[New-Poetry] Fwd: Poet of the Month or Poetry versus Painting

[TheOldMole]

I always thought, until I started doing it, that painting was much 
easier, because you didn't have to come up with a subject -- you could 
just go find a tree, or a nude, or the dishes in your sink, and start 
painting. And actually I still do think that, to some extent.

But I'd mostly take issue with Mr. Clare Rossini on the question of just 
coming out and saying what you mean. I go along with whoever said if 
know what you want to say, it's by definition not worth saying. And if 
it was me that said that, then I go along with me.

When I draw or paint, I do it with my hand and eye -- I try to engage my 
conscious mind in the process as little as possible. That's why, even 
though I've done all those poetry portraits, I'm never really happy 
doing portraits, because you have to think -- what does this person 
really look like? What do I have to do to capture that?



Anny Ballardini wrote:
> What does Tad Richards think, and what do I think, or other people who 
> try or tried to master both?
> "My husband is a painter, and he often says he envies poets—“You guys 
> can just come out and say what you mean,” he says. Oh, honey! Mine has 
> been a long abidance with words, and I still feel the frustration of 
> how often they come up short. There’s this diffuse 
> image-thought-energy-emotion nebula floating around in the head, with 
> patches of darkness and quivers of light. And on the page, draft after 
> draft after draft, all taking stabs at getting it down, much less 
> getting it right. The writing process is a long interior conversation, 
> with all parts of the self, and it dwindles at times to a 
> self-interrogation, without the strobes. What comes out of all this? 
> Sometimes pitifully little. Death, especially, exposes the limitations 
> of language. Every funeral or memorial service I’ve been to has made 
> me aware that language, like some kind of old-fashioned, fussy 
> wallpaper, merely covers over all the bumps and crevasses. On the 
> other hand, without hymns or homilies or poems, how would we deal with 
> the rotten luck of our mortality? Let’s face it, after awhile, the 
> silence gets to you."
> Clare Rossini
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* jforjames at aol.com <mailto:jforjames at aol.com>
>     *To:* new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu <mailto:new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>     *Sent:* Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:45 PM
>     *Subject:* [New-Poetry] Fwd: Poet of the Month
>
>     I'll top David's Verse Daily pick. Someone I know is Poet of the
>     Month...
>     http://poetrynet.org/month/index.htm.
>     Clare Rossini
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail
>     <http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-us/text.htm?ncid=aolcmp00050000000003>!
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     _______________________________________________
>     New-Poetry mailing list
>     New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu <mailto:New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>     http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>   

-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/

The moral is this: in American verse,
The better you are, the pay is worse.
  --Corey Ford