PHNOM PENH: June 1st, 2014: POET AS PROJECTIONIST (extract from a forthcoming article) Poetic free-fall…. You’ve got the audience hooked, your newsreel is running. You are, again, for, “your masterpiece of minutes”, part of that select band that Shelley called, ” the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. You’re the voice of poetry. You’re not on anybody’s payroll; nobody owns your words. Your skills don’t go whoring like those of P.R. snakes or advertising copy writers. You serve the art, and what Leavis, the English critic, once called, “The Great Tradition”. You stand (to borrow Newton’s words) “.on the shoulders of giants”; and there’s no need to explain, here at least, .....to sleepwalkers and pigmies, that there’s something more to life than football and shopping. from…… PRESTON TO PINNACLE HILL Autumnal fire across the ancient scarp would break a landscape painters heart. Your masterpiece of minutes soon is gone, but you, a breathless audience of one for several moments have it stark and clear. The puzzle palace vanishes, the moon looks on, and this is why you’re here. The air bites: you race the thrilling onset of the dark. johngartland.net
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 11:33:20 +0000
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