[New-Poetry] bob's art for art's sake

[Suzanne Burns]

On 1/5/07, Linda Sue Grimes <suelin7184 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  What is the function of love?
>


Errm, well Love brings us together both both individually and communally,
makes people seek out and cherish emotional bonds and think about the
wellbeing of others, which, I think it is fair to say, contributes to
overall human happiness, security, and survival in a very harsh and
threatening world.  Scientists have found that it actually serves a very
real biological function-- the body works better and stays healthier if the
person inside that body has close emotional ties. Babies who are not held
and play with die.  Etc. etc. etc.

There are some useless things in this world that serve no purpose at all,
agreed.  My appendix, for example.  Love comes in handy.  So does poetry--
it keeps me relatively sane.  Hey, isn't that useful?

I haven't been following every part of this thread, but I've been thinking a
lot this week about Dickinson, and my initial suggest that she was not
social in her poetry due to her being very hermit-like.  However reserved
and cryptic she was, she called her poems her "letter to the world", and
clearly her poetry served a social purpose for her (however strange it might
be to most people of her time).

Isn't the very act of putting a word down on paper for posterity social?
Doesn't writing anything at all presume that somewhere, somehow, someone is
going to read what you have written and perhaps care?  I am thinking about
that scene in V ffor Vendetta when Evie discovers Valerie's letter, written
on toilet paper and hidden in a rathole.  These efforts are  never useless
or without any purpose at all.  Unless you live in a complete vacuum (who
does?) there is going to be a social element in there somewhere.

Suzanne Burns



-- 
"Start with your identity, which is a combination of your assets and what
your friends mean when they discuss 'the trouble with you,' polish that, and
you have style."

--Quentin Crisp
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