(continued) It’s a good title for a magazine, as ‘The Observer’ is for a newspaper. One is presented with some sort of a re-cap of current affairs and as it were invited to attend a free-ranging debate, which is conducted generally from a particular angle but gives one at least an idea of opposing views. There is space (if a small one) on the letters page for a reader’s contribution; and lighter pieces, including puzzles and competitions, while the time away. A good magazine is entertaining, informative, even necessary in its commentary – but non-urgent. A work of art, however light on the surface, is not non-urgent. It is vital, fresh, and stays so.
It is part of the living stream. The news media are a reflection of the stream in its larger scale. An individual life is more than that, in its small way it is no reflection but a part of the flow; and a work of art, imbued with its creator’s vitality, immortalises that part. That is how the artist lives on. That may happen if in its perception, what it “says”, the artwork is unique, as an individual is; and so as a unit of special awareness it too has an individual status. As such it is not cut off from its surround, existing merely in its own time-line and local appearance, but conveys a link at a deeper than everyday level to the current of life.
When a story ends there is the sense not of a sudden stop but a joining with … a deeper narrative? One may simply call it a current. This is so for a child or an adult, and with a story or a poem, a piece of music or a painting or a sculpture, if there has been a certain kind of journey in getting to know it. To return to poetry, the “I” of the reader or listener of old is taken on a journey and liberated; but the modern concept of a journey in art is apt to lead up to or into a state of arrest. Then where is the current?
The fact is, the underlying assumption of modern art is that there is none. There is merely a passing series of phenomena. And the reader (listener, onlooker) tends to be no more than a spectator, as each observation is landed within a focal area, so to speak, and let lie. It is a cold, detached sort of business.
One becomes a viewer of unrelated perceptions. They may appear each to be unique but are so not as part of the uniqueness of life itself, but only in an unjoined-up way. With apologies to the admirable magazine, this is what its poetry – as virtually every poem that is published now – comes down to. The reduction of the individual to a camera or a recorder. The thinning-out of the blood to a watery nod. A mental pandemic has reduced the population of the world of art to the lonely satisfaction of a closed position. This is Art now and this is its Spectator.
Joe, I suspect that you generalise too much. I can’t say anything more definite then ‘I suspect’ because my knowledge of poetry is far inferior to yours. But I suspect also that there may be a parallel to the state of affairs which obtained a few years ago in ‘classical’ music. (Classical – a problematic term if ever there was one – but this isn’t the place to go into that.) Most of my own experience of what gets attention comes from the radio, but insofar as that’s any guide, I can tell you that, while what you say would serve as a good description of what went on for quite a lot of the last century, the situation has changed for the better now. Programming in classical music is much more wide ranging and interesting than it was. I think it likely that good, expressive, living music was always being written, but that for various reasons it was systematically neglected.
I mention this as a way of tentatively suggesting that the current situation in poetry may be comparable.
Interesting, Tony. I’ve seen nothing in recent years to suggest a change for the better in poetry. I often ask myself – am I determined not to see such a thing? or somesuch – but I tell you, if I found a poet or poetry that reached across the divide instead of banging up against it, I would bless the stars,.