An Excerpt from “MEMORIES OF STAROBIELSK ESSAYS BETWEEN ART AND HISTORY” by Józef Czapski, translated from the Polish by Alissa Valles, introduction by Irena Grudzińska Gross “We paint only one percent of contemplation.” —CYPRIAN NORWID What is vision? A certain synthetic, singular way of looking at the surrounding world. A moment of such vision always…
Tag: Ars poetica
The purpose of poetry
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will. from Ars Poetica? BY CZESLAW MILOSZ
A custodian of larger issues
“It is a widely accepted notion that making art is about self-expression. And it is – but that is not necessarily all it is. It may only be a passing feature of our times that validating the sense of who-you-are is held up as the major source of the need to make art. What gets…
Allow the self to be distracted — (Ars Poetica XVI)
— wasting time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another. Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures by Mary Ruefle * Susan Hiller: Dream Mapping (1973/74) Dream Mapping, 1973 was an art event provocatively poised between an experiment (social or scientific) and a performance without an…
Ars Poetica XIII
The space between two languages is a space like no other. — Anne Carson . Writing anything at all is a work of translation exactly comparable to that of transmuting a text from one language into another. — Paul Valéry .
Ars Poetica XI: A work of art is always part person
from: MY LOUISE BOURGEOIS SIRI HUSTVEDT ON THE COMPLEX, BRILLIANT, CONTRADICTORY ARTIST … we do not treat artworks the way we treat forks or chairs.[…] because it carries the traces of a living consciousness and unconsciousness, and it is invested with that being’s vitality. A work of art is always part person. Therefore the experience…
Ars Poetica X (unreportable sadnesses)
The Poet’s Occasional Alternative I was going to write a poem I made a pie instead it took about the same amount of time of course the pie was a final draft a poem would have had some distance to go days and weeks and much crumpled paper the pie already had a talking tumbling audience among small…
Ars Poetica IX (You must seek your central rhythm in order to find out who you are)
I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world. From “Reflections” by Stanley Kunitz: Years ago I came to the realization that the most poignant of all lyric tensions stems from the awareness that we are living & dying at once. To embrace such knowledge and yet…
Ars Poetica VIII (Precision and surprise)
In his introduction to Best American Poetry 2016, Edward Hirsch writes: Poetry is an art form that continues to thrive in unexpected ways, engaging and evading its own history, setting out on unknown paths. We live, perhaps we have always lived, in perilous times, and stand on the edge of an abyss, which absorbs us. We…
Ars Poetica VII
From Mary Oliver: “My Friend Walt Whitman” … I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing—an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness—wonderful as that part of it is. I learned…
sub rosa 