Bravo Steven - lovely piece. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Just one thought: I've never believed that art has to be spontaneous and free from self-interest. I think Carl Sandburg is quite wrong when he says “Commanding a person to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.” Bach wrote a cantata every week as a condition of his employment. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. It is in fact narcissistic to place one's personal ego above such things as duty and obligation.
Bring it on, Steven. Something in the Australian psyche seems not to want to wake. Too indolent to fashion our own independent polity—to leave our parents' house. Poetry, among its many character traits, practises and models and performs freedom: it frees language from cant and cliche, and freeing language, it frees those who use it. It wakes us from platitudes and celebrates something in the human spirit that refuses to be cowed, to be stereotyped, to be disenfranchised. And it remembers the earth in every phrase. Let's make a noise again for a poet laureateship. Thanks for starting the cry.
An excellent defence of poetry while urging us to reintroduce poetry, which is "the best words in the best order" so believed Coleridge. Poetry would also help us to wake up, as Rushdie reminds us that "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep."
Bravo Steven - lovely piece. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Just one thought: I've never believed that art has to be spontaneous and free from self-interest. I think Carl Sandburg is quite wrong when he says “Commanding a person to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.” Bach wrote a cantata every week as a condition of his employment. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. It is in fact narcissistic to place one's personal ego above such things as duty and obligation.
Bring it on, Steven. Something in the Australian psyche seems not to want to wake. Too indolent to fashion our own independent polity—to leave our parents' house. Poetry, among its many character traits, practises and models and performs freedom: it frees language from cant and cliche, and freeing language, it frees those who use it. It wakes us from platitudes and celebrates something in the human spirit that refuses to be cowed, to be stereotyped, to be disenfranchised. And it remembers the earth in every phrase. Let's make a noise again for a poet laureateship. Thanks for starting the cry.
An excellent defence of poetry while urging us to reintroduce poetry, which is "the best words in the best order" so believed Coleridge. Poetry would also help us to wake up, as Rushdie reminds us that "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep."