You may have forgotten - or even assumed that I would - but here is my entry, as promised in my post of May 11, for the non-existent Turner Prize for Poetry".
I Don't Know What I mean, but I Definitely Disagree.
Out of the darkness at the deep
heart of what I am, blind Angel, blinded
by internal light, by light
that burns its way towards the surface.
I am the Bush that burns
and yet is not consumed,
the burning Bush from which the voice of God goes forth
into the world, to put
out cap for coin, for currency
enough to buy this world of frivol
and fatuity, this pin-ball world,
for decency, for
eyes like those my father had
that saw in darkness,
sawed through the darkness
to the grain that ran our way.
I am the one you show across the road,
your penny-whistler whistling in the dark.
But friend, the other path is darker still.
All paths are dark except to one
who lives in darkness.
I am the hewn stone raised in witness,
the white stone of acquittal,
the stone-cold certainty
rejected by the builders.
But friends, know this:
there are those in this wicked world,
insurgents, evil men who snatch
the burning brands from me,
the lighted beacon of the western world,
to keep their flames alight
across the world's dark voids.
You see them in Iraq - and
what's that other country thereabouts?
But they shall not prevail, and those that die
I shall raise up.
Friends, let me be frank: at times
I grope for walls, for footholds, footling
holds, forgetting I have wings.
Come in beneath the shadow of my wings. There find
my Father's mercy seat.
I am the edifice
upon the megalith
upon the pebble from the shore
upon a grain of sand
adrift upon the void.
But friends, the void shall not prevail!
Friends, I am all things to all men, both
Elephant and Castle, Bush and Shepherd, and below
me are my Father's mansions. I, the way,
the only way, the escalator to the lines
of your salvation. No one can come
to Him but first descend in me.
Popular Posts
-
As Antony Gormley's One and Other 100 days project for the fourth (empty) plinth in Trafalgar Square neared its conclusion I found mys... -
It all depends, you see, how you go about it. And that I cannot tell you, for that will be dictated by you and by you knowing your friends... -
Hello everyone who follows David King (My Father). On behalf of the family this post is to let you know that Dad sadly passed away, peacefu...
-
The moon petals the sea. Rose petals the sea. Stone sea. Stone petals. Rose petals of stone. Stone rising before me. Sea moves. How moves...
-
A work in progress: 2 verses are in their first draft, the rest are in a second. So any feedback would be gratefully received. Pale and brit...
Monday, 24 September 2007
Saturday, 22 September 2007
Art Therapy
One of my earliest ambitions - after I had emerged from the 'wild man of the woods' phase (see my profile) was to be a medical artist. Someone had told me of the people who sat in the observation areas of operating theatres and made drawings at various stages of an operation. Why that appealed to me, I cannot now remember or imagine. For sure I would never have had the draftsmanship to carry it off. Later, two of my friends were to become art therapists, though neither of them permanently. (I am not sure if that small insight into a dead-end stage of my development will prove relevant, but I throw it in on the chance that you might find it so.)
So much is but background. My interest in art as therapy really took off at art school. The agent for it was a commission for six students each to paint a mural in a public area of one of those vast Victorian mental hospitals, fortunately now confined to history. The man responsible for this project (a psychiatrist, as I recall) would visit regularly to check the progress of the work that nothing might be put there to inflame or excite his charges. One student, engaged on a scene of fishing boats on a beach, was reprimanded several times for allowing the masts of the boats to cross the horizon. This was too dramatic, too violent for the patients. Horizontal lines were what were required, for they were soothing. Definitely nothing crossing.
I have been a somewhat frequent waiter in waiting rooms of late: dental, hospital and others. On one of these occasions I overheard a patient describe a rather gaudy sunset as "therapeutic". To my mind the thing about therapy is that it does not have to be Art, but it does have to be done by the patient - or at the very least to engage with the patient, not just sooth. It is the patient's field of encounter with what is troubling him or her. It is a way of facing - and hopefully, facing-down - the current demon. As such, it is not for waiting rooms.
Always, though, there are exceptions to our rules. Along one wall of one large department in our local main hospital is a series of large coloured photographs of body tissues and fluids in a variety of magnifications. They are sumptuous images, sexy, sensuous, and, it seems to me, having a great deal in common with my fractal print-outs (16 March, 22 March and 24 April). More importantly, they are relevant to , or could be seen to be relevant to, the preoccupations of some patients at least. They may not have been done by the patient, but they might well engage with the patient at an appropriate level. And if only one patient comes to see one or more of the images as relevant, and by that came to see the problem as having its own great intrinsic beauty, might that not help, emotionally? Might it not offset to some extent, the ugly thoughts that had held total sway until then? Might that not trigger a change from negative to positive?
So much that is referred to as art these days is little more than self-expression. The boundaries are blurred. And not just in painting. In poetry, for example, Frieda Hughs wrote recently about the perception that more people are writing poetry these days then are reading it, and attributed that largely to the fact that much of what is written is self-expression, requiring no work, no discipline, no engagement with the language or with the rules and forms of poetry.
So much is but background. My interest in art as therapy really took off at art school. The agent for it was a commission for six students each to paint a mural in a public area of one of those vast Victorian mental hospitals, fortunately now confined to history. The man responsible for this project (a psychiatrist, as I recall) would visit regularly to check the progress of the work that nothing might be put there to inflame or excite his charges. One student, engaged on a scene of fishing boats on a beach, was reprimanded several times for allowing the masts of the boats to cross the horizon. This was too dramatic, too violent for the patients. Horizontal lines were what were required, for they were soothing. Definitely nothing crossing.
I have been a somewhat frequent waiter in waiting rooms of late: dental, hospital and others. On one of these occasions I overheard a patient describe a rather gaudy sunset as "therapeutic". To my mind the thing about therapy is that it does not have to be Art, but it does have to be done by the patient - or at the very least to engage with the patient, not just sooth. It is the patient's field of encounter with what is troubling him or her. It is a way of facing - and hopefully, facing-down - the current demon. As such, it is not for waiting rooms.
Always, though, there are exceptions to our rules. Along one wall of one large department in our local main hospital is a series of large coloured photographs of body tissues and fluids in a variety of magnifications. They are sumptuous images, sexy, sensuous, and, it seems to me, having a great deal in common with my fractal print-outs (16 March, 22 March and 24 April). More importantly, they are relevant to , or could be seen to be relevant to, the preoccupations of some patients at least. They may not have been done by the patient, but they might well engage with the patient at an appropriate level. And if only one patient comes to see one or more of the images as relevant, and by that came to see the problem as having its own great intrinsic beauty, might that not help, emotionally? Might it not offset to some extent, the ugly thoughts that had held total sway until then? Might that not trigger a change from negative to positive?
So much that is referred to as art these days is little more than self-expression. The boundaries are blurred. And not just in painting. In poetry, for example, Frieda Hughs wrote recently about the perception that more people are writing poetry these days then are reading it, and attributed that largely to the fact that much of what is written is self-expression, requiring no work, no discipline, no engagement with the language or with the rules and forms of poetry.
Sunday, 16 September 2007
Yet More Doodles from the Digital Darkroom
A touch too long since my last post, but having been given a new monitor (an early birthday present from my wife and my first LCD), I decided to spend a bit of time playing with graphics to try out its colour capability. (I know: excuses, excuses.) Naturally enough, I got myself hooked.
But easier to show than to tell what I have been squandering my time on: the second image here was intended as an abstract, but I have renamed it "Tunnel of Lights". The first is one of a series (ongoing) on The Raising of Lazarus, a favourite theme of mine from way back
Saturday, 8 September 2007
The Prose Poem
A rather unusual email in my website box this week. Unique, I could say. From Portugal. A whole string of questions, from "What about a regular column on 'Little Known Facts of Poetry'?" (more appropriate for the blog, perhaps?) to, am I an expert on either ghazals (pronounced guzzles) or prose poetry and could I tell him..... in a frenzy of excitement at having had such an email to my website, I turned at once to answer it, only to wilt at the number of points raised. Then a better idea occurred: post the reply on the blog, thereby providing me with a ready-made subject and guaranteeing at least one additional visitor. (My Portuguese friend is comfortable with this.)
First of all, no, I am not an expert on either ghazals or prose poetry.... Well, thinking about it, I guess I know as much about ghazals as about other forms of poetry (interpret that as you will!), but all I will say for now is that a couple of blogs back (Two Poets) I wrote of Khalvati's latest book which contains some excellent examples. There are also plenty on the web, though many of these would not be regarded as 'true' ghazals. I may write more on them in the future.
Of prose poetry I probably know less, but never having been one to let ignorance stand in the way of an opinion, I will have a go. According to some authorities, the genre we know as prose poetry was invented by Baudelaire, though others maintain that it goes back to the ancient Hebrews and that The King James Bible is full of examples. Others believe that it is not a genre at all. These divide into two camps, one maintaining that it belongs to poetry by virtue of the way it uses language, and because of its (often) metaphorical nature. The other believes it to be a branch of prose through its reliance (usually) on narrative and its pursuit (usually) of some form of objective truth. I have seen it argued that prose poetry is really literary prose by another name, and that it shares with poetry a more thorough-going use of rhythm, euphony, fragmentation and so forth. It is the lack of recurring metric patterns that identifies it as prose. In Aristotle's famous dictum: It must neither possess meter nor be without rhythm. Additionally, some have pointed to the absence of line breaks as evidence of its place in the prose camp. This last point strikes me as being wholly trivial. What we can say, I think, is that at its best, prose poetry demonstrates the power of poetry in its use of compression, rhyme, assonance and those layers of meaning and nuance which take on such importance in our journey to understand what is being said.
So, if prose poetry looks like prose, it nevertheless reads - and sounds - like poetry, and it stays with us the way that poetry does. But of course, there are degrees. Most good prose (apart from purely technical, "plain" prose) has elements of poetry, which is why, no doubt, my Portuguese friend*asks how it is possible to tell "whether a piece of prose-looking writing is just prose or actually is a bit of prose poetry" (sic). At what point, I suppose he is asking, does it cross over? How many boxes must be ticked for it to qualify? It is like asking at what point, as you add red to mauve, does it become purple? It depends. On the viewer. On the colours around it. On the light. Or perhaps we should take our cue from the Modern painters and say, It is prose poetry because I say it is!
I will conclude with two examples. First, the final passage of Baudelaire's "Be Drunk".
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
My other example is "Hysteria" by T.S.Eliot
S she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it, until her
teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,
inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by
the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading
a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying: "If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their
tea in the garden ..." I decided that if the
shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of
the fragments of the afternoon might be collected,
and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.
Or click here for an interesting read on the influence of William Wordsworth on the prose poem.
* I do not know that my emailer is Portuguese, only that the email came from Portugal.
First of all, no, I am not an expert on either ghazals or prose poetry.... Well, thinking about it, I guess I know as much about ghazals as about other forms of poetry (interpret that as you will!), but all I will say for now is that a couple of blogs back (Two Poets) I wrote of Khalvati's latest book which contains some excellent examples. There are also plenty on the web, though many of these would not be regarded as 'true' ghazals. I may write more on them in the future.
Of prose poetry I probably know less, but never having been one to let ignorance stand in the way of an opinion, I will have a go. According to some authorities, the genre we know as prose poetry was invented by Baudelaire, though others maintain that it goes back to the ancient Hebrews and that The King James Bible is full of examples. Others believe that it is not a genre at all. These divide into two camps, one maintaining that it belongs to poetry by virtue of the way it uses language, and because of its (often) metaphorical nature. The other believes it to be a branch of prose through its reliance (usually) on narrative and its pursuit (usually) of some form of objective truth. I have seen it argued that prose poetry is really literary prose by another name, and that it shares with poetry a more thorough-going use of rhythm, euphony, fragmentation and so forth. It is the lack of recurring metric patterns that identifies it as prose. In Aristotle's famous dictum: It must neither possess meter nor be without rhythm. Additionally, some have pointed to the absence of line breaks as evidence of its place in the prose camp. This last point strikes me as being wholly trivial. What we can say, I think, is that at its best, prose poetry demonstrates the power of poetry in its use of compression, rhyme, assonance and those layers of meaning and nuance which take on such importance in our journey to understand what is being said.
So, if prose poetry looks like prose, it nevertheless reads - and sounds - like poetry, and it stays with us the way that poetry does. But of course, there are degrees. Most good prose (apart from purely technical, "plain" prose) has elements of poetry, which is why, no doubt, my Portuguese friend*asks how it is possible to tell "whether a piece of prose-looking writing is just prose or actually is a bit of prose poetry" (sic). At what point, I suppose he is asking, does it cross over? How many boxes must be ticked for it to qualify? It is like asking at what point, as you add red to mauve, does it become purple? It depends. On the viewer. On the colours around it. On the light. Or perhaps we should take our cue from the Modern painters and say, It is prose poetry because I say it is!
I will conclude with two examples. First, the final passage of Baudelaire's "Be Drunk".
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
My other example is "Hysteria" by T.S.Eliot
S she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it, until her
teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,
inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by
the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading
a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying: "If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their
tea in the garden ..." I decided that if the
shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of
the fragments of the afternoon might be collected,
and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.
Or click here for an interesting read on the influence of William Wordsworth on the prose poem.
* I do not know that my emailer is Portuguese, only that the email came from Portugal.
Saturday, 1 September 2007
on beauty
It must be fashionable just now to speak of beauty as being unfashionable, at least so far as art and its practitioners and admirers are concerned. I have latterly come across several, some from either camp, talking as though beauty was either something to be weeded out of a "serious" piece of artwork or something of no consequence either way. Sometimes it is a question of one man's beauty another man's yuk, or even the confusion of "serious" with beauty. For me the whole issue was somehow encapsulated in the sad story of Jack Vettriano, he of "The Singing Butler" fame (£744,000 at auction), he who was originally, just plain Jack Hoggans. Jack Hoggans made an executive decision to change his name (a marketing ploy) and put commercial success before critical acclaim. Some would say before art, certainly before serious art (a definition of which must wait for another post). He succeeded, surely beyond his wildest dreams and now finds himself irritated by the carping and sniping of fellow artists who are obviously not a little resentful of his success. He is entitled to be. But he is equally at odds with the critics for their low opinion of his work, though it is not so easy to see why he should resent them. He deliberately turned his back on what he knew to be their standpoints. They sre not only within their rights, but duty-bound to say "We think this is not how it should be!".He went a different road and cannot now complain if they say so.
I suppose it was always so: there must always have been portraitists who were willing to flatter sitters (perhaps forgetting why they took up their brushes in the first place) for popular success - and artists who, sticking to their first principles, became jealous of that success. And from very early days there were probably artists frustrated when work was rejected for for not matching the wallpaper or some other trivial reason. And feeding that frustration, there would have been those who were willing to sacrifice other things in order to match the wallpaper for the sake of a few bucks - as they were perfectly entitled to do. Nothing wrong with that.
On the page facing the Vettriano story Grayson Perry was interviewing another artist commanding six-figure price tags, the sculptor Gary Hume, a workaholic and a man consumed by self-doubt, but one who does what he does from a "love of seeing and making".
Nothing wrong with that, either. Just don't compare Vittriano and Hume or judge one by the standards of the other. They are in different occupations. They are doing different jobs.
The two images are from the Wikipedia site. (Click for Gary Hume
Click for Jack Vettriano) They are: The Singing Butler and Gary Hume's Water Painting, which is in The Tate.
I suppose it was always so: there must always have been portraitists who were willing to flatter sitters (perhaps forgetting why they took up their brushes in the first place) for popular success - and artists who, sticking to their first principles, became jealous of that success. And from very early days there were probably artists frustrated when work was rejected for for not matching the wallpaper or some other trivial reason. And feeding that frustration, there would have been those who were willing to sacrifice other things in order to match the wallpaper for the sake of a few bucks - as they were perfectly entitled to do. Nothing wrong with that.
On the page facing the Vettriano story Grayson Perry was interviewing another artist commanding six-figure price tags, the sculptor Gary Hume, a workaholic and a man consumed by self-doubt, but one who does what he does from a "love of seeing and making".
Nothing wrong with that, either. Just don't compare Vittriano and Hume or judge one by the standards of the other. They are in different occupations. They are doing different jobs.
The two images are from the Wikipedia site. (Click for Gary Hume
Click for Jack Vettriano) They are: The Singing Butler and Gary Hume's Water Painting, which is in The Tate.
Saturday, 25 August 2007
Two Poets
No doubt, it's the time of the year: it's been a while now since this sort of excitement, but this morning (Saturday), two such, both in The Guardian.
First there was The Saturday Poem. There is always the Saturday poem, of course, but not always with the freshness (for me, it had that freshness) and excitement of this morning. "Autumn Collection" by Luke Kennard, was the piece in question. I had not heard of him, nor of Mimi Khalvati. Her "The Meanest Flower" was the subject of this morning's Poetry Review. So, not just a couple of new poems, but the buzz of two new poets.
The quotes from her book passed my first test: they were not stock poems, my ears did not complain that they had heard this, or something like it, before - even though, as Charles Bainbridge points out in the review, the title is taken from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", and "the book as a whole could be seen as an on-going conversation with that wonderful meditation on childhood and loss". Indeed, the book is inspired by Shakespeare's songs, the short poems of Emily Dickinson, and Wordsworth's "Lucy" poems, and by the way in which weeds spread ubiquitously. Along the way, Khalvati experiments with the Ghazal, an ancient Persian form composed of an unrhymed couplets. Here she is, in a sonnet sequence, speaking of a family as though they were flowers - or is it the other way around?
"As if they were family, flowers surround you.
As if they were a story-book, they speak.
They speak through eyes and strange configurations
on their faces, markings on petals, whiskers,
mouth-holes and pointed teeth. They are related
to wind. Wind is a kind of godfather, high up
in the branches. They’re willing you to listen
to them, not him."
Obviously, I have not read the book - yet. But I have done some research on the web (There is a mass of material; she has been around for a long time, and I really should have known all about her.), enough to guarantee to myself - and you - that the whole oeuvre would be worth a good, long look.
For a good introduction to Khalvati, Click Here where you can read some of her verses and/or listen to her reading them.
But before I move on, here are some lines from "Mirrorwork" in which she is using Islamic mirror mosaics (She was born in Tehran, but left at the age of six and went back only briefly during her late teens and early twenties.) as the skeleton to bring the work together as a functioning whole.
'We are the thought of something not itself.
Each fragment whole, each unit split, but
dovetailed, one wall, one dome, in whose
muddied lakes of colour swim the blues
of a bag, green rings of a skirt. We
are the hall of mirrors, a fine mosaic,
the mirrorwork in which not even Kings
can see themselves.'
Luke Kennard seems not to be as well established, which is not surprising in one so young (a PhD student who also happens to be the youngest writer ever nominated for the prestigious Forward Poetry Prize, this for his collection "The Harbour Beyond the Movie".
Here are the first and last verses from "Autumn Collection"
There was dancing but no music.
The liquidambar scattered its leaves;
I played jacks with the Intuit girl.
Many of us have our own versions of events
Engraved one over the other on monuments
Erected one on top of the other.
First there was The Saturday Poem. There is always the Saturday poem, of course, but not always with the freshness (for me, it had that freshness) and excitement of this morning. "Autumn Collection" by Luke Kennard, was the piece in question. I had not heard of him, nor of Mimi Khalvati. Her "The Meanest Flower" was the subject of this morning's Poetry Review. So, not just a couple of new poems, but the buzz of two new poets.
The quotes from her book passed my first test: they were not stock poems, my ears did not complain that they had heard this, or something like it, before - even though, as Charles Bainbridge points out in the review, the title is taken from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", and "the book as a whole could be seen as an on-going conversation with that wonderful meditation on childhood and loss". Indeed, the book is inspired by Shakespeare's songs, the short poems of Emily Dickinson, and Wordsworth's "Lucy" poems, and by the way in which weeds spread ubiquitously. Along the way, Khalvati experiments with the Ghazal, an ancient Persian form composed of an unrhymed couplets. Here she is, in a sonnet sequence, speaking of a family as though they were flowers - or is it the other way around?
"As if they were family, flowers surround you.
As if they were a story-book, they speak.
They speak through eyes and strange configurations
on their faces, markings on petals, whiskers,
mouth-holes and pointed teeth. They are related
to wind. Wind is a kind of godfather, high up
in the branches. They’re willing you to listen
to them, not him."
Obviously, I have not read the book - yet. But I have done some research on the web (There is a mass of material; she has been around for a long time, and I really should have known all about her.), enough to guarantee to myself - and you - that the whole oeuvre would be worth a good, long look.
For a good introduction to Khalvati, Click Here where you can read some of her verses and/or listen to her reading them.
But before I move on, here are some lines from "Mirrorwork" in which she is using Islamic mirror mosaics (She was born in Tehran, but left at the age of six and went back only briefly during her late teens and early twenties.) as the skeleton to bring the work together as a functioning whole.
'We are the thought of something not itself.
Each fragment whole, each unit split, but
dovetailed, one wall, one dome, in whose
muddied lakes of colour swim the blues
of a bag, green rings of a skirt. We
are the hall of mirrors, a fine mosaic,
the mirrorwork in which not even Kings
can see themselves.'
Luke Kennard seems not to be as well established, which is not surprising in one so young (a PhD student who also happens to be the youngest writer ever nominated for the prestigious Forward Poetry Prize, this for his collection "The Harbour Beyond the Movie".
Here are the first and last verses from "Autumn Collection"
There was dancing but no music.
The liquidambar scattered its leaves;
I played jacks with the Intuit girl.
Many of us have our own versions of events
Engraved one over the other on monuments
Erected one on top of the other.
Sunday, 19 August 2007
The Sculpture Park
Time for a few more pics, I thought. These Digital Doodles are, as the title of the post suggests, from a series I call The Sculpture Park.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Have You Read It Before?
What do you most look for in a new poem? Speaking personally, I look first for something I have not read or heard before, after which I would hope to gain from it some fresh insight, to be shown something or someone in a new light. Finally, to fully satisfy, there is the requirement for a distinctive voice. I say "finally", though in fact there remains an extensive list of potential requirements, but the three I have given are enough for now, they represent, as I see it, both a very demanding expectation and the three absolute essentials, in that the absence of any one renders the poem poorer for its loss.
These thoughts were prompted in part by suggestions made in the media recently that Ian Mc Ewan has been guilty of plagiarism. To the best of my knowledge, the P word has not actually been used, but the implication has been made, and that strongly. Specifically it is said that "Enduring Love" is a somewhat below par rewrite of Stephen King's "Misery", and "Atonement" owes far too much to Lucilla Andrews's "No Time for Romance". One question raised, inevitably, you may think, by these charges, concerns that of the drawing of the line between inspiration and plagiarism. As always, everyone, it seems, would draw it somewhere else. I doubt whether there could ever be an objective standard laid down. "If more than 30% of the words in more than 40% of the book are replicated in their original order, the work shall be deemed to be...." I don't think so, do you?
The problem of the P word does not occur so much in the same way in the case of poetry. (Or do you know differently?) Here, plagiarism tends to be replaced by slavish imitation combined with a failure of the imitator to establish some essential distance from the imitated, a lack of that distinctive voice, in other words. How many would-be poets have lost their way in the wilderness trying to be yet one more Seamus Heaney? How much poetic talent has been lost that way? Poetry may not suffer from the P word to the extent that prose does, yet I think I more often read a poem than a novel with the feeling that I have read it before.
Echoes of other poets, even quotes, are common, but in any poem worth its salt they are positive: a phrase strikes sparks and invites us to consider a line from Eliot or Heaney. It all adds to the density of the poems, to the layers of meaning or possible meaning. To its ambiguity, perhaps. An image from the pen of Yeats or a metaphor from MacDiarmid may provide a loom of light above the poem's own horizon.
These thoughts were prompted in part by suggestions made in the media recently that Ian Mc Ewan has been guilty of plagiarism. To the best of my knowledge, the P word has not actually been used, but the implication has been made, and that strongly. Specifically it is said that "Enduring Love" is a somewhat below par rewrite of Stephen King's "Misery", and "Atonement" owes far too much to Lucilla Andrews's "No Time for Romance". One question raised, inevitably, you may think, by these charges, concerns that of the drawing of the line between inspiration and plagiarism. As always, everyone, it seems, would draw it somewhere else. I doubt whether there could ever be an objective standard laid down. "If more than 30% of the words in more than 40% of the book are replicated in their original order, the work shall be deemed to be...." I don't think so, do you?
The problem of the P word does not occur so much in the same way in the case of poetry. (Or do you know differently?) Here, plagiarism tends to be replaced by slavish imitation combined with a failure of the imitator to establish some essential distance from the imitated, a lack of that distinctive voice, in other words. How many would-be poets have lost their way in the wilderness trying to be yet one more Seamus Heaney? How much poetic talent has been lost that way? Poetry may not suffer from the P word to the extent that prose does, yet I think I more often read a poem than a novel with the feeling that I have read it before.
Echoes of other poets, even quotes, are common, but in any poem worth its salt they are positive: a phrase strikes sparks and invites us to consider a line from Eliot or Heaney. It all adds to the density of the poems, to the layers of meaning or possible meaning. To its ambiguity, perhaps. An image from the pen of Yeats or a metaphor from MacDiarmid may provide a loom of light above the poem's own horizon.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Process V Outcome
My Grandparents were true Victorians. Indeed, you could say that in some ways they were more Victorian than the good queen herself. Not unnaturally, therefore, their taste in art ("pictures", they would have said) was Victorian. "Every picture tells a story" was a phrase I grew up with. They meant, of course, "Every picture should tell a story". Certainly, their pictures had narratives, usually a moral, which could be deduced from the work itself, often with the aid of the title.
Some days ago, surfing on the net, I came upon a blog extolling the primacy of process in all things art. I thought little of it at the time, and surfed on, but later thought more about it. Back a decade or two (or three) there was a vogue for process, not only in art, but in other fields also. (There may still be, for all I know.) In Education, for example, this translated as "How a person learns is what matters, not what s/he learns". "Process, not outcome," became the dictum. In other words, it is what happens to a person during the learning process that matters in the long run, that will decide what sort of a person s/he will become.
Following this dictum in art, the story is no longer told by the work, but of it. So what at first sight appeared to me to be a ventilation grill well overdue for cleaning, having layers of fluff adhering to its bars, became, when I was given its credentials, an object of vastly different kind: it was Idris Khan's photograph of the Qur'an'. He had scanned every page - nearly 2000 in all -into his computer and then digitally layered them to form a composite image. some say the result is beautiful. I do not go that far, but would say that knowing the story behind it, changes the emotional charge.
Cornelia Parker, you may recall, blew up a shed - or had it blown up, hopefully by someone who knew what s/he was doing. She presented the result as an installation, and intriguing it was, too. But knowing the means by which it was achieved added enormously to its impact. Simon Starling's boat seemed nothing extraordinary - until you were told that it was an ex-shed, and would be one again. It was said that his Shedboatshed was instrumental in gaining for him The Turner Prize.
There is in fact a whole genre called Process Art, has been since the 1960's. It was originally a reaction against minimalism. Its exponents chose transient materials, such as ice, wax, sand, fat, yeast. The artist would devise and set in motion a process by which the chosen materials would be changed, often repeating the process over and over. I think I see similarities here with the way in which fractals are produced, but here we have something physical, an artifact, if only fleetingly, not an image of something virtually conceived.
Like to find out more? Try these links.
General
The Guggenheim Collection
The Tate Collection
Artists you might like to look at are: Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis and Richard Serra.
Haacker
Kounellis
Serra
Some days ago, surfing on the net, I came upon a blog extolling the primacy of process in all things art. I thought little of it at the time, and surfed on, but later thought more about it. Back a decade or two (or three) there was a vogue for process, not only in art, but in other fields also. (There may still be, for all I know.) In Education, for example, this translated as "How a person learns is what matters, not what s/he learns". "Process, not outcome," became the dictum. In other words, it is what happens to a person during the learning process that matters in the long run, that will decide what sort of a person s/he will become.
Following this dictum in art, the story is no longer told by the work, but of it. So what at first sight appeared to me to be a ventilation grill well overdue for cleaning, having layers of fluff adhering to its bars, became, when I was given its credentials, an object of vastly different kind: it was Idris Khan's photograph of the Qur'an'. He had scanned every page - nearly 2000 in all -into his computer and then digitally layered them to form a composite image. some say the result is beautiful. I do not go that far, but would say that knowing the story behind it, changes the emotional charge.
Cornelia Parker, you may recall, blew up a shed - or had it blown up, hopefully by someone who knew what s/he was doing. She presented the result as an installation, and intriguing it was, too. But knowing the means by which it was achieved added enormously to its impact. Simon Starling's boat seemed nothing extraordinary - until you were told that it was an ex-shed, and would be one again. It was said that his Shedboatshed was instrumental in gaining for him The Turner Prize.
There is in fact a whole genre called Process Art, has been since the 1960's. It was originally a reaction against minimalism. Its exponents chose transient materials, such as ice, wax, sand, fat, yeast. The artist would devise and set in motion a process by which the chosen materials would be changed, often repeating the process over and over. I think I see similarities here with the way in which fractals are produced, but here we have something physical, an artifact, if only fleetingly, not an image of something virtually conceived.
Like to find out more? Try these links.
General
The Guggenheim Collection
The Tate Collection
Artists you might like to look at are: Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis and Richard Serra.
Haacker
Kounellis
Serra
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Wonderful!
No posts for a couple of weeks, yours truly having been tasting the aesthetic delights of the Norwegian Fjords. It might have been the work of those omnipresent trolls or the waterfalls or caves that somehow in the darker recesses of my mind suggested the following, or it might have been a combination of all these. Or none. Who knows?
On Acquiring the Optimum Conditions for Creativity.
How wonderful to find a cave,
a shell-like structure, stone and brick,
you curled within, a perfect fit.
The world without, a distant myth.
And then to find as well your own
amenable dominatrix,
a muse with whip and concrete mix
to drive you in and seal the door.
How wonderful to kiss the whip,
be blinded to this half-blind world -
and deafened too, though foetus-like,
you listen to your mother's heart.
Your mother's heart lies at the heart
of music, poetry and art.
Its metronomic rhythms bind
the trolls composing in your mind.
How wonderful to feel the walls
cave out before your wall of sound,
to shatter like a singing glass,
or water ricocheted from rock.
How wonderful to be pitched back
into the bosom of the street,
submit again to hearing, sight...
and worship at her beauty feet.
On Acquiring the Optimum Conditions for Creativity.
How wonderful to find a cave,
a shell-like structure, stone and brick,
you curled within, a perfect fit.
The world without, a distant myth.
And then to find as well your own
amenable dominatrix,
a muse with whip and concrete mix
to drive you in and seal the door.
How wonderful to kiss the whip,
be blinded to this half-blind world -
and deafened too, though foetus-like,
you listen to your mother's heart.
Your mother's heart lies at the heart
of music, poetry and art.
Its metronomic rhythms bind
the trolls composing in your mind.
How wonderful to feel the walls
cave out before your wall of sound,
to shatter like a singing glass,
or water ricocheted from rock.
How wonderful to be pitched back
into the bosom of the street,
submit again to hearing, sight...
and worship at her beauty feet.
Thursday, 12 July 2007
A Voice from the Silence
Recently I treated myself to a copy of Don Paterson's "Orpheus : A Version of Rilke". Fifty five sonnets to Orpheus, the originals having been completed by Rilke in under a month at a time when he was working on the Duino Elegies - when he was working to finish them, no less. It does not seem feasible. He spoke of writing them to dictation. Paterson is at pains to stress that what he has produced is a version, not a translation, and he includes a twelve page Afterword, plus an appendix of fourteen notes, all devoted, in the main, to an analysis of the contrasting natures of these two very different beasts. Incidentally, the book would have been well worth buying had it contained no more than the Afterword and the Appendix.
But they are merely a bonus. It does contain more. It contains fifty five stunning sonnets. I say that as an act of faith, for I have not yet read them all, not even half of them, but they will, I just know, be meat and drink to me for some time to come. (I guess I will take substantially longer to read them than Rilke took to write the originals.) But my purpose just now is not to discuss or eulogize about the sonnets, but to think upon the following, which Paterson quotes in the fourth of his Notes:
"Charles Simic once memorably remarked that poems are translations from the silence. For a version to be any kind of a real poem, it must first reinhabit that extralinguistic silence the original poem once itself enjoyed - which is to say the poem must make a symbolic exit from language altogether. In this meditative space, its pattern of idea and image is reconsumed by its own strangeness, and when it re-emerges into language rediscovers itself in original speech."
I think it is not too fanciful to say that I was aware of something akin to this - perhaps the obverse side of the process - as I chose and read some "taster" sonnets, and particularly the opening one, "Orpheus". I read the words, was aware of meaning (though not "the" meaning), as from the page came, a voice, certainly, but a voice in the silence. The language was not being internalised. It was meaning as you might encounter it in dream, not knowing by what means you had come by it, a ghostly flame flickering between me and the page. A brief moment, no more; a tick of the clock, but perhaps it was the eternal clock that had ticked.
Later,as I read them again, the spell was broken, and the language kicked in with its own enchantments. Later still, it occurred to me that there is often (always?) something of this to my first reading of any great poem. It would be interesting to know if this is a universal finding. Is it the same for all?
But they are merely a bonus. It does contain more. It contains fifty five stunning sonnets. I say that as an act of faith, for I have not yet read them all, not even half of them, but they will, I just know, be meat and drink to me for some time to come. (I guess I will take substantially longer to read them than Rilke took to write the originals.) But my purpose just now is not to discuss or eulogize about the sonnets, but to think upon the following, which Paterson quotes in the fourth of his Notes:
"Charles Simic once memorably remarked that poems are translations from the silence. For a version to be any kind of a real poem, it must first reinhabit that extralinguistic silence the original poem once itself enjoyed - which is to say the poem must make a symbolic exit from language altogether. In this meditative space, its pattern of idea and image is reconsumed by its own strangeness, and when it re-emerges into language rediscovers itself in original speech."
I think it is not too fanciful to say that I was aware of something akin to this - perhaps the obverse side of the process - as I chose and read some "taster" sonnets, and particularly the opening one, "Orpheus". I read the words, was aware of meaning (though not "the" meaning), as from the page came, a voice, certainly, but a voice in the silence. The language was not being internalised. It was meaning as you might encounter it in dream, not knowing by what means you had come by it, a ghostly flame flickering between me and the page. A brief moment, no more; a tick of the clock, but perhaps it was the eternal clock that had ticked.
Later,as I read them again, the spell was broken, and the language kicked in with its own enchantments. Later still, it occurred to me that there is often (always?) something of this to my first reading of any great poem. It would be interesting to know if this is a universal finding. Is it the same for all?
Sunday, 8 July 2007
Vision
"Vision" must be one of the most overworked words in the context of literary or artistic reviews and discussions. Every publisher's blurb, it seems, talks of "the author's vision". Art critics are no less fond of the epithet than their literary counterparts. So what, in these contexts, does the word mean? Very often, the author's or the artist's "vision" amounts to no more than his or her personal "take" on a particular subject. Sometimes it is doom-laden, as in: "The author's vision of the final days of global warming...", such a vision being something conjured from the depth of the imagination. It used to mean more. A "visionary" artist was one such as Samuel Palmer or William Blake. The word visionary was an accolade that marked him out, exalted him above his more mundane and realistic peers. As always, there would have been disagreement about which artists qualified for the honour, but about the nature of the honour itself there would have been more or less total concord. At that time it would most likely have been a supernatural vision - or an hallucination, depending upon your particular take on the subject. So, am I saying that to be visionary a work must record an actual visionary experience? Or can an artist or an author construct a vision from his or her imagination? It surely must involve more than a slickness with imagery, more than the twisting of a shape on canvas or a clever way with rhyme or assonance. Traditionally, the first essential would have been that it should possess a heightening effect to lift it out of the ordinary, one that was more than special effects or a device to achieve a coherent composition. And where the word "vision" retains its former meaning, that must still apply. In other words, it must compel with its authenticity; we must be convinced by a genuine spiritual quality, be able to see in it the signature of an active other world or life peeping into ours and having some effect upon it.
But away from its historical aspect, maybe there is another, equally worthy, equally valid: the artist or the author may have a "vision" in which s/he sees - and helps us to see - the world, or some small part of it - in a wholly new way. Van Gogh's "take" on the world has done so for many. We could argue endlessly as to whether his vision involves the penetration of another world into ours. For me it does not, but no one now sees sunflowers in quite the way they were seen before he painted them. Or consider the distortions of an El Greco painting, even those of the disciples in Leonardo's "Last Supper". Expressions of tension and spiritual struggle. The difference between the heightening effect of these on the one hand and van Gogh's on the other is not easy to convey, but is clear enough when the comparison is made. Looking at either of the former two we instinctively feel that the artist has reached us through something seen at the heart of each of us, an image of the eternal, some would say; a small particle of being that does not change whatever may be changing in the world around. Shelley, confirmed atheist that he was, had a sense of the spiritual and a drive towards self-knowledge that came together in his poetry, creating visions to open up that world for his readers, while for Wallace Stevens poetry could change the world by re-ordering what is there, re-creating the given. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" can not give me that, however much I may glean from them.
But away from its historical aspect, maybe there is another, equally worthy, equally valid: the artist or the author may have a "vision" in which s/he sees - and helps us to see - the world, or some small part of it - in a wholly new way. Van Gogh's "take" on the world has done so for many. We could argue endlessly as to whether his vision involves the penetration of another world into ours. For me it does not, but no one now sees sunflowers in quite the way they were seen before he painted them. Or consider the distortions of an El Greco painting, even those of the disciples in Leonardo's "Last Supper". Expressions of tension and spiritual struggle. The difference between the heightening effect of these on the one hand and van Gogh's on the other is not easy to convey, but is clear enough when the comparison is made. Looking at either of the former two we instinctively feel that the artist has reached us through something seen at the heart of each of us, an image of the eternal, some would say; a small particle of being that does not change whatever may be changing in the world around. Shelley, confirmed atheist that he was, had a sense of the spiritual and a drive towards self-knowledge that came together in his poetry, creating visions to open up that world for his readers, while for Wallace Stevens poetry could change the world by re-ordering what is there, re-creating the given. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" can not give me that, however much I may glean from them.
Friday, 29 June 2007
An Instinctive Follower of Fashion
It could be that I am at serious risk of mentioning Grayson Perry on a regular basis. He does seem to me to offer a rare (among art commentators) mixture of the interesting and eminently sensible. This last week he was commenting on the unlikely subject of art and sport. Or, more usually, sport and art. As he rightly (some might say, obviously) pointed out, sporting art, like any other art, can only rise to greatness when done for art's sake.
As a young boy I would stand, fascinated, before a large reproduction of a Victorian painting that hung in my grandparents' hallway. Its title was: "An Evening at the National Sporting Club". The subject: boxing. It depicted the ring, the contestants, the officials and the great and the good who had assembled to watch the sport. But what fascinated me was not the painting itself, but the full sized key hanging beside it which identified those depicted there. As far as I remember, every individual in that crowded arena was given his or her name, rank and number. The painting itself was a typical piece of Victoriana - and definitely done for the sake of neither sport nor art, but for the sake of a certain social snobbery. Nevertheless, it fascinated me; without even knowing it, I was instinctively in tune with the fashion, the zeitgeist even.
Wind on a few years and I have made it to grammar school by the plaque on the skin of my teeth. There I came into contact with an art teacher who was inspirational - as most of the others were not. Furthermore, he had a passion for cycle (road) racing, as did I. Road racing as we know it today was not permitted by law, back then. It was confined to time trialling, and in order to follow or take part in it, one had to be up and about in the (very) wee hours of the morning when the roads were empty of other users. How different today, with The Tour de France about to bring its life and colour to London and the South East for a couple of days. Nearly 200 riders on our roads, bringing with them a bonus of over a £1,000,000! But to return: it came to pass that one afternoon this inspirational art teacher painted for us a brilliant word picture of an attempt on the London to Brighton record, at the conclusion of which account he told us to paint whatever his words had suggested to us. I remember that I painted a yellow circle on a wholly black background. When asked what it was, I explained that the event had taken place at night, so all you could see was his headlight coming towards you. In my defence I would point out that I had used the golden mean to calculate the size and position of the disc of light. The ghosts of Neo-plasticism applauded, I am sure. I was actually very proud of my work. I had not heard of Neo-plasticism back then, though I was about to be introduced to it by that same inspirational teacher. Once again, I was instinctively in step with the prevailing fashion (albeit one slightly on the wane), and still all unaware. Weird. Very worrying! Could this really be the future, I ask myself?
As a young boy I would stand, fascinated, before a large reproduction of a Victorian painting that hung in my grandparents' hallway. Its title was: "An Evening at the National Sporting Club". The subject: boxing. It depicted the ring, the contestants, the officials and the great and the good who had assembled to watch the sport. But what fascinated me was not the painting itself, but the full sized key hanging beside it which identified those depicted there. As far as I remember, every individual in that crowded arena was given his or her name, rank and number. The painting itself was a typical piece of Victoriana - and definitely done for the sake of neither sport nor art, but for the sake of a certain social snobbery. Nevertheless, it fascinated me; without even knowing it, I was instinctively in tune with the fashion, the zeitgeist even.
Wind on a few years and I have made it to grammar school by the plaque on the skin of my teeth. There I came into contact with an art teacher who was inspirational - as most of the others were not. Furthermore, he had a passion for cycle (road) racing, as did I. Road racing as we know it today was not permitted by law, back then. It was confined to time trialling, and in order to follow or take part in it, one had to be up and about in the (very) wee hours of the morning when the roads were empty of other users. How different today, with The Tour de France about to bring its life and colour to London and the South East for a couple of days. Nearly 200 riders on our roads, bringing with them a bonus of over a £1,000,000! But to return: it came to pass that one afternoon this inspirational art teacher painted for us a brilliant word picture of an attempt on the London to Brighton record, at the conclusion of which account he told us to paint whatever his words had suggested to us. I remember that I painted a yellow circle on a wholly black background. When asked what it was, I explained that the event had taken place at night, so all you could see was his headlight coming towards you. In my defence I would point out that I had used the golden mean to calculate the size and position of the disc of light. The ghosts of Neo-plasticism applauded, I am sure. I was actually very proud of my work. I had not heard of Neo-plasticism back then, though I was about to be introduced to it by that same inspirational teacher. Once again, I was instinctively in step with the prevailing fashion (albeit one slightly on the wane), and still all unaware. Weird. Very worrying! Could this really be the future, I ask myself?
Friday, 22 June 2007
Only God and Eliot
An anecdote featuring Seamus Heaney sparked a lengthy train of thought and recall in me recently. It was a retelling by Martha Kapos in the summer edition of Poetry London of Heaney's own account in "Finders Keepers". Seamus Heaney, the story goes, received a copy of T.S. Eliot's "Collected" as a lad away at boarding school. It was "wrapped like a food parcel". This was in the fifties, at a time when Elliot was the main man, the guiding light of poetry, so you might think he (Heaney) would have regarded it as manna from heaven, seen the poems as a revelation even. Not so: they made him ill. He suffered something akin to a panic attack, complete with all the psycho-somatic symptoms that are the well-known associates of such attacks. The cause: he simply could not understand the poems, make any sense of Eliot's words. He prayed (in some sort of way) for a "paraphrasable meaning" to come to him, but none did. Repeated re-readings took him no further: the lines would not release their secrets.
Pausing there for a moment, I find the story reassuring on at least two counts. Initially, because if Heaney could make no sense of Eliot's lines, then there is no need for us to feel inadequate, hopeless or inferior (except perhaps by Heaney's standards) when we fail to unravel some obscurity or fail to find "the paraphrasable meaning" of something by Eliot, Pound, Stevens et al. Reassuring also, because the implication is that the quest for such a meaning is a search for the non-existent. I remember fondly when that thought, or something very like it, first occurred to me, what a difference it made to me, and has done ever since. But if I recall fondly, it is not with any great clarity, alas. I do remember that I was reading a book (or essay) on the writings and association of Pound and Fenellosa. In it there was an image of the poet as one fishing in troubled waters. Reading the editorial by Kapos has brought it all back: my thoughts and my excitement at the time. She quotes Stevens's remark that "A poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully." Obscurity in poetry, she points out, is not an encounter with a stretch of muddy water which repeated (and, no doubt, intelligent) reading will make transparent. No, my own analogy would be with the white water thrown up by the words thrashing about below the surface as the poet stretches their natural meaning to take the language beyond itself in order to express the inexpressible. The meaning lies at a level beyond or below (you choose) the intelligence - which is why it is possible to respond to a poem before it has been understood - and go on enjoying it even if it is never completely "understood". Unlike muddy water, white water can be read. It takes time, knowledge and experience, but in the meantime intuition can be doing a passable job.
My title, "Only God and Eliot", is taken from something a colleague said to me years back in the staff room, one of those apparently insignificant remarks that for some reason decided to hang around in the memory: "The Waste Land, only God and Eliot know what that's about - and I wouldn't go betting on God!"
Pausing there for a moment, I find the story reassuring on at least two counts. Initially, because if Heaney could make no sense of Eliot's lines, then there is no need for us to feel inadequate, hopeless or inferior (except perhaps by Heaney's standards) when we fail to unravel some obscurity or fail to find "the paraphrasable meaning" of something by Eliot, Pound, Stevens et al. Reassuring also, because the implication is that the quest for such a meaning is a search for the non-existent. I remember fondly when that thought, or something very like it, first occurred to me, what a difference it made to me, and has done ever since. But if I recall fondly, it is not with any great clarity, alas. I do remember that I was reading a book (or essay) on the writings and association of Pound and Fenellosa. In it there was an image of the poet as one fishing in troubled waters. Reading the editorial by Kapos has brought it all back: my thoughts and my excitement at the time. She quotes Stevens's remark that "A poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully." Obscurity in poetry, she points out, is not an encounter with a stretch of muddy water which repeated (and, no doubt, intelligent) reading will make transparent. No, my own analogy would be with the white water thrown up by the words thrashing about below the surface as the poet stretches their natural meaning to take the language beyond itself in order to express the inexpressible. The meaning lies at a level beyond or below (you choose) the intelligence - which is why it is possible to respond to a poem before it has been understood - and go on enjoying it even if it is never completely "understood". Unlike muddy water, white water can be read. It takes time, knowledge and experience, but in the meantime intuition can be doing a passable job.
My title, "Only God and Eliot", is taken from something a colleague said to me years back in the staff room, one of those apparently insignificant remarks that for some reason decided to hang around in the memory: "The Waste Land, only God and Eliot know what that's about - and I wouldn't go betting on God!"
Monday, 18 June 2007
Dirty Linen
Something rather strange has happened: a review of an artist whose work I have not seen has caused me to re-examine my response(s) to an artist with whose work I though I had come to terms.
The stereotypical response to modern art ("My five year old could do as well!"), has long since suffered modification in the face of artifacts from the likes of Damien Hirst (the shark in formaldehyde is technically beyond the range of most five year olds) and Tracey Emin (You wouldn't want your five year old to tackle her subject matter) to the slightly more accommodating, "But it's not really art is it?".
I must confess to having been unsure of my own response(s) to Emin. Was she merely out to shock? The thing about that infamous bed, for example, is that it only shocks because it is her bed. The same bed exhibited as a statement about some aspect of, for want of better expression, the seamy side of life, would have been acceptable to many who were offended by the knowledge that it was hers.But hers it is. In fact everything is hers, or has been so far. So what's behind it all? Is it therapy? But if it is therapy, should it not be more private? Less in our faces? Much art is therapeutic, of course. Some would say all art, but I might have a problem with that "all". Certainly there is a line between art and therapy, which some art straddles and some does not. I might concede that in Aristotelian phrase all great art purges the soul of the negative passions with which it conjures. Certainly, too, Emin's work is there on the front line of that great divide, sometimes straddling it, sometimes not quite managing to do so - in my opinion.
This year Emin has been our representative at the Venice Biennale. The various reviews that I have read of her exhibits have been less extreme than we have become used to over the years: less laudatory, less condemnatory. Kinder, certainly. But at the same time they have tended to compare her unfavourably with an artist in a nearby pavilion, Sophie Calle. Calle is in many ways, it seems, the French Tracey Emin, the High Priestess of what my mother would have called "dirty linen being washed in public". A while back, Calle was the recipient of a dumping text message from her boy friend. It seems to have had a profound effect on her. After a couple of days she showed it to a friend, seeking suggestions as to how best to reply. Then she showed another friend. In fact, she ended up sending copies to a hundred and seven friends and acquaintances, asking them to analyse the text in the sort of terms they would habitually use in their professions. So an editor considered it in terms of its use of grammar and style, an etiquette consultant for manners, and so forth. But what began as therapy (successful therapy, as it happened, for "the project replaced the person"), became art. The resulting hundred and seven texts constitute her exhibit at the Venice Biennale.
When I first read of this (not having read the texts, of course), I thought what a brilliant idea! It was an idea that seemed to suggest all manner of possibilities to me - even if a philistine or a pedant might have been forgiven for suggesting that the work was verging ever so slightly, towards the literary rather than the visual arts, but that is another story. My next thought was: How Tracey Emin-like! And then: What if it had been Emin who had "produced" (collated?) these texts? Would the critics and commentators have bestowed the same compliments upon them?
The stereotypical response to modern art ("My five year old could do as well!"), has long since suffered modification in the face of artifacts from the likes of Damien Hirst (the shark in formaldehyde is technically beyond the range of most five year olds) and Tracey Emin (You wouldn't want your five year old to tackle her subject matter) to the slightly more accommodating, "But it's not really art is it?".
I must confess to having been unsure of my own response(s) to Emin. Was she merely out to shock? The thing about that infamous bed, for example, is that it only shocks because it is her bed. The same bed exhibited as a statement about some aspect of, for want of better expression, the seamy side of life, would have been acceptable to many who were offended by the knowledge that it was hers.But hers it is. In fact everything is hers, or has been so far. So what's behind it all? Is it therapy? But if it is therapy, should it not be more private? Less in our faces? Much art is therapeutic, of course. Some would say all art, but I might have a problem with that "all". Certainly there is a line between art and therapy, which some art straddles and some does not. I might concede that in Aristotelian phrase all great art purges the soul of the negative passions with which it conjures. Certainly, too, Emin's work is there on the front line of that great divide, sometimes straddling it, sometimes not quite managing to do so - in my opinion.
This year Emin has been our representative at the Venice Biennale. The various reviews that I have read of her exhibits have been less extreme than we have become used to over the years: less laudatory, less condemnatory. Kinder, certainly. But at the same time they have tended to compare her unfavourably with an artist in a nearby pavilion, Sophie Calle. Calle is in many ways, it seems, the French Tracey Emin, the High Priestess of what my mother would have called "dirty linen being washed in public". A while back, Calle was the recipient of a dumping text message from her boy friend. It seems to have had a profound effect on her. After a couple of days she showed it to a friend, seeking suggestions as to how best to reply. Then she showed another friend. In fact, she ended up sending copies to a hundred and seven friends and acquaintances, asking them to analyse the text in the sort of terms they would habitually use in their professions. So an editor considered it in terms of its use of grammar and style, an etiquette consultant for manners, and so forth. But what began as therapy (successful therapy, as it happened, for "the project replaced the person"), became art. The resulting hundred and seven texts constitute her exhibit at the Venice Biennale.
When I first read of this (not having read the texts, of course), I thought what a brilliant idea! It was an idea that seemed to suggest all manner of possibilities to me - even if a philistine or a pedant might have been forgiven for suggesting that the work was verging ever so slightly, towards the literary rather than the visual arts, but that is another story. My next thought was: How Tracey Emin-like! And then: What if it had been Emin who had "produced" (collated?) these texts? Would the critics and commentators have bestowed the same compliments upon them?
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
A Walk in the Woods
I pinched this poem from my website. I had intended to include it with yesterday's image, which is where it really belongs, but then thought that I didn't want to take the focus from the Ghazals.
The leaves move in the wind -
or moving leaves create the wind.
Mysterious, the wood through which I walk,
and hung with possibilities I thought
we had resolved in childhood.
A greenness, as of ocean,
overwhelms; its weight makes
dizzy, twangs the brambles round the feet, entwined
like broken cello strings. If trees were people
we would call them bullies, yet they wait,
patient as the mist above the pond
and like a million fibres hung
with stars, as though a million
spiders had a million thoughts
and could not stay with one.
We look for stasis, but the spiders know
the world is built on motion, they are one
with it, their webs are sexual, are moments
of completion, their only absolutes -
in moments torn to pieces.
Each ecstasy brings forth another
like itself. Beyond life hangs life's image
in another web. Between the roots
and canopy the trunks impose
their discipline, a regularity
of space and form. Things follow things,
there are no final moments, final states.
Mysterious the wood, and hung
with possibilities. And yet, and yet
we cannot move without the web is torn.
The leaves move in the wind -
or moving leaves create the wind.
Mysterious, the wood through which I walk,
and hung with possibilities I thought
we had resolved in childhood.
A greenness, as of ocean,
overwhelms; its weight makes
dizzy, twangs the brambles round the feet, entwined
like broken cello strings. If trees were people
we would call them bullies, yet they wait,
patient as the mist above the pond
and like a million fibres hung
with stars, as though a million
spiders had a million thoughts
and could not stay with one.
We look for stasis, but the spiders know
the world is built on motion, they are one
with it, their webs are sexual, are moments
of completion, their only absolutes -
in moments torn to pieces.
Each ecstasy brings forth another
like itself. Beyond life hangs life's image
in another web. Between the roots
and canopy the trunks impose
their discipline, a regularity
of space and form. Things follow things,
there are no final moments, final states.
Mysterious the wood, and hung
with possibilities. And yet, and yet
we cannot move without the web is torn.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Magic Realism or Parallel Subject Matter
Recently a friend sent me some interesting texts on, and links to, the work of Rob Gonsalves. Totally new to me. "Magic realism" painting of a kind I find intriguing. At the time, it just so happened, I was digitally doodling, playing with ideas that I at once saw reflected in Gonsalves's work. As if that was not enough to stop me in my stride, whilst surfing on the web I then came by accident upon a new (to me) poetic form, The Ghazal (pronounced "guzzle"). It seemed to embody some of the same attributes. Since when I have been largely researching the Ghazal, though what I have unearthed to date is fairly elementary.
The Ghazal comes to us from ancient Persia (a few sources I have found, mention India). It derives from a pre-Islamic, conversational form and consists of a series (no more than a dozen or so, usually) of couplets, mostly end-stopped, strung together by a common rhythm and rhyme scheme, but unconnected by any form of narrative or logical association. Initially, they struck me as being related in the way that a young child at the autistic stage of development relates things and incidents; pointing perhaps to a steaming kettle and saying "Puff, puff mummy!" - though not these days, of course! This freedom from the restraints of subject matter opens up realms of possibilities in love and mystical poetry - and in much more, not least in magic realism and surrealism.
The first couplet (the matla) has a rhyme pattern (kaffiyaa) followed by a short refrain (a word or a phrase, the radij) at the end of each line. Thereafter, in each couplet we find that the first line is free, while the following one ends in the kaffiyaa and the radij. The two lines of a couplet may not even have the same number of feet and may themselves be unrelated. Each couplet may be a compete poem in itself, but thought and/or feeling should leap from one to the next. Connections may be sensed, but are usually not expressable in words.
There is something here that I was experimenting with, trying to capture with my digital doodling, what I have called parallel subject matter. The image reproduced here is the first - and so far only - one to have made it to a presentable stage of development. From it came the idea that was beginning to fascinate me when I encountered, first Gonsalves and then the Ghazal. If all goes well, these will appear, no doubt in some future posting(s). But who knows. Meanwhile, should any reader have, or encounter, any knowledge that would add to or correct anything I have included here, a word to the wise (myself) would be much appreciated.
It has been said that it is easy to write a Ghazal, but exceedingly difficult to write one well - I know, you could say that about, well, almost anything, but whereas free verse, for example, may hide a poet's mediocrity, a ghazal will highlight it. It is perhaps the Bedouin equivalent of the Western World's sonnet.
link to Gonsalves
link to Gonsalves
The Ghazal
Sunday, 3 June 2007
Wordsworth in Rap?
Our culture has something of a problem with fun. We pay lip service to it: if asked about an event or activity we have recently been engaged in, we are as like as not to say: "Oh, it was fun!", but scratch the surface and the record sticks, the inappropriateness or the insincerity shows through. The remark did not say what it said.
Radio 4 attempted the nigh-impossible just recently: they ran a programme in their Ha Ha series, called Ha Ha Art. It was, of course, all Ha Ha and no art, though it did make one telling point: that when the subject (humour, fun, whatever...) begins to get "serious" we approach it as outsiders.
Think of two or three works of art that have meant something to you... go on, say "The Ring"! No? Okay, you don't really have to get that serious... Got them? Can you honestly say that you think them fun? Any of them? All of them? If you can manage one yes, I congratulate you, but now there's a supplementary: can you imagine any of our worthy critics confessing to having found them "fun" - as part of a "serious" critical appraisal of the work concerned? I have heard such confessions on occasion, but it's very unusual and mostly confined to certain genres.
In a previous life I was, for my sins, a Methodist lay preacher. I always felt extremely uncomfortable when some kind soul would say to me after a service that she (It nearly always was a she.) had enjoyed the sermon. The Protestant ethic, as I was taught it, did not allow for sermons to be enjoyed. They were supposed to make the good worshipper uncomfortable in the presence of the Almighty. After all, if the flesh is enjoying something, it can't be doing the soul much good. Or can it? (I suspect that we have two souls, incidentally, an aesthetic soul and an eternal soul - maybe the first, with a little T.L.C., can develop into the second, but neither of them can find room for fun, that would seem a rum do.) The idea sticks, that medicine, to do you good, must not have a pleasant taste.
A few days ago I overheard some mothers talking about the staff at their children's school. They (the staff) had "taken themselves off" to some comfortable, not to say luxurious, watering hole for a few days for a conference. Ha! Ha! was the response of the mothers to that! - and they may have been right, for after all, they know the staff concerned! What concerns me, though, is their assumption, stated forcibly by several, that whatever the motives of the teachers, nothing of any practical value was going to come out of the jaunt because they were all having fun! The two just do not mix.
I'm not advocating Wordsworth in rap, or anything for that matter in terms of creating art. Simply that we try to look at, or listen to, art free from the usual spin and assumptions. For example, I have always found Brueghel's "Icarus" amusing, fun, humorous - I don't really mind which tag you apply. Yes, there's a trth being illustrated here, but surely I can't be alone in thinking there's a bit of fun going on as well. Or can I? I first saw a reproduction of it when I was quite young, and found it amusing before anyone told me how serious it was - as though the two were mutually exclusive - and now that Auden's poem has imbued it with another layer of seriousness, you can be looked at askance if you own to finding it fun.
Another question: how many works can you think of (without too much effort) that might be thought fun? Or how many artists whose name is associated in your mind with fun. I would think of Brueghel's Icarus (naturally!), Beardsley and Hogarth and, for poetry, Under Milk Wood (An obvious choice? But wait for my next - and last - question.), then almost any Mira, Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matta, Koons, Lowry, de Kooning or Tinguely's sculptures. (I have purposely avoided some areas, eg Shakespeare plays, but you will think of many that I could have included.) You have your list? How many in that list could you also deem to be serious? I will have a bet that this last question is easier than was my first.
Radio 4 attempted the nigh-impossible just recently: they ran a programme in their Ha Ha series, called Ha Ha Art. It was, of course, all Ha Ha and no art, though it did make one telling point: that when the subject (humour, fun, whatever...) begins to get "serious" we approach it as outsiders.
Think of two or three works of art that have meant something to you... go on, say "The Ring"! No? Okay, you don't really have to get that serious... Got them? Can you honestly say that you think them fun? Any of them? All of them? If you can manage one yes, I congratulate you, but now there's a supplementary: can you imagine any of our worthy critics confessing to having found them "fun" - as part of a "serious" critical appraisal of the work concerned? I have heard such confessions on occasion, but it's very unusual and mostly confined to certain genres.
In a previous life I was, for my sins, a Methodist lay preacher. I always felt extremely uncomfortable when some kind soul would say to me after a service that she (It nearly always was a she.) had enjoyed the sermon. The Protestant ethic, as I was taught it, did not allow for sermons to be enjoyed. They were supposed to make the good worshipper uncomfortable in the presence of the Almighty. After all, if the flesh is enjoying something, it can't be doing the soul much good. Or can it? (I suspect that we have two souls, incidentally, an aesthetic soul and an eternal soul - maybe the first, with a little T.L.C., can develop into the second, but neither of them can find room for fun, that would seem a rum do.) The idea sticks, that medicine, to do you good, must not have a pleasant taste.
A few days ago I overheard some mothers talking about the staff at their children's school. They (the staff) had "taken themselves off" to some comfortable, not to say luxurious, watering hole for a few days for a conference. Ha! Ha! was the response of the mothers to that! - and they may have been right, for after all, they know the staff concerned! What concerns me, though, is their assumption, stated forcibly by several, that whatever the motives of the teachers, nothing of any practical value was going to come out of the jaunt because they were all having fun! The two just do not mix.
I'm not advocating Wordsworth in rap, or anything for that matter in terms of creating art. Simply that we try to look at, or listen to, art free from the usual spin and assumptions. For example, I have always found Brueghel's "Icarus" amusing, fun, humorous - I don't really mind which tag you apply. Yes, there's a trth being illustrated here, but surely I can't be alone in thinking there's a bit of fun going on as well. Or can I? I first saw a reproduction of it when I was quite young, and found it amusing before anyone told me how serious it was - as though the two were mutually exclusive - and now that Auden's poem has imbued it with another layer of seriousness, you can be looked at askance if you own to finding it fun.
Another question: how many works can you think of (without too much effort) that might be thought fun? Or how many artists whose name is associated in your mind with fun. I would think of Brueghel's Icarus (naturally!), Beardsley and Hogarth and, for poetry, Under Milk Wood (An obvious choice? But wait for my next - and last - question.), then almost any Mira, Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matta, Koons, Lowry, de Kooning or Tinguely's sculptures. (I have purposely avoided some areas, eg Shakespeare plays, but you will think of many that I could have included.) You have your list? How many in that list could you also deem to be serious? I will have a bet that this last question is easier than was my first.
Monday, 28 May 2007
Myths and Antony Gormley
I have been taken gently to task by a correspondent who accuses me of two sins, one of omission and the other of commission - though I am not sure which is which. One concerns my post on Antony Gormley (13 May) and the other, my article on "Myth: Public and Personal" (21 May), though both relate to the work of Antony Gormley.
Did I not realise, John (of Chesterfield) asks, that many of Antony Gormley's figures are cast, not from his own body, but from the bodies of others - mostly friends and volunteers? Well, yes I did and I apologise for the slip, though in truth I had not realised the extent to which he uses others, had I done so I would have noted it in my post, so I suppose that is a slip both of commission and omission. For some installations friends and volunteers have been numbered in the hundreds, I now realise.
The other point is more fundamental, and the reason for this reply. Furthermore, by a remarkable coincidence the same point was made - in a somewhat different form - in an article on Gormley published in last Saturday's Guardian: that the artists of genius who changed art for ever early in the last century and who, in doing so, "gave us" primitive art, took no interest in the cultures from which that art came - and therefore took no interest in the "meaning" of the artifacts from which they lifted what merely took their fancy. In other words, they took no interest in the myths behind the art works that they plundered.
John's contention is that Gormley is pre-eminent among the few who have taken such an interest, who have explored the cultural "meaning" of the artifacts and have found inspiration (and more than inspiration - a driving force) in the belief systems underlying the art. His art is not about "isolation in isolation" (Did I suggest it was?), but about how we live alone and with one another, about society, in other words, and the myths that sustain or threaten it and us. And about the artifacts that carry those myths.
There are points here worthy of further thought and research, I feel.
Did I not realise, John (of Chesterfield) asks, that many of Antony Gormley's figures are cast, not from his own body, but from the bodies of others - mostly friends and volunteers? Well, yes I did and I apologise for the slip, though in truth I had not realised the extent to which he uses others, had I done so I would have noted it in my post, so I suppose that is a slip both of commission and omission. For some installations friends and volunteers have been numbered in the hundreds, I now realise.
The other point is more fundamental, and the reason for this reply. Furthermore, by a remarkable coincidence the same point was made - in a somewhat different form - in an article on Gormley published in last Saturday's Guardian: that the artists of genius who changed art for ever early in the last century and who, in doing so, "gave us" primitive art, took no interest in the cultures from which that art came - and therefore took no interest in the "meaning" of the artifacts from which they lifted what merely took their fancy. In other words, they took no interest in the myths behind the art works that they plundered.
John's contention is that Gormley is pre-eminent among the few who have taken such an interest, who have explored the cultural "meaning" of the artifacts and have found inspiration (and more than inspiration - a driving force) in the belief systems underlying the art. His art is not about "isolation in isolation" (Did I suggest it was?), but about how we live alone and with one another, about society, in other words, and the myths that sustain or threaten it and us. And about the artifacts that carry those myths.
There are points here worthy of further thought and research, I feel.
Saturday, 26 May 2007
Have You Done?
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, a fairly insignificant institution, smaller than France or Germany, is in dispute with one of its intended exhibitors, Christoph Büchel, a Swiss artist whose installation is the bone of contention. Büchel began assembling his work last year for a show, The Training Ground of Democracy, that was due to open in December. To date he has assembled in its football pitch-sized hall, an oil tanker, a smashed police car, and a two-story house that was cut into four and reassembled indoors. Obviously, Büchel has no intention of stopping there, and does not wish the visitors to view it in its present unfinished state. The Mass Mus, on the other hand, maintain that a lot of people have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the show, and the people are entitled to walk past and view the growing pile of materials being assembled.
My interest in all this lies in the fact that it has resurrected another of those conundrums that once exercised the best brains of my art school (see blog 18 Jan : It's How He Sees It): When exactly, is a work of art finished?
With some works the answer is clear enough. A statue, once the final casting has been made, would not normally cry out for more to be done to it - although even here there might be some room for disagreement. A fresco, on the other hand, is finished (I guess) when the last bit of plaster has dried. All things are a matter of degree, of course, for the problem becomes critical in the case of some art forms. A watercolour, treated to one brush stroke too many, can go from a sparkling clarity that is the joy of the medium, to a muddy patch, fit only for the growing of vegetables.
In the case of poetry, the situation changes again. Here you may change and develop to your heart's content, knowing that you will always have the original, or the previous, version to fall back on if you overdo things. It is well said (for many poets, at least) that a poem is never finished, only abandoned.
The case of poetry raises another question: at what point does a new version become a new poem? It sounds like a false conundrum, does it not? Analogous to: at what point is a twisted belt, twisted. But it highlights a deeper dilemma: should we always accept the creator's view of these matters? Is there an alternative? Maybe there is no way in which the poser could be answered in terms both absolute and aesthetic, but what about in moral terms? And if there is a moral answer, could it be important, or is it only the aesthetic that matters where art is concerned? Again, if there is a moral aspect, will that always be on the side of the artist? Let me put a hypothetical question: I have entered a poem for a major competition and it has been placed first by the judges. However, the rules of the competition state that it must not have been previously published. Unfortunately, in the opinion of the sponsors, it has. Or has it? They point to an earlier version that was published in a magazine, but I claim (and genuinely believe) that to have been a different poem: some lines were the same (How many does it take?), but it is shorter, has a different title, the structure has changed, the lineation is different, etc, etc - How much does it take? Whose judgment should prevail, and on what basis? The art world in America is finding it very difficult to adjudicate between Büchel and the MMoCA - which is why the latter is taking Büchel to court for a judicial ruling. Shame it should go that far.
My interest in all this lies in the fact that it has resurrected another of those conundrums that once exercised the best brains of my art school (see blog 18 Jan : It's How He Sees It): When exactly, is a work of art finished?
With some works the answer is clear enough. A statue, once the final casting has been made, would not normally cry out for more to be done to it - although even here there might be some room for disagreement. A fresco, on the other hand, is finished (I guess) when the last bit of plaster has dried. All things are a matter of degree, of course, for the problem becomes critical in the case of some art forms. A watercolour, treated to one brush stroke too many, can go from a sparkling clarity that is the joy of the medium, to a muddy patch, fit only for the growing of vegetables.
In the case of poetry, the situation changes again. Here you may change and develop to your heart's content, knowing that you will always have the original, or the previous, version to fall back on if you overdo things. It is well said (for many poets, at least) that a poem is never finished, only abandoned.
The case of poetry raises another question: at what point does a new version become a new poem? It sounds like a false conundrum, does it not? Analogous to: at what point is a twisted belt, twisted. But it highlights a deeper dilemma: should we always accept the creator's view of these matters? Is there an alternative? Maybe there is no way in which the poser could be answered in terms both absolute and aesthetic, but what about in moral terms? And if there is a moral answer, could it be important, or is it only the aesthetic that matters where art is concerned? Again, if there is a moral aspect, will that always be on the side of the artist? Let me put a hypothetical question: I have entered a poem for a major competition and it has been placed first by the judges. However, the rules of the competition state that it must not have been previously published. Unfortunately, in the opinion of the sponsors, it has. Or has it? They point to an earlier version that was published in a magazine, but I claim (and genuinely believe) that to have been a different poem: some lines were the same (How many does it take?), but it is shorter, has a different title, the structure has changed, the lineation is different, etc, etc - How much does it take? Whose judgment should prevail, and on what basis? The art world in America is finding it very difficult to adjudicate between Büchel and the MMoCA - which is why the latter is taking Büchel to court for a judicial ruling. Shame it should go that far.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)