Wasted

"No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. All the better, then, if he could have at least the satisfaction of having a part to play in society as worthy as that of the music-hall comedian."
~ T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)

The Metaphysical Organ

"The process of making sense of the world is closely connected with the word. Speech is the metaphysical organ of man. And yet over time the word grows rigid, becomes immobilized, ceases to be the conductor of new meanings. The poet restores conductivity to words through new short-circuits, which arise out of their fusions. The image is also an offshoot of the original word, the word which was not yet a sign, but a myth, a story, or a meaning."
~ Bruno Schulz, "Mityzacja rzeczywistosci"
("The Mythologization of Reality," transl. John M. Bates)

An Experience

"'To read a poem should be an experience, like experiencing an act' [Wallace Stevens, 'Adagia,' Collected Poetry and Prose]. The idea of the artwork as an experience also produces a basis for aesthetic judgment. One can (and should) ask, 'Does this artwork provide a unique, distinctive experience, one that hasn't already been experienced, known, understood?' Walter Benjamin describes shock and distraction as the modern mode of consciousness (or unconsciousness), in which most of our experience is not really experienced and doesn't actually exist for us at all. Although art should be the antidote to this nonexperience of distraction, most of what we read simply repeats and re-presents what has already been experienced (or nonexperienced). A real work of art makes us stop and pay attention. It breaks through our crust of habit and routine."
~ Reginald Shepherd, "On Difficulty in Poetry"

The Artist

The Artist

The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless.
The true artist: capable, practicing, skillful;
maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his mind.

The true artist: draws out all from his heart,
works with delight, makes things with calm, with sagacity,
works like a true Toltec*, composes his objects, works dexterously, invents;
arranges materials, adorns them, makes them adjust.

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things,
works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.

~ author unknown; mid-fifteenth century Náhuatl text
Translated by Elvira Abascal and Denise Levertov, from the
Spanish translation of the Toltec Codice de la Real Academia.
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* "...[T]he word, toltecatl, simply means 'craftsman' in the Nahua languages. Toltec was simply the word used to distinguish the Mexican peoples which retained the culture and much of the urban characteristics of the culture of Teotihuacán from other peoples; even the Aztecs primarily referred to themselves by either their tribal name (Tenochca) or as 'Toltecs.'"