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Ryōkan gets the last word

8/31/2023

Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
When you know that my poems are not poems,
Then we can speak of poetry.

— Ryōkan

Instead of my long complaint in yesterday's post I could just as well posted this poem and been done with it, I think.

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1946670-ryokan-who-says-my-poems-are-poems-my-poems-are-not-poe/

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Carl Phillips

8/30/2023

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I have to stop ordering books online, sight unseen. Last week I came across, My Trade is Mystery, Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing, by Carl Phillips, and sent for it. I liked the cover and the title, and the blurb on bookshop.org. But so far anyway, I’m disappointed. Not that it’s a bad book – it’s well written, and probably is a good book for many – but it’s not for me. Most frustrating to me is that he makes global statements about art that don’t apply to me. Like, “…[Writing a poem is] how I temporarily arrive at clarity and stability – emotionally, psychologically, intellectually… Art is one of the many ways to get there but for the artist it’s a chief way, and sometimes the only way.” Really. Clarity and stability. I guess I need those as much as anyone, but it’s certainly not why I write or draw. A couple pages later he writes, “All art springs from a human impulse, if not to resolve what’s not resolvable, then to contain, if only temporarily, what resists containment…” Seriously. All art. Hmm. “Each time I write a poem I feel as if I’ve laid something to rest, arrived at the stability of having understood a thing.” Wow. Laid to rest. His stability sounds like something to put in a grave. Or pinned to a board, maybe, like a butterfly, captured and laid out securely dead and on display. He even uses the word “capture,” as this capturing is assumed to be the intention of art.

Well, I'm not out to capture anything, much less stabilize it with my understanding. If anything my poems are meant to release butterflies. Set them free. Let them fly.

He goes on, on the same page (only page 11) to speak of self expression, like it’s a given, not even up for debate. “How we express ourselves and understand ourselves and the world around us…” Well, if poetry is for him an expression of himself and his understanding, can’t he just say that? Who is this “we” he refers to. Not me.

Am I not a poet? Or an artist? On page 12 he offers (parenthetically, no less) that art is “the artist’s medium for expression and understanding.” If that’s not what my art is, and that leaves me out, I suppose I can live with that. If that’s the consensus he makes it out to be. But it makes it all that much harder to put (what I call) my poetry and my artwork out where it can be seen. It seems I have to start with explaining how not to read my poems.

As I’ve been doing for many years anyway, I guess. As anyone who reads these blog posts must have noticed by now, I keep saying that my poems are not self-expression but self-less-expression. I point to the ancient Chinese poems that have nothing to do with personal expression or understanding the world. Or the poetry of Robert Lax that resonate as spiritual depth in a material world.

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Ryōkan gets the last word

Carl Phillips

Doug Westendorp

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