Replies

Dear Bill,

I think the idea of repeating several times a phrase that one (or many) has found particularly meaningful is brilliant. With every pronouncement we take in the same words a different way, and I am guessing our body registers the words, sounds and images more deeply. In essence we are internalizing another voice and making a deep connection with it.

Having the author’s of the poem listed might be very helpful to those who would like to look up these poems.

Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful idea.

Kathleen

Kathleen

Dear Dennis,

We don’t talk much about living and dying in our culture (although there is plenty of death in the news and the movies we watch). Some say love and death are the two primary themes of all literature. I might add “god” or desire to connect with the transcendent/immanent. In any event, in a sense every poem is an elegy to what it is talking about, with death implicit at every moment of experience.

Perhaps SPARKS could feature sets of poems about different topics such as this, although that is not terribly unique; plenty of poetry websites do that.

A challenging topic.

Kathleen

Dear George,

How beautifully put: “over-abundance of head and under-abundance of heart.” I’d like to arugue the latter, though, after hearing all the deeply enriching thoughts you have shared with this group and others in the program!

I have read and listened to folks more expert than me say that figures and facts do not convince others who have points of view that are deeply held with an emotionally component. We have to find mutual areas of connection we can talk about. Robert Moor’s ON TRAILS, a fabulous set of essays about trails from those made by prehistoric creatures to humans offers a beautiful example of this. Hunting was the link that brought about a conversation which at its best can be a thought of as a kind of storytelling about who we are and what we care about. I think you are on to something with regard to the need the potential of story sharing in making climate change (human) connections. Maybe you will have a role in making this happen. I will stay tuned.

Kathleen

Dear Doug,

I myself know little about the therapeutic use of theatre but instinctively feel its potential value. Two books that energized my interest in theatre and use that word “resonance” are by the director Ann Bogart: WHAT’S THE STORY: Essays on Art, Theatre and Storytelling and THE ART OF RESONANCE. They are immensely readable deep dives into the connection between audience and actors.

I recommend them to everyone in the course!

It is true that if one creates a situation of vulnerability in the arts or elsewhere, great care must be taken with those willing to take the risk of exploration and new ways of experiencing.

Dear Andrew,

I can understand how such work took so much out of you; you have given more than your share share of yourself to humanity in studying the darker side of our souls. Moreover, I am so very happy you found poetry. No mistaking it, you are a poet. Feel free to claim that.

I hope that you have, or will find, folks in your community to share your writing but also the reading of poetry together. Find a poetry reading partner, start a group of poetry reading folks at your library. Reading poetry in community is an astonishing experience and is indeed healing. A number of years ago, when I did a “house reading” for my second book, two people who didn’t know each other before that befriended each other and decided to read poetry together each week. Over the years (and this lasted years) they would chose one book or author and read their way through. It became an extraordinary friendship.

Finding words and images for out inner states is in itself an aesthetically meaningful activity, but underlying that is the making sense of our lives, what May Sarton called in her own writing life “making order out of chaos.” Well, some kind of order. When we enter the worlds of others through poetry we are navigating our own selves more deeply and widening our horizons of delight and surprise.

Dear Kaeti,
This sounds like a beautiful and fascinating (maybe ultimately a life-long?) project. I hope we will see some of it.

I suspect most prehensions are happening so rapidly they are unconscious.

How can we bring them to a more conscious level, particularly when we are stuck spiritually or artistically? I’d be a sage if I could answer that, but I suspect that cultivating a degree of attentiveness and openness are key. Even then, it is only later after those times that we have a new inkling of what we are about, what we need to do, and the revisionary process is endless and exciting, if frustrating. Staying “with” the process is perhaps more important than arriving though as artists we sure want to make something of it! All this you probably already know. Your questions are ones I ask, too.

Thank for raising them and pursuing them in your art.

Dear Don,

That video of Jackson Pollack delighted and utterly captivated me. I got so fascinated with what he was saying that I had to watch it a second time to watch what he was doing! Thank you so much for sharing. I hope the rest of the class will take what is a most worthy and stunning 4 minutes to watch it. See what captures you.

Seeing him “in process” is a profound experience that words cannot capture. I wonder if his growing up in the wide spaces of Montana influenced how he liked to paint, energetically moving in large open spaces as he worked on wide canvases. After watching this I see his paintings as landscapes.

Here are a few of the things he said that could certainly relate to our process discussions: something to the effect that how he paints “is a natural growth arising out of a need to express himself . . . technique is a means of arriving at a statement.”

“Sometimes I lose a painting . . . a painting has no accidents, no beginning or end.”

“Because every painting has a life of its own I try to let it live.”

It is interesting that several Chinese painters around the time of Fan Ku’an experimented in an “untrammeled” fashion, throwing paint of a piece of paper to see what kind of landscape they could make from it, throwing paint backwards, and dipping their braids in ink to paint with. Precursors of abstract expressionists? In any event, at the time they had little influence but in time they did, inspiring what came to be known as the eccentric painters.

This reminds me of what you said in your presentation, Don, about finding a freer way of “thinking” and expressing yourself. This speaks to a profound human need beyond the bounds of time.

Dear George,

What a beautifully articulated essay on “model building.” The psychologist might say that we are always carrying/making “schemas” of the world in our heads.

I a particularly love this statement: “Great art resonates when its inner model aligns with something in our own experience, expanding the vocabulary of human feeling and helping us to see ourselves more clearly.”

If and how it resonates – and whether a work of art is considered to deserve the naming as great – depends so much on the individual and their experience, which can change as their live changes. I find the enduring “greatness” of some works to be fascinating and rather amazing. What in the human psyche and in the work makes could be a worthy discussion, likely with many answers.

I wonder if what you said about myths describes all these ways of looking at and modeling the world: “Yet their [myths] persistence testifies to humanity’s deep desire for models that not only describe but also interpret the world.” “Interpret” is the key world there.

Fan Ku’an’s “Travellers Among Mountains and Streams” has been described as “a metaphysical map.” I am without my books at this moment, so I cannot say if I read this in James Cahill’s CHINESE ART or Kelly Grover’s book A NEW WAY OF SEEING.

Dear Dennis,

I found the concept of her work fascinating and want to learn more about it as someone myself for whom music has offered both healing and a deeply spiritual experiences, many as a choral singer (and listener). I was deeply struck by her words in the link you provided: “Music, as a structured envelope of sound, is probably the most effective and safe opener to the doors of the psyche. It reaches beyond personal defenses to the realities and beauties of a person. Music gives access to the discovery of inner strength, uncovers the potential for creativity, and manifests ways in which life can be lived from a center of inner security.” I think that may be the a reason why so many of us, from all areas of life, are holding music to our ears, music of all kinds, all day long and night.

I look forward to learning more about her work and ideas.

Kathleen

Dear Doug,
You have created a beautiful intermingling of words and worlds, honoring the creativity of each artist and sage. Each maintains their individuality yet together make a new whole. This work with the video’s deeply effecting dharma talk. This in itself is an art form.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Kathleen

Dear Andrew,
Thank you for sharing your lovely haiku, your deeply thoughtful reflection on it, and the photograph (is it of your beach – magnificent in any case).

I like how the word “quiet” might work as both adjective or verb. As a verb, a new vision. I am curious as to what you were intending. Once a poem goes out to others there is no saying what “happens” to it.

Hope you continue to share your haikus with us.

Kathleen

Dennis,

I heartily agree with you on all points! I particularly like “It is impossible for me to write about the imagination; it is like asking a fish to describe the sea.” Yes! Thank you for introducing me to this book, which I plan to read as soon as I can.

I am so glad you enjoyed Ruefle’s essay and that it has spurred you on to other reading. This is one of the delights of literature for the individual and for building community.

Kathleen

Dear George and company,

So glad you found Oliver’s wonderful handbook which I have used in teaching because it is so very invitational. As are her poems.

While it is true that learning more about how poems are made (check out the book with that name by the recently deceased James Longenbach, HOW POEMS ARE MADE) can deepen your enjoyment and reading, trust your own ability to enjoy and enter into the world of a poem. I facilitate a once a month poetry reading group at my library; many of the participants come courageously with little experience (or having had a bad experience) reading poetry. Reading poetry in community – this, by the way, can start with one other person – can be a rich heart-opening and mind-bending experience.

If you like Mary Oliver I suspect you will also like Wendell Berry, one of whose poems Doug shared with us at our session.

I would take to heart Andrew’s mention of Oliver’s book DEVOTIONS. Thank you!

Happy reading.

Kathleen

Dear Kaeti,

I was deeply moved by the poems you and the other students wrote in our class. They were stunning. Folks are always surprised by the poems they have inside them. Once it happens, a new world of possibility opens up. I will be interested to see how words find their way into your art.

Are you familiar with the shaped Calligram’s of Appolinaire? His “Rain” poem, for example. The poet Lorca did several drawings infused with language. Islamic art, about which I know relatively little, uses calligraphy in exquisite ways. Celtic manuscripts. Cy Twombly’s very abstract paintings with their references to Greek mythology and Dante. I went back to look at some of his paintings and came across a book which you may like and which I hope to read, READING CY TWOMBLY: Poetry in Paint by Mary Jacobus. Thank you for getting me there! You will have a blast looking and making your own creations.

I think you will be “pulling writings from grass,” from your imagery and find your “star.” I look forward to seeing what you do.

Kathleen

Dear Bill,

I would say that I, too, disagree with Mary Rueffle on this point despite how much I love this essay and her book. May I recommend all of it.

Whitehead says “Art is a fragment of nature” which seems to me to imply that the poem and all of its metaphors are also. Does that make it/them real? All of language is pointing to something else. Does this not make it real, spoken, shared or held in our heads, contributing to each moment of occasion, perhaps being the moment?

To say what is real would be an endless conversation, one we are always engaged in. I take heart from Whitehead’s affirmation of our experience, though I make no claims as to saying what exactly constitutes “the real” whose layers seem endless. We experience but a small portion of it and with the amazing instrument of language we deepen the experience, our understanding of it, and ability to share it. It can even to impel us to action. Is that real? Is the fact that it is always pointing something beyond itself make it not real? Once placed on the page, a poem can seem more distanced from us and an abstract entity. Once taken up into mind and breath of the body it carries and expresses the energy of our being/becoming. Don’t take all this mumbo jumbo too seriously: mere words.

Kathleen