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shadowkatI keep landing on this poem every time I enter DW today:
It's by Mary Oliver, who seems to be the poet of the moment.
"I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
The line that grates is "none of which, I think, I ever wasted" - there's this view that sitting still is wasting life. Or watching a television show. Or sleeping. Or staring into space. Or spending weekends playing on social media, or talking on the phone.
But what do we know? And she doesn't really say that? But I'm not sure of the poem.
I have a love/hate relationship with poetry and always have. I wrote a lot of it in high-school and college, and struggled, because my immediate family was not fond of poetry and scoffed at it. I did it any way. I read it in front of people at coffee houses. At one point, my senior year of college, I read it in front of an audience of over 700 people. Just me. On stage. By myself. With a spotlight on me. Reading my poetry. My entire body trembling as I did so. My hands shaking along with the paper. I had people tease and make fun of that.
My brother saw me read - and his reaction was that he felt I was exposing too much of myself to the wrong people. Why wear your heart on your sleeve? Why expose yourself quite that much?
And indeed, one of the audience members, a wet-behind-the ears lad of seventeen, tactlessly asked to see the poem and stated, somewhat bewildered, the poem is horrible - yet your performance of it made it great.
The problem with most poetry is it is intended to be read or sung or performed, it's like lines to a play - or a Shakespearean sonnet - it doesn't quite work merely read or played with in the head, you need to hear it too, taste it, touch it, interact with it. Hear the rhythm and the rhyme, and the metaphor.
And like all art, the beauty of it is in the eye of the beholder as is the artistry. It cannot be judged objectively, not really. And those who deign to do so, the more fools they...full of themselves and their erstwhile snobbery and superiority of prose and rhyme, when in truth they are nothing but squirrels nibbling at the feet of a giraff that towers high above them neck stretched to the sky. Judge not for thy shall be held in judgement, and found wanting or so it says in texts far older than ours.
For myself, all poetry is worth something to someone. None are a waste. To either those throwing them up on the page or those taking the time to read and parcel out their truths. I find it disingenuous to critique art or poetry, particularly by those who create it.
***
I watched a film tonight, part I, The Bread Factory, which I rented for $3.95 on Apple TV. I'm not quite certain what to make of it. It's slow. But it is supposed to be. It is what I'd call hyper-realism. About a culture clash in a small town in Upstate New York. One reviewer on IMBD called it a bad film, while the New Yorker Reviewer applauded it. Again, art, remains in the eye of the beholder. We see it through our own lens.
My brother is annoyingly snobbish about film and art. He saw Polite Society with his wife and daughter, and he and his wife tore it apart, while their daughter sank back and stayed quiet for the most part, telling me privately that she really enjoyed it but her parents disliked it, and not saying anything else. At one point, I watched her mother make fun of television shows that her daughter loved, denigrating them. And her daughter at one point deliberately wore an outfit that she knew would annoy her image conscious parents. She has since moved out West, traveling about the Southwest, and Utah with her boyfriend and playing park ranger, far from the snobby East Coast and the Ivy League schools, instead going to the University of Montana.
I couldn't be prouder.
Perhaps that's the waste of a life? Caring too much about how others perceive us? Define us? Or view us? Caring too much about how we market ourselves and our wares? Caring too much about the accolades?
I don't know. Yellowface - the satire I'm reading about the publishing industry - struck me last night - when it detailed the stupidity of the book awards. How they all want them, but how they are all meaningless and all the authors know they are meaningless - since it is just a select few who even select the winners, and little more than a popularity contest.
But still wanted all the same.
**
I'm trying to turn off the critical mind. That rips and tears. And stomps on creative impulses. That questions what I've wrought. Saying it's not good enough. Seeing the flaws and cracks within.
Does my drawing have to look like the photo I was using as a guide? No. No one will know what I used but me, anyhow.
I've realized that I struggle with compliments. Mother says that I almost get defensive about them. Which is an odd thing to say? I'd say I'm more surprised by them? And find myself doing a double-take. Wait? What? What did you say? Could you say that again please, so I can take it in and actually believe it is real and not imagined? Our world, I think, is too ready with the critique, and not always that ready with the compliment?
We like to tear folks down to build ourselves up, as opposed to build them up and build up ourselves in equal standing?
We should walk hand in hand, I think? And not in competition. I've always hated competition. Yet, it appears to be as ingrained in me as everyone.
It's by Mary Oliver, who seems to be the poet of the moment.
"I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
The line that grates is "none of which, I think, I ever wasted" - there's this view that sitting still is wasting life. Or watching a television show. Or sleeping. Or staring into space. Or spending weekends playing on social media, or talking on the phone.
But what do we know? And she doesn't really say that? But I'm not sure of the poem.
I have a love/hate relationship with poetry and always have. I wrote a lot of it in high-school and college, and struggled, because my immediate family was not fond of poetry and scoffed at it. I did it any way. I read it in front of people at coffee houses. At one point, my senior year of college, I read it in front of an audience of over 700 people. Just me. On stage. By myself. With a spotlight on me. Reading my poetry. My entire body trembling as I did so. My hands shaking along with the paper. I had people tease and make fun of that.
My brother saw me read - and his reaction was that he felt I was exposing too much of myself to the wrong people. Why wear your heart on your sleeve? Why expose yourself quite that much?
And indeed, one of the audience members, a wet-behind-the ears lad of seventeen, tactlessly asked to see the poem and stated, somewhat bewildered, the poem is horrible - yet your performance of it made it great.
The problem with most poetry is it is intended to be read or sung or performed, it's like lines to a play - or a Shakespearean sonnet - it doesn't quite work merely read or played with in the head, you need to hear it too, taste it, touch it, interact with it. Hear the rhythm and the rhyme, and the metaphor.
And like all art, the beauty of it is in the eye of the beholder as is the artistry. It cannot be judged objectively, not really. And those who deign to do so, the more fools they...full of themselves and their erstwhile snobbery and superiority of prose and rhyme, when in truth they are nothing but squirrels nibbling at the feet of a giraff that towers high above them neck stretched to the sky. Judge not for thy shall be held in judgement, and found wanting or so it says in texts far older than ours.
For myself, all poetry is worth something to someone. None are a waste. To either those throwing them up on the page or those taking the time to read and parcel out their truths. I find it disingenuous to critique art or poetry, particularly by those who create it.
***
I watched a film tonight, part I, The Bread Factory, which I rented for $3.95 on Apple TV. I'm not quite certain what to make of it. It's slow. But it is supposed to be. It is what I'd call hyper-realism. About a culture clash in a small town in Upstate New York. One reviewer on IMBD called it a bad film, while the New Yorker Reviewer applauded it. Again, art, remains in the eye of the beholder. We see it through our own lens.
My brother is annoyingly snobbish about film and art. He saw Polite Society with his wife and daughter, and he and his wife tore it apart, while their daughter sank back and stayed quiet for the most part, telling me privately that she really enjoyed it but her parents disliked it, and not saying anything else. At one point, I watched her mother make fun of television shows that her daughter loved, denigrating them. And her daughter at one point deliberately wore an outfit that she knew would annoy her image conscious parents. She has since moved out West, traveling about the Southwest, and Utah with her boyfriend and playing park ranger, far from the snobby East Coast and the Ivy League schools, instead going to the University of Montana.
I couldn't be prouder.
Perhaps that's the waste of a life? Caring too much about how others perceive us? Define us? Or view us? Caring too much about how we market ourselves and our wares? Caring too much about the accolades?
I don't know. Yellowface - the satire I'm reading about the publishing industry - struck me last night - when it detailed the stupidity of the book awards. How they all want them, but how they are all meaningless and all the authors know they are meaningless - since it is just a select few who even select the winners, and little more than a popularity contest.
But still wanted all the same.
**
I'm trying to turn off the critical mind. That rips and tears. And stomps on creative impulses. That questions what I've wrought. Saying it's not good enough. Seeing the flaws and cracks within.
Does my drawing have to look like the photo I was using as a guide? No. No one will know what I used but me, anyhow.
I've realized that I struggle with compliments. Mother says that I almost get defensive about them. Which is an odd thing to say? I'd say I'm more surprised by them? And find myself doing a double-take. Wait? What? What did you say? Could you say that again please, so I can take it in and actually believe it is real and not imagined? Our world, I think, is too ready with the critique, and not always that ready with the compliment?
We like to tear folks down to build ourselves up, as opposed to build them up and build up ourselves in equal standing?
We should walk hand in hand, I think? And not in competition. I've always hated competition. Yet, it appears to be as ingrained in me as everyone.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-01 09:32 am (UTC)