[New-Poetry] Re: Bok, Goldsmith, et al

[Crisman Cooley]

I should be careful what I say.   A few years ago one guy who used to  
be on this list backchannelled me to say that Hal and I had destroyed  
his life by talking about readymades.  Never told you that Hal, did I?

If we're going to fight, Bob, we'll be on the same side because as a  
religion, I prefer artistic creation to nihilism too.  Dadaism,  
though, is not nihilism.  It began as a way of laughing at and  
thereby mastering a world (just after WWI, and no less today) gone  
mad.  Many of its forms, including Goldsmith's, point to non- 
creation.   Of course, we must go on creating.  No one will take our  
toy bow and arrow away!


> Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 20:47:35 -0500
> From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Bok, Goldsmith, et al
>
>> Hal, agreed.  This is the dadaist's, and especially Cage's, gift  
>> to  the
>> world.  And if followed religiously (i.e., as one practices Zen)   
>> it leads
>> out of artistic creation to continuous contemplation.  For  me,  
>> anyway, I
>> have felt the need to absorb, to embrace, and to escape  that trap.
>
> What trap?  Artistic creation?  Communicable artistic creation  
> seems to me
> far superior to nihilism, but to each his own.
>
> --Bob