The Art of Conversation

          Isadore "Izy" Gruye interviewed me for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads this week.  The result, In this Version of My Life--An Interview with Susan Chast, carries the marvelous tone of an engaged conversation, an unusual event in this time of my life.  It was fun to chat with Izy on-line, hear her voice on the phone, and then watch her shape the posted interview through her generous emails.  I laughed and learned while interacting, and regretted the end of the conversation.  Here's part of the raw conversation from Facebook chat: 

• 

  10:43pm

  Isadora Gruye
  

  
  

  I think you are saying wonderful things thus far, I wouldn't want to reign in a wild horse....but let me circle back

• 

  10:43pm

  Susan Chast
  

  
  

  I just noticed how close p o e t i c a l and p o l i t i c a l are in spelling

  A wild horse!

• 

  10:44pm

  Isadora Gruye
  

  
  

  you deserve to run free

• 

  10:45pm

  Susan Chast

  poli-poet-ical
  O, we all deserve that. But could we get jobs? Could we survive in the wild?
  Easier and safer to let the wild survive in us.

  
  

              Ha ha!  I remember being in settings such as college housing, bars, coffee houses, and beaches where rising dialogue was plentiful.  Nothing else was quite as effective at making me forget to go to bed, meals, classes, work, and even dates.  In these conversations I had the sense of rising up in an elevator through tall mountains of thought; I felt movement from peepholes to picture windows at the same time.  Heat was generated, but not the heat of battle--more the heat of building a high-rise in the light of day or walking in sunshine without a protective hat.   That was talking to think, just as now I write to think.  Rene Magritte's image of conversation nicely captures what I mean:

L'Art de la conversation by Rene Magritte

          This week I was blessed with two of these conversations, after missing them for what seems like years.  The second one occurred at the yearly 2-day conference of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts.  There we each shared our art(s) at an open mic of poetry, music, song, theater, and slide presentations.  Visual arts--paintings, fabric and paper art, pottery, and sculpture--formed a gallery, and I actually entered my raw notebook of first drafts here (besides reading 4 poems in the show).   We expanded our perception of the world through trying out new ideas in workshops and at meals.  Here is a picture of me with Pat Reed in the "Clay: Naturally!" workshop she led with Marilyn Morrison of the Lancaster County Art Association:

Pictures are by Blair Seitz

In his "Revision" workshop, Blair Seitz read from his new book and led us through an exercise of writing for 20 minutes and then work-shopping our work in the intimate group.  I wrote about my broken heart, one still evident despite retirement from teaching English in Philadelphia's secondary schools.  The conversation climbed because it did not hinge on  particulars but on the theories and experiences of learning we each brought into the room.  I was finally moved to tears from an overflow of gratitude, tears from being part of a true meeting for learning in the Parker Palmer sense:

Meeting For Learning: Education In A Quaker Context
by PARKER PALMER
"Much of what I want to say about education in a Quaker context can be organized around one of Quakerism's most central, concrete, yet spacious images: the image of "meeting." Among Friends, of course, there is first the meeting for worship, but then there is the meeting for business, the meeting for marriage, the meeting on the occasion of a graduation , the meeting in memorial of one who has died.... Friends made a simple and compelling point: The common element in both worship and business should be the search for truth - and the expectation that, if we give it space and time, truth will come to us."

            - Palmer, from the pamphlet   "Friends Council on Education" 2007 13 PP. Paper

        
          When I speak of the "Art of Conversation,"  I am not speaking about the discipline of Rhetoric taught in academies, but the meetings for learning that can occur inside or outside of them when the spirit comes out to play as well as emotions and mind.  In this art, we find our vulnerabilities, our meanings, our friends.  In these meetings we grow.

Mary Oliver, Rumi and Me.

Mary Oliver.  Photograph by Rob Howard.

This morning on NPR, poet Mary Oliver, in a promo for her new book A Thousand Mornings, spoke of prayer becoming more integrated into her mornings and quoted Rumi: "Hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Because this quote resonates with my own experience living and also with writing poetry, I googled the quote and found that it came from a longer Rumi poem available on line from The Wandering Minstrels:

Rumi

                              (Poem #472)






Spring Giddiness

 Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
 and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
 and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
 Let the beauty we love be what we do.
 There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

 The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
 Don't go back to sleep.
 You must ask for what you really want.
 Don't go back to sleep.
 People are going back and forth across the doorsill
 where the two worlds touch.
 The door is round and open.
 Don't go back to sleep.

 I would love to kiss you.
 The price of kissing is your life.
 Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
 What a bargain, let's buy it.

 Daylight, full of small dancing particles
 and the one great turning, our souls
 are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
 Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

 All day and night, music,
 a quiet, bright
 reedsong. If it
 fades, we fade.

-- Jalaluddin Rumi    

Today--actually yesterday and all night--I have been meditating on my fears because of a challenge at the on-line poetry workshop group dVerse Poets Pub to write about fears and phobias.   Rumi's poem speaks directly to that.  I am a horn, a brassy instrument, I fear the air ceasing to enliven me.  Here I am, let me play.  I am song, therefore I am.

Me

 

Art for Art's Sake: an Apology

I believe that my poem says that Art for Arts Sake is morally purposeful and/or subversive.  I deny the possibility of cutting art off from spirit and assert that pure art is spirit.

Yesterday I posted a poem called "Let this be my epitaph" which said to my readers that I am in the "Art for Art's Sake" camp of writing.  Here I am making an Apology: I just read through the poems I have written since April 2012--six months of almost a poem a day.  Few--if any--of them are "Art for Art's Sake." Indeed, this poem opens a paradox while actually redefining this very term.  Did I know this when I wrote it, or discover the riddle later?  

 

This must sound funny--that I had to reread my poems to discover this meaning and this question--but it is not a joke.  I do not mean to say that I write in some kind of trance state.  There are stages of writing, however, and then stages of performing which fall into the realm of prayer in the same sense that a person, an action, words--all we do in the name of God or that God does through us--can be seen as prayer.  Here I want to discuss this spiritual action in three steps: (1) what my poem actually "says," (2) what "art for art's sake" is, and (3) poetry as spiritual action.

 

(1)  

In "Let this be my epitaph,"  I wrote:

I make art; I go to art for its aesthetic alone 
and find vacation from play and work and giving 
that nourishes  all three

What seems a direct claim for "art for art's sake" contains a paradox.  If art "nourishes" it has purpose, and--if it has purpose--the art is not art for art's sake.  In these lines I compare the purpose of art to the purpose of vacation, which is, I assert, to nourish "all three": "play and work and giving."  Vacation is for refreshing vocation, not for escape from vocation.

 

In fact, it is a fallacy to say that since p (play) = P and w (work) = W and g (giving) = G, then a (art) = A.  Instead, the truth is that a (art) = p + w + g = PWG = A.  Perhaps logicians can tell me in formal terms what I am saying here.  

 

In informal terms, I am saying that by making and enjoying art--by definition outside the context of necessary daily occupation--I find new meaning in daily life.  When I can, I use poetic and other forms of writing to pass on the truths and questions I find.  That is my art.  It may also be a paradox to find art necessary and useful and powerful--not at all a luxury.  Government censorship of the arts--and of the kinds of free public education that encourages the arts--is proof of its power.  I believe that creating and enjoying art is a way of training independent thought and creative solutions in every imaginable context.

 

(2)

I wrote the poem "Let this be my Epitaph" for the challenge "Arts gonna art" at Poetry Jam.  For her prompt, blogger Dani clarifies three stances on the merit of poetry as (1) "for poetry's sake," (2) "to serve some moral or didactic purpose," and (3)  "to be morally subversive."  She directs her readers to the Wikipedia article  Art for Art's Sake for more information, but also concludes, "Perhaps all viewpoints are valid."  She asks us to write a poem which takes a point of view on these merits by commenting on or debating one or more of these stances or by illustrating one of them.  I believe that my poem says that Art for Arts Sake is morally purposeful and/or subversive.  I deny the possibility of cutting art off from spirit and assert that pure art is spirit. 

 

For example, what if I paint one colorful and textured blob or write a poem all sounds and nonsense--in each case foregrounding artistic means and form but not content.  My only purpose might be to pass the time, or to play with elements and to avoid any purpose.  But, how subversive!  An audience member has to think, even in asking, "What is the artist doing, and Why?"   Dada--an artistic movement that engaged writers, artists, and performers in nonsense--was subversive in this way in the second decade of the 20th century as it acted against war, authority, and even museum-hogging of culture.  

 

Modern arts including "Art for Art's sake" picked up from there.  The spirit of "no" often arises, the spirit of "yes" often does too as well as more complexity.  I have not used the word "political" yet, but you can feel it coming.  All choices are political, even those NOT to align with any one system.  

 

(3)

In studying, teaching, and directing theatre most of my life, I learned that anything that advances the plot is action and often character in action.  Indeed, every element of the theatre and drama can be used strategically (politically) by actor, designer, and director to advance the story's plot and thought.  Words, looks, gestures, stance are action filled with intention.  Color, line, decor, balance, and the entire physical apparatus of the stage has active intention.  And then the actual movement and dialogue acts, as does stillness, groupings, comings and goings.  Everything.  

 

This is true of poetry as well, whether a poem lies on a page of a book waiting for discovery or whether sounded into words, phrases, juxtapositions, and voice.  All is action.  A tree stands, OK.  But, in a poem that tree also stands, placed there and framed by a poet.  Does the reader see the tree?  Does it matter?  Does the reader see it now but not later?  How does the reader change the tree?  That too is action for the theatre and for poetry.  

 

For my poem's opening lines I chose three of the many things that engage my conscious and unconscious mind: play, work, and giving.  I might have chosen eating, sleeping and loving or any of myriad actions, but I didn't.  I took the first three that entered my head and penned them in a new order: playing became first because I used to leave it out, I was such a workaholic.  And giving--which characterized a lot of my work--stood out as I am retired from teaching, so I am questioning how giving--ministering--will still be part of my life.  In each case I wrote a phrase parallel to art for art's sake:

I play for the sake of playing (and all my troubles stay away)
I work for the sake of working (and lose myself in its hours)
I  give for the sake of giving, ego–free, (and I gain more than my mind can comprehend)

 

I thought that if these phrases made sense I would know WHAT I had to write about art for arts sake.  They did make sense once I added a phrase clarifying the result (in the parenthesis above).  Therefore, my 4th line, quoted in Part (1) above, addressed the same question about art and simultaneously compared and redefined it.  What remained was to describe the art/vacation, and that came out as a mash-up of poetry I have written, spirit-filled yes, no, and thank you. Is it also a paradox to say that  "Yes, no, and thank you" are the only three answers I have ever received to my prayers?  It feels to me that the poems I--we--write are questions or answers to our moments in a

mash-up of “what if” with 

“is” and “was” that at best 

touches soul and opens spirit

 

This is, at best, the action of my poems in the world, and it was the action of this poem on me.  While writing.  While sifting thoughts and reaping between the lines.  And I thought wouldn't that be a wonderful epitaph?  And I made it so.  Would it be so.  It is, in this poem, a definite yes.

 

 

 

 

My first publication!

 



Nain Rouge  published one of my poems! I am so happy. It is a a new magazine for the arts out of Detroit which is international in scope, and it even has page numbers. It has a unique urban theme, and my poem "Blindness" (on page 33) fits in very well.
 

I have also submitted poems to 2 other publications: Apiary Magazine--written by humans--features Philadelphia writers and Friends Journal carries a few poems each month interspersed among features on Quaker life and thought today.

I am too excited today to write anything else.  I will commit myself to write a blog to post on Fridays.

RAMBLES FROM MY CHAIR - my main blog: More about Real Toads

I am a member of  The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads* where I link my poetry in order to get the feedback and practice I need to become a better poet.  You need not be a member to be active in the blog, you just have to actively participate with poetry and responses to other poets.  I felt quite alone as a poet until I ran into the garden where I feel safe to write and read.  Every other day, members of the garden post a challenge or another stimulation for our writing--it may be a new form to write in, a painting or a poem to respond to, an interview of a poet or an introduction to a more obscure historical poet.  The variety is important, because I never feel that I am in school. 

Creative Commons*

If you are a poet--or even just a beginning poet--you should visit to see what it is like.  

One Sunday, the post was a photography challenge featuring the art of Scriptor Senex*, otherwise known as John Edwards.  I found his photos and narrative to be stepping stones into a new land.   While other poets each chose a photo and wrote a poem from it--amazing poems that I wish I had written--I wrote a tribute to the man himself.  

Portrait of the Artist

He included the tribute in a post on his own blog, the last piece in a description of his experience in the garden which provides links to many of the poems he inspired.  You can read it here:  RAMBLES FROM MY CHAIR - my main blog: More about Real Toads.*

Small Copper
© John Edwards

*click here for a quick link.  Since this blog has stopped changing the color of links, I have starred each phrase that has a link to its own site.  Sorry for the inconvenience.