Poets Coming

Mira Schor
Empty Speech Bubble
2007


As part of our Artist Survival Skills series, I have invited poets Wayne Koestenbaum (March 8) and Michael Coffey (March 21) to come and read poems that are inspired or structured by modern and contemporary art movements including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, POP, and Conceptual Art. In preparation for their arrival, I have been perusing some of their books but also The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets by David Lehman, and The Answers Are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life by William Stafford.

The following lines are taken from these books and have as much to say about visual art as they do about poetry. The relevance of place is examined, and I think this is particularly interesting for artists who are struggling with questions of what can or cannot happen for them in Atlanta. There are also useful comments about talent, career, and audience.

From The Last Avant-Garde

"For a long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everyone accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Gertrude Stein 1926

Kafka's parable: Leopards in the Temple
"Leopards break into the temple and drink up the contents of the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated again and again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes part of the ceremony."

John Ashbery on living in New York:
"One could think of oneself as living in the world, whereas in Key West, let's say, one is all to aware of being in Key West."

"To be in the center of a cheering mob is no better for the artist than creating in a vacuum."
John Ashbery

"Along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves."
Louis Kronenberger

Kenneth Koch on Frank O'Hara:
"The silliest idea actually in his head was better than the most profound idea actually in someone else's head."

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."
Oscar Wilde

"I have to change in order to stay the same."
De Kooning

"It is characteristic of great poetry that you can enjoy it before you understand it."
T.S. Eliot

From The Answers Are Inside the Mountains

"Where you live is not crucial, but how you feel about where you live is crucial."

"Maybe one feels neglected only if one has an opinion of one's rightful place, and I don't have that opinion. That's up to the world."

posted by the Contemporary