Saturday, April 21, 2007

A Boiled Telephone

In Salvador Dali's "autobiography," he expresses disappointment that whenever he orders boiled lobster, he is never surprised with a serving of boiled telephone. Of course, had Dali been served boiled telephone, he wouldn't have been surprised. Still, I consider it a legitimate complaint.

I may not deliver that boiled telephone very often in my own writing, but I always hope for it in art. Boiled telephones come to us often in daily life. I've always advised others, especially young artists, to look for boiled telephones, knowing that they rarely got them from their parents, their teachers, or the paid arbiters of culture. Being aware of how infrequently contemporary poetry offers the dish, I believe the poet has an obligation to point to encounters with boiled telephones as a poetry of experience. & to regard seeing, hearing, curiosity, patience, & acceptance of whatever happens next* as learnable creative skills - which may paradoxically render unnecessary the actual making of poems, but will at the least instill a valuable skepticism toward art, the marketable artifact, & the people who sell it or worship it.

*hat tip to pianist/composer Neely Bruce, from his essay on 19th Century popular piano recital music.

(A revision of one of my first blog posts.)

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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson

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