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I saw a little dirt road
It zigzagged off in adventure
It took me through whispering fields
And through hills of crumpled velvet
Where I slept overnight in a copse
I meandered through cities and towns
Charming small villages which inspired paintings
Loud noises of city markets
Buildings stretched into the clouds
I had two drinks at the "Slapping Fish Inn"
I Went down filthy dark alleys
Where men wearing shoes with flappy sole pieces
and clothing totally threadbare
Were living in cardboard boxes
Under dingy lights of a lonesome depot
I traveled to the best
And the worst
Of all possible worlds
As quickly as a topless dancer
Snatches an old man's dollar
What was happening here
This sudden, wonderful, blinding knowledge
Flowing through my brain?
It took more than intelligence
To solve this Rubik's Cube
It was as though my soul
Had suddenly been unchained
Like every emotion in the galaxy
Had wormed its way to my heart
Then, of course, I awoke
With a sense of astonishment
Mystery solved, but what brought
A dream of such strength? There it was
'Neath the pillow, a book of poems
Lay under my head
Richard Reed Jr.
A world without artistic creation is like a life not lived to the fullest; bland, stark, and routine. Art is a way of fulfilling totally one's imagination, often impossible in everyday life.
To me, the subject matter of art is an ever-changing reality, hiding analytically over here, yet popping up for brief, intuitive moments over there. This fluctuating reality creates and re-creates new worlds for all of us, each differently, according to his perception. The artist must portray a mutable world in his artistic creation even as he is creating, hence the use of metaphors which change under our very eyes, like chameleons giving action and life to the artistic creation.
My utter-frustration is finding good metaphors, and not knowing where to place them in order to capture this fluctuating reality. Also frustrating is to put the ideas into words which will communicate my perceptions and feelings as completely and clearly as
possible. No matter what the finished product of art might be, or who the artist might be, I believe that communicating clearly is, or should be the goal of the artist.
Even more frustrating is, that lurking in the back of my mind is the sneaking suspicion that there is no truth in life, yet I'm always searching for a truth to put into my poems. As I write, the truth flows through my hands like finely ground sand. I am left with the
lesson of my Zen Buddhist master, "Silence is truer than any utterance." Or "If you speak of it, you have
already missed the point."
Thus fiction is all that's left to me, hence my own personal koan: "How can any one live or write truth when the words in the mind can only fabricate imagination or fiction?" Slowly I began to realize that all poems are fiction, the statements within them merely speculations, if there's any truth, it can only be intuitive. As I stated previously, art is primarily a way of fulfilling one's imagination. While the words in my poems cannot speak truth, I can hope that the reader someday instinctively discovers the signposts I leave behind, and in the process finds a truth, not necessarily mine.
Another huge task of the artist is simply to entertain. I love writing poems sheerly for entertainment. To leave the reader puzzled to the very last, and to allow the point of the poem to suddenly burst forth in the closing lines. Forcing the reader to exclaim, "Aha" always creates in me a sensation of pleasure. That's the entire point of Japanese Haiku, which I dearly love to read and write. Sometimes just the way certain words sound, or are arranged on the paper is pleasurable. A good description of a winter's day can make one feel chilled to the bone. Just as describing a pastoral scene can make one imagine beauty, and feel a sense of peace. In these cases, a writer becomes as a painter, using words rather than
a brush. I love to read and write powerful descriptions, although I believe that this can be much over-done if one is not careful. To me just making a reader chuckle is a great achievement. Who doesn't
like to laugh?
The previous paragraph has led me to muse on another point. If you are a writer, know the audience for whom you are writing, or you will be in dire straits, as you can well imagine. If you're an avid reader, you must understand the writers you are reading. You must also study the basics of poetry. If you cannot understand what's on the paper before your eyes, you either don't understand the medium, or you don't understand the many and variable styles of the writers.
These things have frustrated me as both a reader, and writer. As a writer You can break things down into categories of entertainment forms, and attempt to write to please everyone. You will soon fail at this, but you will eventually discover the themes and styles that work best for you, just as a comedian knows which material throws him flat on his face, and which jokes leave the audience howling.
I truly believe that understanding an artist, and I speak here only of writers, is a much more difficult thing to do than it is for the writer to create the work. There are plain and simple poems written for plain and simple pleasure, then there are those metaphysical pieces filled with imagery, metaphors, and similes. There is something for everyone.
It's difficult to understand what these writers are attempting to convey without almost fully understanding the writer himself, his tastes, likes, dislikes and so on; his obsessions, personality
strengths and flaws, and so on. And probably, most importantly, his writing style.
Thus, one who wishes to understand the writings of the so-called great writers, one must necessarily, in part, understand the great writer himself.
And herein lies the crux of another of my frustrations. Wishing to be a great writer, I need to read great writers, but in order to read great writers, I need to understand great writers.
What a laborious task, to decipher samples of great writers. But the wealth of knowledge gained is a thousandfold worth the investment of labor. I am always surprised and intoxicated when while reading
someone else's piece, I come up with an original idea of my own. It's very magical and mostly intuitive, which is how I write. I throw words on a piece of paper like Rorschach blots and hope that I see an idea there, and most times I do, although how I do remains
quite a mystery to me. Having said that, the idea must be planned and organized from the view point of having a beginning and an end. For me, the rest intuitively fills itself in. And, of course after the poem writes itself intuitively, it must be improved upon, analytically.
I will write of one last frustration, as I'm sure by now everyone is frustrated from reading such a long discourse. Please try to stay awake. This is my pet peeve! I grew up in a small, and I do mean small, farm town in Pennsylvania. Everything was done there in a
traditional manner, and one didn't ask why. Thus, in school we all learned Western European, and American poems written in the traditional manner, where all English grammar rules applied to any
piece of writing, including poetry. Like a good Pennsylvania German schoolboy, I learned as I was taught. However, when I started to study poetry on my own, the modernistic era of poetry had blossomed,
And here stood I, like a Centrist, caught between the left and the right, not knowing which way to lean.
I like my poems to look neat and have as much rhythm as possible, but when I write in the traditional manner, these nasty old punctuation marks, especially commas and periods look ugly to my eyes, and somehow seem to puncture the rhythm. My frustration is that I'm still not sure whether to punctuate poems, or not, and if so, which marks should be used and where. Alas, I put a hundred different poets in a room and put the problem to them, and guess what? They came up with a hundred different answers. Which reminds me of a good way to close.
Ashoka, the Emperor of India
was up early one morning,
writing on a gigantic
flat-bladed sword.
A monk saw him writing
and approached, asking
"What are you doing Sire?"
Ashoka replied, "I'm writing
down our laws so that everyone
will understand clearly what
they are." "Oh no Sire, I would
advise against that. If you do
that, the people of the empire
will be arguing amongst themselves
constantly."
In summary, the artist's tools are all there. Picking lively ones and placing them in the appropriate place in a writing is laborious and frustrating, so if
your works are not labors of love to you, perhaps you should not be writing. Along with the previous frustration is the seemingly hopeless task of communicating to your audience exactly what you
want to say. Words are powerful indeed, but they escape you just when you need them most. Until you are communicating to yourself adequately, your audience will probably not understand you.
Also, while someone can teach you what the tools are and how they have used them, you must find the
phrases and expressions that work for you and your subject matter. Trying to communicate an absolute truth is beyond human ability. Be satisfied with leaving signposts, pointing the way to metaphysical
truths scattered throughout your writings, and hope that they will be stumbled upon from time to time.
In my opinion, Entertaining your audience, no matter how you do it, is everything to art. All else is of lesser importance. The best way to do this is to know your audience, and however, wherever, and
whenever you can, keep on introducing yourself to your audience. Be aggressive with your writing, even to the point of obnoxiousness. Aggressiveness will lead to experimentation. Experiment with all the
tools of writing until you find your style and your voice, and I include punctuation here.
After all is said and done, and all the classes have been taught, You must still take the bit in your own mouth. There is much left to learn that only you can teach yourself. There are many paths to God, yet each must find his own; there are many roads to the world of art, yet each must find his own. I wish you good fortune as you travel upon that road.
I close, concluding that writing and other art forms are pleasurable, because they stimulate the imaginations of the artists and their audiences. The artist attempts to portray fluctuating
reality through the use of metaphors, simile, analogy, and allegory. These art tools breathe life and action and intuitive truth into the artists creation and in doing so creates pleasure in the imagination of his audience.
Now, it is time for you to leave.
A poem never written
Is like a life never lived
Like sperm lying uselessly
Upon the soaking ground
Drying in the sun
Enticing one to wonder
What If?
Richard Reed Jr.
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