Thursday, November 26, 2009

Good Writing. The Questions.



Is it

Who notices that it is

Who admits that

Who subverts it

Who never knows it

Who 'rediscovers' it

Who profits from it

Who forgets it

Does it have a 'use value' beyond its own birthing


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5 comments:

  1. "Does it have a 'use value' beyond its own birthing?" Love that line.

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  2. Good writing comes from one's soul and lends a window to an inkling of what may linger there. In that regard, it does have a wondrous value. It is the many layers of a person's character that are intriguing. Your poem, for example, gives us a glimpse of your own pondering moments, and a hint of many more.

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  3. To 'nothingprofound': thanks for loving the last line.

    To 'askcherlock': I agree. a person's character and the kernel of poetic/artistic response are founded beneath the layers. So basic, so old, deeply pre-literate, somatic. Love, and its mysteries abide there, as also do hate's, aversion's.

    I don't argue for the preeminence of irrationality, its justification by 'being earliest'. The world, if it's to survive, has to employ reason better than it has shown an inclination to do.

    As the ape-animals we are (just look at what's under what you're wearing), though, we've been fortified with an ability at mythic apprehension, invention.

    Before we 'know' nature, well before, our organism makes sense of it by recreating versions of it in words and pictures and dance and song, mugging in rhythms and pitches, warding off the fear of it by innoculating ourselves with our own creation of it.

    The more 'uncontained' our containment of it, the more effective the art?

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  4. "The more 'uncontained' our containment of it, the more effective the art?" At times when art is "contained" it leaves one wanting more, more from the artist. Sometimes if art is "uncontained", one may wrongly surmise that is all there is. Therein, I believe, is the beauty of the individual and the manner in which they express themselves. As an example, I very much like the impressionist painters. Their interpretations are filled with subtleties. It seems that the nuances of individuality await discovery. I treasure the discovery of an individual through the nuances of their art. It is such a journey of following threads of their being.

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  5. You're right. There's a balance to be met. Too open an art may seem like no art at all. Too stiff an art, one too 'contained', may not be true enough to that 'irrational' response coming from the shadows of oneself.

    Impressionists try to loosen up the formal to regain immediacy. The painters and musicians who go by that label seem to show of themselves more readily than do academicians -- in their day, realist painters, tonal composers.

    Academicians, Establishments of any kind at any time, dictate the borders of acceptable form and content. That kind of constraint represents an ossification of art, however accomplished the acceptable result.

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