peterography

Last night at the FAWC Major Jackson gave an outstanding reading of his works -  funny, poignant, touching and rich and satisfying in its complexity.    His is a fascinating story and it was his interview on NPR’s Radio Open Source that prompted me to take this workshop.    Here is a link to Major Jackson’s website.

Our workshop continues.  Two of my poems have been read and critiqued - Poet Laureate and Just Stop It.   The former enjoyed limited benefit from the comments because of the problem I mentioned in the last entry - everyone went down a rat hole of what they thought I intended and made suggestions about how to do that thing better, but it wasn’t what I was trying to do!   In today’s reading of Just Stop It Major corralled the classroom swerve and I got outstanding and very useful feedback.

There are interesting questions raised by this problem.   At my company, where I work as a design engineer, we accept the idea that successful products are market-driven.   We begin every product with a detailed market analysis and as we discover more about what the customers want we alter our designs accordingly.    That’s the way to sell products.  I know artists who do the same thing - one fellow member of the Arts League of Lowell loves to paint nudes but seldom does so because there’s little market for them.   And I know at least one poet who pays minute attention to what the editors of her target journals are looking for - the better to get published.

But I proclaim that I’m the artist here and I want to write my poems and paint or photograph my subjects.  My goal in any class or workshop is to make my art, but learn to make it to a higher standard.    This position is hardly without controversy - going back at least to Pollock there has lately been a reluctance for visual artists to try to “control” their art but, instead, to allow it to emerge and develop a life of its own.  And in literary theory a similar development has arisen from hermeneutics as authors despair of controlling the meaning of their work - indeed, in some quarters even the effort to exercise control is seen as an expression of some sort of patriarchal or imperialistic hegemony.    No one in this class has suggested such impure motives but in general I’ve received pushback at many times in recent years when I seek to capture my own visions and call them mine.