the Creeley essay I just mentioned two posts ago:
"Calvin Tompkins recalls that, '[d]oubt, uncertainty, contradiction, the emphasis on becoming rather than being, on process rather than completion, on the journey rather than the arrival -- this is the intellectual climate of de Kooning's Abstract Expressionism, and of one whole area of modern art as well' (Post= to Neo- 135)..."
So, the next time someone tries to tell YOU about a poem of one kind or another "succeeding" because of some "aim, emphasis and goal" being one thing or another, you just point them in this blog post's direction with all my gathering of salient quotes from admirable creators of art things and say, "phooey". 'Cause really it's like I said in the beginning here, it's not about "okay, I'm here to write a poem about Sundays eating cheese and crackers at my nana's house" but just going about trying to put something down and letting the better, meta part of your brain -- or maybe the opposite: the quiet, more basic part of your being -- or both of those (and not your silly middle mind) make a thing. To feel rather than make, create rather than produce.
Whooo-eee. I'm spent from all that thinking. Ha ha ha...