The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
In the following excerpt, by painter Edith Schloss, “Bill” and “Elaine” refers to William and Elaine de Kooning, and “Edwin” refers to Edwin Denby.
“Anyway, it’s all fake,” Bill said. “Yes?” Edwin batted his eyelashes demurely and inclined his head. “Art is all fake,” said Elaine. “It’s all fake because you have to make it,” said Bill. “There’s nothing there. You put on the paint. It goes this way, it goes that way, and then you think and then you work. The work goes any old way. There’s the paint, it runs and spreads with your strokes and you dig into it and you make something out of it. It’s what you thought about and what you know about and about what will happen or what should happen. You make something out of nothing, pretending it was all there in the first place. You believe it, and when you believe it, pretty soon someone else will believe it too.” “Yes,” Edwin agreed, “and you make it look right.” The emphasis was on you. Elaine nodded. This was ruthlessly open. You made something out of nothing because you had the will to do it, that was the wonder.
Edith Schloss, The Loft Generation: From the de Koonings to Twombley, Portraits and Sketches 1942-2011 (NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021), 68-9.
. . . . Perhaps we are here in order to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window— at most: column, tower . . . . But to say them, you must understand, oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves ever dreamed of existing. . . . Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Stephen Mitchell, trans. Boston: Shambhala, 1992. P. 82.
From Wallace Stevens, “On Modern Poetry”
ReplyDeleteThe poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
In the following excerpt, by painter Edith Schloss, “Bill” and “Elaine” refers to William and Elaine de Kooning, and “Edwin” refers to Edwin Denby.
“Anyway, it’s all fake,” Bill said.
“Yes?” Edwin batted his eyelashes demurely and inclined his head.
“Art is all fake,” said Elaine.
“It’s all fake because you have to make it,” said Bill. “There’s nothing there. You put on the paint. It goes this way, it goes that way, and then you think and then you work. The work goes any old way. There’s the paint, it runs and spreads with your strokes and you dig into it and you make something out of it. It’s what you thought about and what you know about and about what will happen or what should happen. You make something out of nothing, pretending it was all there in the first place. You believe it, and when you believe it, pretty soon someone else will believe it too.”
“Yes,” Edwin agreed, “and you make it look right.” The emphasis was on you.
Elaine nodded. This was ruthlessly open. You made something out of nothing because you had the will to do it, that was the wonder.
Edith Schloss, The Loft Generation: From the de Koonings to Twombley, Portraits and Sketches 1942-2011 (NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021), 68-9.
. . . . Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window—
at most: column, tower . . . . But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. . . .
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Stephen Mitchell, trans. Boston: Shambhala, 1992. P. 82.