12.14.2016

Momentary stay, with confusion

For the past couple years, at least, I've been digging along in the trenches, or the mole-hole, of Ravenna Diagram, my long processional day-by-day poem.  It might be nice to try messing with this blog as I used to, with off-the-cuff observations & ponderings.  I have 15 minutes here before I have to go pick up Sophie, my granddaughter, from her school - what can I say in 15 minutes?

As I say, Ravenna D. absorbs most of my so-called mental concentration now.  But fleeting thoughts today...

"Detachment."  Is it possible an artist/poet might show a kind of natural capacity for detachment from his/her own work, and from the field of poetry generally?

Is such detachment perhaps necessary for substantial creative works?

I'm thinking about how poetic movements, fashions - fundamental changes in styles and thematic concerns - actually happen.  Perhaps they have to culminate in a level of conscious choice, of principle.  Some awareness, self-consciousness of one's cultural-historical situation, and of what might be possible.

This seemingly would require some mode of detachment - the ability to stand back, see things from "the outside".

Which for me anyway gets to a question about "tradition" in poetry.  Is there such a thing?  What does it mean?

Is it possible that the real & authentic creative effort we call "poetry" is very much caught up in a kind of artistic consciousness - a sort of retrospective "memory" - which is both involved, integrated - and detached from its processes and perspectives?

I guess the word often used is "critical" consciousness.

I must run... more later?  Who knows.




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