Friday, January 24, 2025

The Mass of Poets Lead Lives of Quiet Exasperation






There are those who literally knock their heads against brick walls and have scars to prove it. The proverbial brick wall is invisible to all but those who run into it—say climbers like Ibsen's architect Solness, who is building castles in the sky. Is it possible to separate aspiration and culmination? Can one be ambitious as an artist and free oneself from the muggy torture of being misunderstood that some, certainly not all, creatives experience? Alain Robbe-Grillet once said new forms seem like the absence of form. What would have happened to Jackson Pollock were there no Clement Greenberg? Pollock was well on the way to alcoholic oblivion anyway. Perhaps the intervention of a critical mind bought some respite that civilization ultimately profited from. No matter—the mass of poets lead lives of quiet exasperation!

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr

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