for Prudy
Half a league from Canberra's runway
Atop a hill, beside the lake:
Ngunnawal and Ngambri country,
Sand-born Dreaming in mosaic.
Artisans, your rest forsake!
Rise from slumber, and return
Down the word-mine once again.
Hear the voices of our nation
Attest her grace from every wing.
Noisy, sea-spray splash oration:
Sweet condolences they bring;
And then—All hail our new-made King!
Ragged sentence fragments said,
Destined for the work ahead.
Here the smiths pick up the scent
And search for words meant but not seen;
Now cast them to convey intent,
Set like sapphires on the screen.
At last, fine prose and as they mean;
Read through, approve. Reflect upon
Day's duty done; lights out—we're gone.
24/9/2022
Why are there no Good Poems?
The phrase The Great and the Good seems tautologous to modern ears, a rhetorical repetition for emphasis; I hold that here the two words mean different things: the traditional example is of Napoleon—certainly Great, but by no means Good. This kind of goodness implies intent; and in our modern understanding of art and its relationship with the audience, that is not a property that art possesses.
Poems, like any art, are manifestly a product of their creator; and while most people—myself included—would agree that there is much great art in the world, we'd often find it hard to agree on which art qualifies; and the more we know about the artist, the more troubling our choices may seem. Arthur Eric Gill produced sculpture and typefaces that were considered great for decades, but when people discovered his private diaries a few years ago that all changed more or less overnight; Pablo Picasso was considered one of the world's greatest artists, but it's hard to look at much of his work through modern eyes without a deep feeling of unease.
Which is not to say that to be a great artist you must be a bad person; but good people tend not to be great artists: they are more likely to be selfless and content—if not with the world itself, at least with their place and work within it; when they are motivated to act, they are more likely to produce a work of altruism or kindness than of poetry. Great art doesn't happen on a whim; it is born of a desire to manifest the transcendent by people for whom that is the best they can do, or whose inner demons demand it of them. The image of the artist struggling in a garret is romantic, but not noble; and its romance is at once both tragic and troubling.
P.K. Dick was one of the greatest short-story writers of the 20th century, producing and selling scores of stories through the 1950s and 60s not because he wanted to bring them into the light, but because he discovered he had a talent for it and it was the only way he had of paying the rent and feeding his family. He wrote quickly, matching deadlines from his creditors with those of his publishers, but nonetheless he ultimately believed there was an underlying literal truth to his stories, which still resonate today—raising questions of identity and humanity that have both inspired countless others and found direct expression in works like Blade Runner, Minority Report and The Man in the High Castle. At the other end of the spectrum one of my favourite musicians, the guitarist Robert Fripp, has worked for over 50 years as a musician driven not by ambition or financial considerations but by a compelling need to express his art; a career which, in his own words, has been an almost unremittingly wretched experience relieved only by a handful of brief moments when he felt that he was in the presence of the music he was seeking. Both are, in artistic terms, highly successful and arguably great, but neither could be viewed as wholly good; and neither can their art: it is—directly or indirectly—derived from and imbued with the suffering they endured, and our enjoyment of it must, in conscience, be tempered by that.
I believe in the fundamental imperfectibility of humanity; no matter how much and in how many ways we improve, we can only ever hope to be better—never perfect. And so too with art: a work of literature is only ever as ready as the writer is prepared to accept, and it's historically been commonplace for writers and painters to re-visit their work and improve it, even after having submitted it to an audience: the Royal Academy Varnishing days provided an opportunity for artists to revisit their works already hanging, and add the finishing touches under the public gaze. In the present day that would be unthinkable; but if it weren't for the demands of publishers, most written work would only ever be provisionally complete in the eyes of its authors.
That is, perhaps, the hidden gift of producing work for a publisher or market, rather than for its own sake: the author must find the point at which they can let go of their work and let it limp, however lame and imperfect it may seem to them, into the light. The alternative is to make ever more minute, painfully extracted improvements to it, climbing ever upward: towards, but never reaching, a rare and beautiful place where the air is so thin as to be unsustaining, and—however magnificent the view—an experience that can only be hinted at to those who have not lived it. As someone who doesn't write for publication, maybe that's why I like constrained writing: a problem to be solved, like a cryptic crossword; and a rigid framework that imposes demands beyond mere expression and places a clear finishing line across your path—if you choose to continue that's entirely a matter for you, but there's a sense of completion that can be hard to achieve in more conventional forms.
Varnished on 25/9/2022