No one person can be sane. It is always a judgment passed by someone else. And yet, given that each of us is at least in part unknowable to the other, it is a judgment to that extent passed on a set of representations. So....is sanity a pretense? One cannot cultivate sanity any more than one can cultivate madness. Sanity is not an act of will. As already said, it is an observation made about a set of representations under a set of conditions. Is that person's response to a circumstance sane or insane? There are too many variables at play in the circumstances of sanity to be subjected to formula or defined. Sanity is "x", including the quotation marks...
Sanity is the sleight-of-hand of consciousness. It is a mirror that cannot be seen, a whisper that cannot be heard. It is about us. Better, it is the sense of the mirror that cannot be seen, the rumor of a whisper that cannot be heard. Sanity is linked to the uncanny the way hope is linked to despair or belief to doubt. Sanity remarks that all the pieces do not fit, that there is inconsistency and irrationality. This remark posits the vantage point of the imagined self, of the illusion of normality, of coherence, of self. Sanity is this hope for the other, this desire that the signs cohere into sensible meaning.
The sensation of rejection, emanating from a communication that seeks but does not find an audience, that is not contested but rejected as nonsense is a dreadful disorientation. One's only topics are subjectivity and reality. One's only recourses upon rejection are despair or a hardening of autonomous conviction. Insanity.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
The Minds of Others
It is what gives work meaning. But, what if I speak an entirely different language from those who are judging my work? I have heard it said that English majors don't read literature anymore. True or not, they certainly don't read the same books I did. Of course, some of this is describable as distinction: no one reads the same "books". I once went through the mental exercise of trying to figure how many of the roughly 50,000 remaining readers of Ancient Greek and Latin in the United States also attended law school and got an MFA. A small number, I bet. And those are probably just three minor irrelevant facts. The real stuff, the real teachers in our lives, the alcoholic drug-addicted mother, the girl one fell in love with in high school, the death of a close friend, etc, etc., etc., are each different for each of us. So back to books.
It's astounding to me how often on first review of a new poem, I see the echos in it, the allusions, the tone picked up from thousands of poems read in several different languages. One must be wary of pride in this and I was more than a little mean-spirited the other day. I was sitting next to a young woman who has been writing poetry and performing at a local "spoken word" venue. I asked her about where her poetry originated, what inspired her, and she talked about about a group of incarcerated women she met who have evolved a rap-inspired spoken word to help them process the injustice in their lives. This is a beautiful thing. Beautiful in itself and beautiful to be inspired by it. But it also made me feel very alone, like a distant cold satellite in a wobbly orbit around a green and happy planet. When she asked me about my work, I told her that I had been writing poetry since I was in third grade, I listed the languages I had learned all or part of, the teachers with whom I had studied, the aesthetic school with which I had once been associated, the degrees I had collected, the reading I did in art history, philosophy, science, and the poets whom I loved more than others, whose music and depth still was a fount of inspiration. When I was done, I apologized for being an ass.
Of course, I am imagining the supposed audience. Here is what I imagine (some of this is fired by experience, having been co-editor of two literary magazines): a gaggle of bored, sullen, college students, who are texting while leafing through submissions to the magazine on which each is part of the editorial staff. That is the rhythm of their lives. Their literature. Web pages. Sound bites. Synopses and books about books about books. I once had a creative writing graduate student defend his failure to read literature by claiming that it would dilute his originality. Has the world passed me by? Am I merely a relic?
Perhaps. Does it matter? Probably not. It's not as though I am going to stop writing. It is an affliction I can't seem to shake. The poems just happen. Perhaps the point is not to be published, to be acclaimed, to be compensated. Perhaps the point is the writing of the poem. All of it, all the books, all the experience, all the unconscious, all the conscious all comes down to that: the writing of the last poem. Until the next one.
Keith Dunlap
It's astounding to me how often on first review of a new poem, I see the echos in it, the allusions, the tone picked up from thousands of poems read in several different languages. One must be wary of pride in this and I was more than a little mean-spirited the other day. I was sitting next to a young woman who has been writing poetry and performing at a local "spoken word" venue. I asked her about where her poetry originated, what inspired her, and she talked about about a group of incarcerated women she met who have evolved a rap-inspired spoken word to help them process the injustice in their lives. This is a beautiful thing. Beautiful in itself and beautiful to be inspired by it. But it also made me feel very alone, like a distant cold satellite in a wobbly orbit around a green and happy planet. When she asked me about my work, I told her that I had been writing poetry since I was in third grade, I listed the languages I had learned all or part of, the teachers with whom I had studied, the aesthetic school with which I had once been associated, the degrees I had collected, the reading I did in art history, philosophy, science, and the poets whom I loved more than others, whose music and depth still was a fount of inspiration. When I was done, I apologized for being an ass.
Of course, I am imagining the supposed audience. Here is what I imagine (some of this is fired by experience, having been co-editor of two literary magazines): a gaggle of bored, sullen, college students, who are texting while leafing through submissions to the magazine on which each is part of the editorial staff. That is the rhythm of their lives. Their literature. Web pages. Sound bites. Synopses and books about books about books. I once had a creative writing graduate student defend his failure to read literature by claiming that it would dilute his originality. Has the world passed me by? Am I merely a relic?
Perhaps. Does it matter? Probably not. It's not as though I am going to stop writing. It is an affliction I can't seem to shake. The poems just happen. Perhaps the point is not to be published, to be acclaimed, to be compensated. Perhaps the point is the writing of the poem. All of it, all the books, all the experience, all the unconscious, all the conscious all comes down to that: the writing of the last poem. Until the next one.
March 31
To what purpose, April, do you return tomorrow?
Like a virgin consecrated to God, producing nothing
But joy full of sorrow and the empty rehearsal
The same cruel trick played over and over and then
Smiling with your canine teeth exposed
Advertising like a sometimes distant friend
That winter is surely over until it comes around again
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
A Lesson From Life?
It's like jazz; sometimes you play the wrong note, but you play it fortissimo, and maybe it's the right note:
Lines Written At the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum
(John Clare)
What I do is for me, for that I came
In a world full of worry, I am to be defamed
I am mine own sound, but mine sound is not the same
Because a hazel wood fire permeates my brain
I long for scenes where men hath never tread
As my doctor, Fenwick Skrimchire, once said
“After years of poetical prosing,” the present insanity
ensued
I live among the ignorant a man hungry for food
Disheveled I wander in the quickening maze
East of me, winter, west of me, winter days
I stumble like a chariot hitched to a crippled blaze
Into the world’s own chaos half-crazed
With constructed meaning, with the simple earth’s delight
I am mine own museum vacant of mine own sight
Keith Dunlap
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Post-Post-Post Post (After Andy Warhol)
Andy Warhol happened. High and low collapsed into each other. Beauty and truth were replaced by the image as manipulated by commerce to entice the consumer. All this was showcased by Andy Warhol. The lyric was replaced by the jingle. All pop music, even rock, is merely an advertisement for an image. We are not trying to live with integrity to a moral ideal (something greater than the self) but to an image (a substitute self). So, what to do?
I propose nothing. Seriously. NOTHING. I predict that if one lives, reads, thinks, breathes, writes, revises at this moment in time, one will be influenced by this fact, one's work will account for this fact. Don't chase it. Do not try self-consciously through irony, self-reflexiveness, or some other mannered response, to incorporate it. Aim at truth. Aim at beauty. Your efforts will reflect the zeitgeist. Or they won't. You can't force it. You can't avoid it. Any attempt to be new will result in a mere novelty.
Stop chasing your shadow. It will follow you.
I propose nothing. Seriously. NOTHING. I predict that if one lives, reads, thinks, breathes, writes, revises at this moment in time, one will be influenced by this fact, one's work will account for this fact. Don't chase it. Do not try self-consciously through irony, self-reflexiveness, or some other mannered response, to incorporate it. Aim at truth. Aim at beauty. Your efforts will reflect the zeitgeist. Or they won't. You can't force it. You can't avoid it. Any attempt to be new will result in a mere novelty.
Stop chasing your shadow. It will follow you.
The Speed of Light
The speed of light is much too slow
I cannot let my panic go
Starting to snow a deliberate snow
The speed of light is much too slow
Nothing happens quite as fast
Snow follows stars, follows snow falling fast
The stars imply the distant past
I wouldn’t want this day to last
How time curves back to show
The speed of light is much too slow
But I wouldn’t want it any faster
As long as you were here with me
On this the best of days my last
Keith Dunlap
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
The Only Cardinal Sin
The only mistake I have ever made--and it is one that I have repeated over and over throughout my life--is not having confidence in what I suspect to be true. "Not having the courage of one's convictions" is too strong an expression of this failing, however. My suspicions rarely if ever formally solidify into convictions. Instead, my timidity or thoughtfulness or low self esteem (or whatever) prevents me from announcing/publishing my dimly sensed inner thoughts about something. Rather, I more easily adopt the ideas of others about things, because the holders of those contrary opinions are, in my view, more authoritative, more learned, and generally smarter than I. As a result, I suffer from a peculiar brand of intellectual depravity. For example, other than Yeats and Auden, I never cared much for modernist poetry. Yet, when I was an undergraduate at Columbia in the late seventies, modernist poetry was central to what was taught as poetry. So, I pretended to like Pound and Eliot more than I did. I suppose this is a common enough failing of undergraduates (at least in my day.) Yet isn't it the worst of sins? Better to cling stubbornly and foolishly to a genuinely held even if generally discredited belief. Not trusting one's inner voice leads over and over again into a peculiar brand of disappointment and confusion. It is disappointment tripled: first, one is disappointed in what turns out not to be true; second, one is disappointed in one's elected arbiters elegantiae; and, third, one is disappointed in oneself for having been duped. Attentiveness to one's own opinion leads not only to the dialectical testing of closely held assumptions and perhaps a habit of prudent investigation into those assumptions, but also to a journey of discovery about oneself. It is better to have loved and lost...
Of course, the above is a gross over-simplification. Nothing is more tedious or doomed than someone who only listens to his inner voice, who is tone deaf to the criticisms or insights of others. Yet in the crucible of one's innermost thoughts, there is an alchemy.
Of course, the above is a gross over-simplification. Nothing is more tedious or doomed than someone who only listens to his inner voice, who is tone deaf to the criticisms or insights of others. Yet in the crucible of one's innermost thoughts, there is an alchemy.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Things I Don't Like in Poetry
Not a complete list:
A fancy word where a plain, powerful word would do
"Breathy" lines instead of lines informed by stress and letter sounds
Where the poem tells me what to think about the poem, i.e. where the idea of the poem is spelled out in abstract terms in the poem itself so that there's no mystery about what the poem is trying (or not trying) to say
Cliche wrapped in preciousness, any preciousness at all, in fact (often associated with breathiness)
Disingenuous ideas. Try this experiment: next time you read a poem, stop at each distinct thought, and ask yourself: does anyone really think that way? You will be amazed.
In fact, a lot of poems I read stand on either cliche wrapped in preciousness (take away the fancy language and what is really being said is nothing but the obvious) or disingenuous (truly unbelievable that anyone would seriously think that)
I am sure that I am guilty of all these things at one time or another. All the more reason to make a list.
A fancy word where a plain, powerful word would do
"Breathy" lines instead of lines informed by stress and letter sounds
Where the poem tells me what to think about the poem, i.e. where the idea of the poem is spelled out in abstract terms in the poem itself so that there's no mystery about what the poem is trying (or not trying) to say
Cliche wrapped in preciousness, any preciousness at all, in fact (often associated with breathiness)
Disingenuous ideas. Try this experiment: next time you read a poem, stop at each distinct thought, and ask yourself: does anyone really think that way? You will be amazed.
In fact, a lot of poems I read stand on either cliche wrapped in preciousness (take away the fancy language and what is really being said is nothing but the obvious) or disingenuous (truly unbelievable that anyone would seriously think that)
I am sure that I am guilty of all these things at one time or another. All the more reason to make a list.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Why I Write
Let's be honest. Poetry is a hobby to me, an important hobby, but a hobby nonetheless. It's not putting food on the table and I have no illusions about my stature or talent, except perhaps for the illusion that I have no illusions. I'm good at it. I publish and can probably continue to publish. Beyond that, who knows? I'm probably not the worst poet in America, and certainly not the best (whatever that means). I am neither convinced of my own "genius" nor of my own "immortality".
The question then is why I write at all. Why one writes at all. I mean, why bother? If one is not convinced that one is contributing in an essential way to culture or humanity, what is one doing and why is one doing it? I have always written. I started writing in Third Grade and haven't stopped. That may be a complete answer, but still an evasion.
It may simply come down to a combination of laziness and stubbornness. Really. Writing, I think, is a kind of shortcut to life. It takes this complex impossible task, living, and reduces it to two-dimensions. That is, it provides substitute aesthetic satisfactions for the hard-won real satisfactions of life. I can only speak for myself, but I have no desire to "get ahead" in life. None. Writing is a way of getting ahead OF life without getting ahead IN life. An odd use of one's time, if you ask me. It is, in many ways, of course, self-contained. Its rewards, for me, nonetheless, are spiritual, in a very broad sense of that word. Writing is an exploratory experience which also allows me to confirm my basic ideas about who I am and what's important to me.
Don't get me wrong. I like clean sheets and hot meals and paid bills. I have had periods in my life when I didn't have any of those things and I don't romanticize that insecurity. I'm just saying that, if that is all there is or if getting more of those things than someone else is all there is, I'm not extremely motivated to get out of bed. I am lazy and unambitious in that way. I don't care so much. Perhaps, for this reason, I will never be a "successful" writer.
I like the pretend world better. The world of music and words and ideas. The world of synthesizing all those things into something I call a poem.
The stubbornness? Persisting despite constant discouragement, disappointment and doubt. Somehow, at an early age, I came to believe that writing is important, and despite the evidence of reality, I won't let go of that ideal. Pure stubbornness and laziness.
The question then is why I write at all. Why one writes at all. I mean, why bother? If one is not convinced that one is contributing in an essential way to culture or humanity, what is one doing and why is one doing it? I have always written. I started writing in Third Grade and haven't stopped. That may be a complete answer, but still an evasion.
It may simply come down to a combination of laziness and stubbornness. Really. Writing, I think, is a kind of shortcut to life. It takes this complex impossible task, living, and reduces it to two-dimensions. That is, it provides substitute aesthetic satisfactions for the hard-won real satisfactions of life. I can only speak for myself, but I have no desire to "get ahead" in life. None. Writing is a way of getting ahead OF life without getting ahead IN life. An odd use of one's time, if you ask me. It is, in many ways, of course, self-contained. Its rewards, for me, nonetheless, are spiritual, in a very broad sense of that word. Writing is an exploratory experience which also allows me to confirm my basic ideas about who I am and what's important to me.
Don't get me wrong. I like clean sheets and hot meals and paid bills. I have had periods in my life when I didn't have any of those things and I don't romanticize that insecurity. I'm just saying that, if that is all there is or if getting more of those things than someone else is all there is, I'm not extremely motivated to get out of bed. I am lazy and unambitious in that way. I don't care so much. Perhaps, for this reason, I will never be a "successful" writer.
I like the pretend world better. The world of music and words and ideas. The world of synthesizing all those things into something I call a poem.
The stubbornness? Persisting despite constant discouragement, disappointment and doubt. Somehow, at an early age, I came to believe that writing is important, and despite the evidence of reality, I won't let go of that ideal. Pure stubbornness and laziness.
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