September 2011

Art and the Individual

sadlert12

Art not only has value for an individual, but also for a society. Art is a form of expression that instantaneously develops a relationship or creates distaste. Every individual whether they know it or not arrives at a piece of art with a preconceived set of preferences and ideals that influence their impression. Yet, it is in these differences in opinion that unity is created.

The question what value do we assign art, can be answered not by assigning a value but by looking at the impact art may have on an individual. Art can provide a sense of patriotism, identity, and progress for a community. Art gives those without a voice a medium in which they may be heard. Even today art still holds a place in our culture. Whether it may be decoration or expression, the relationship between the physical piece and the individual cannot be denied.

Therefore, if there is a fire some may chose to collect the art while others may flee, it is simply personal preference.

On the Value of Art

Jack B.

Value is subjective. Without readers, a poem is worthless. In this sense, the value of art is analogous to the value of our world. Without those who experience it, our world may as well not exist.

Given such a nebulous hypothesis, what value do we assign to a work of art? An old English teacher of mine once spoke the phrase, “Poetry is what you bring to it, and what it brings to you.” I couldn’t agree more. As we read (or observe, in the case of Rembrandt) all of our experience, knowledge, and spirituality becomes intertwined with the artwork. Any given word will produce a different set of thoughts, emotions, and images in each reader. What is discouraging to one reader is inspiring to another. There just as much tragedy in decay as there is beauty.

This is the power of art—it creates whole new worlds for each individual. But beyond that, it maps out the elaborate shape of humanity’s common ground (a shape that is continuously shifting to the tides of culture, and a place that is all too often invisible). Therefore, we shouldn’t be asking what the objective value of a poem is, but what it is we value in ourselves.

Above all else: when the museum catches fire, get out.

Art & Ethics

R.T. Smith

I thought about Linda Pastan’s “Ethics,” a favorite of mine for a couple of decades, as Jim Groom and I were discussing the value of art — literary, visual or other. It’s fashionable to say we don’t know much about art, but we know what we like. Truth is, I think many of us do know quite a bit about art, as we’re surrounded by it — commercial art, religious art, pop art, even high art — and we register it and process it, but do we consider what it’s worth, how it fits in, what a world without art would be? Given the early appearance of art blown onto cave walls with earth pigments or smudged there with torches, it seems unlikely that the species can bear the world without art. But how does its value — symbolic or practical — compare to the value of a life? For some people this is a complex question, for others, less so.

Faulkner famously said that a writer will not hesitate to rob his mother and added that “Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” Probably an exaggeration for effect, but he understood that we’re making choices all the time, and he clearly chose to make art over many other options.

One thing I’m interested in hearing about from our readers is what you think about the dilemma posed by the teaching nun, about the girl Linda’s response and the nun’s riposte to that, finally what you think is implied by the adult poet’s conclusion to the poem.

How different are the implications of this poem for an artist — say a writer –and for an audience member/reader. And are these matters of daily importance, or just something else to save for discussions in the classroom or the pub?

If the museum is on fire, or the house, or the flood waters are rising how high on the list of rescue-worthy items are the books, the paintings, the music?

And by the way, the implications of “fall” right away encourage us to consider the resonance of “saving,” so “Ethics” cuts across our minds in more ways than one, as poems are inclined to do.

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

Claudia Emerson on the “poetics of preservation”

R.T. Smith

In a time when this very medium opens up endless questions about the methods and motives of preservation, the above interview with Claudia Emerson offers a rare opportunity to hear a successful poet speaking candidly about what has past and is passing and is to come in her work.

Kudos: SHENANDOAH’s O’Connor Issue Reviewed

R.T. Smith

For a generous and encouraging review of Shenandoah‘s Flannery O’Connor issue (Vol. 60, Nos. 1&2), find a copy of the 2011 issue of the Flannery O’Connor Review. Our thanks to editor Bruce Gentry and reviewer Robert Donahoo. The latter suggests the issue “marks that transition [to the web] with a flourish.” The former has been supportive all the way.

What him say?

R.T. Smith

Brendan Galvin and the late George Garrett briefly edited a mischievous journal intended to parody Poetry, A Magazine of Verse. If memory serves, it was called Poultry, A Magazine of Voice. Or maybe it was “voyce.” At any rate, in each issue they awarded a dubious prize to the most confusing poem they’d seen lately, and they conferred upon it the “What Him Say?” award. (Sounds like Chico Marx.) More than a few people would love to go through Cummings’ books and ask the question. However, I think Eslin almost always gives us more help than we see at first.

However, calling so many poems “poem” is not helpful, though when I see it, at least I know it’s not another bill I have to pay, though maybe it is an item on some bill of fare. And yet, here in our Poem of the Week is another under that title.

Sometimes Cummings (cap or lower case? I’m never sure how much I want to cooperate.) strips his language like somebody hand-skinning a limb (“withe,” if you like, something limber) of forsythia, willow, abelia to make a switch. Here, however, he embellishes, enumerating and coining toward what is, in fact, a mighty conventional sonnet form. An amatory sonnet, and once you’re on to that and start imagining some Romeo whispering it, you’re halfway there, but then there’s that internal sonnet machinery of echoes and winks to be fathomed.

When I catch someone writing “timelessness” twice and “time” four times in fourteen lines, I suspect I’m onto something. I’m assisted by the contrarian turns of “falsely true” and “undie.” A little Hardy there. And “hosts of eternity; not guests of seem”? A whiff of Emily. The opening simple question and overwhelming answer put me in mind of Rimbaud’s “Enivrez-vous.” When he asks what time it is, the French poet says it’s time to be drunk. (“With wine, with virtue or with poetry, as you will.”)

I am no exigete nor was meant to be, so I need to get out of this, maybe by saying those last three lines contrive a neat, intricate, very conventional claim for the love of the speaker and listener (as well as us eavesdroppers). What clocks can measure is small change compared to this forever-eternity “children, poets, lovers” run on. [In my experience, this is the opposite of Irish Time: these three species of beings come early, rather than late.]
Enough, but I would love to see how others parse this, even to see someone go through this piece (originally in Shenandoah in 1962) and follow the strands of negating phrases and deconstructing reversals. A paraphrase would be a paltry thing, but a diagram, now there’s a project. By the way, I’m pretty sure Cummings is pretty sure love and its time-twisting are better than a sharp slash with a switch, though to each his own.

Shenandoah debuts online

Jeff Barry

It’s official, Shenandoah literary magazine has made the move from print to online-only. What’s more, it just so happens that I was integral in the process of moving this journal to WordPress—where else could it go? Martha Burtis and I came up with a pretty slick architecture for making this happen elegantly and easily. I will be blogging that out over the next month in a multi-part series. But in the interim I highly recommend you check out the first online issue of Shenandoah and leave a comment. I’m personally a big fan of Steve Scafidi, so if you do know his work check out a number of poems from his forthcoming book Lincoln Poems—there is even audio of him reading the poems. And what I love about the new format of Shenandoah is that it is free available to anyone with an internet connection—therein is the true revolution.

More Dickey and Poetry

R.T. Smith

Chris Dickey, who posted a comment last week, is the author of Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son, a much more vast and revealing book than any simple retelling of the months in which the movie was made could be. His revelations about his father can be stern, but the affection is always there, and he’s no slouch on other matters. Having described the illusion of using one boy holding and “playing” the banjo while a second, hidden boy worked the frets with his left hand, he observes the other Clayton, GA natives who served as extras in the film: “Of course Hollywood paid these people and treated them as gently as it knew how to do, but it was hard to get over the feeling as the lights went on and the cameras rolled that souls were being stolen here.” (p.170) Reading the book may help a little to ransom them back.

RTS 9/2/11