[New-Poetry] Well put: Bill Berkson

[Chris Stroffolino]

Thanks for posting this....
     I wonder if you substitute any other arts for "painting" if the  
statements would still work...

Chris

On Jan 1, 2008, at 1:26 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> Both painting and poetry occupy fictive spaces in the physical  
> world. But, then again, it may be because poetry and painting are  
> more incomparable to one another than to the other arts that their  
> affinity is sealed. [14]
> --
>
> You can do a lot with educated eyes. What I mean by “educated” is  
> simply how pictures, among other things, can teach you about how to  
> see, and what’s visible when you look hard enough or most openly.  
> At a certain point, past the shock of seeing, you want to do  
> something about it. That’s what makes an artist begin being an  
> artist in the first place. At one time or another you get hit like  
> with a rock. I have a theory that the course of anyone’s artistic  
> life is determined largely by the attempt to retrieve that original  
> rock, or what the painters used to call The Dream. [14]
> --
>
> There is an “everything” principle—the universal “everything”  
> principle—that poetry and painting share. It has to do with  
> including. Fairfield Porter says, “There is an elementary principle  
> of organization in any art that nothing gets in anything else’s way  
> and everything is at its own limit of possibilities.” [15]
> --
>
> Wonderfully, there is no logic why poetry and painting should meet  
> at all. It is not poetry dressing up to be “like” painting or  
> painting being pro- or anti-literary. Those comparisons are really  
> speechless. I sometimes feel called upon to write a whole other  
> lecture entitled “Why I Am Not A Painterly Poet.” The real  
> connections lie elsewhere, with materials which criticism is ever  
> hard put to recognize, because criticism most often doesn’t, as art  
> will, talk about everything all at one. [23]
>
> —Bill Berskon, “Poetry and Painting,” Sudden Address, Cuneiform  
> Press 2007
>
> --
> Kenneth [Koch] was, and continues to be, central to my education.  
> His conception of poetry as a form of nearly materialized, physical  
> excitement made me see not just poetry but the world in and outside  
> poetry differently. Not only did he encourage me in my writing but  
> without proselytizing he revealed how being a poet could be a  
> sensible pursuit—sensible in every respect—for a grown person. [94-95]
> --
> If poetry and art have any assignment it is to make up the universe  
> each time from scratch, hoping to uncover some plausibly  
> declarative thread with enough connective tissue and shine to put  
> it across.
> --
> “We poets know nothing,” sang ancient Hesiod, “only what the muses  
> tell us.” Modernity’s default muses have been private sensibility,  
> abstract forms, and general culture made manifest as what we now  
> call “media.” [102]
>
> —Bill Berskon, “‘The Uneven Phenomenon’—What Did You Expect?,”  
> Sudden Address, Cuneiform Press 2007
>
>
>
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