Wanting to start a new book and nervous about it being fiction, I went for some nonfiction instead. I picked up a little book I bought at the Twin Cities Book Festival back in October last year, The Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, Imagination by Carl Phillips. The book is part of a series put out by local indie publisher Graywolf that focuses on the “art of craft and criticism” according to the series description.
After reading the first chapter I am really impressed and excited and all kinds of happy. I did not know who Carl Phillips was. It turns out he is a poet. His thesis for the book is that restlessness is key to imagination and that imagination must take risks in order to create art. To forward his argument, Phillips analyzes poems. So far the poems he has chosen have been amazing from Louise Bogan to Shakespeare to W.S. Merwin.
In the first chapter Phillips talks about our need to create and make and he suggests this need is a result of our awareness of our mortality as well as wanting answers:
I think it’s largely the conundrum of being human that makes us keep making. I think it has something to do with revision — how, not only is the world in constant revision, but each of us is, as well. Each new experience at some level becomes a part of that lens through which we see — as in understand — the world we pass through.
Even though we keep revising, we are unable to find definite solutions. It is the tension between wanting closure and never being able to truly have it that creates what he calls resonance in a poem. If a poem has resonance, Phillips considers it successful. He understands resonance is frustrating for a reader. We want answers. We want experience to be translated for us. But what a good poem does is
transform experience so that our assumption about a given experience can be disturbed and, accordingly, our thinking about that experience might be at once made more complicated, deeper, richer.
Poetry is not meant to make readers feel better but to help us understand human experience in a way that leads to wisdom instead of the shallowness of simply feeling good.
It is a thought -provoking chapter and I fear I have not adequately conveyed Phillips’ argument. Perhaps as I continue through the book and tell you more about it I will get better at relaying the drift of his thoughts. I am eagerly looking forward to reading more of this little gem and it is making me excited about the other books in the series of which I have one other. Stay tuned!
This seems very interesting…you are right! Most of us as readers want the translation, but the whole concept of resonance is very intriguing. I who love poetry only so much…would I keep reading, if I feel the the lines are going round and round, without really coming to one neatly tied package? I so do agree with the part of “Each new experience at some level becomes a part of that lens through which we see — as in understand — the world we pass through.” – that is why most scholars argued that there is no independent/clinical observation. The very act of observation transforms what is being observed! This books sounds great! Let me know what you think and I will then hunt it up!
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Resonance is a good word for what a poem can give the reader ( perhaps more than fiction can?). I think that when a read gets this resonance he/she is very happy to get it but, as you say, the culture does tend to want answers.
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ian, it is a good word, isn’t it? At first I had difficulty grasping what he meant but when he starts looking at resonance in specific poems it all began to make sense. I think fiction can provide resonance but fiction does it over the course of a much longer piece. Poetry is more compact so perhaps in that way creates a resonance that is much more noticeable because it doesn’t get lost as easily as it can in fiction. Our culture does want answers and tidy endings. I know a lot of people who get upset over ambiguity and lack or clear resolution.
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cirtnecce, I agree, most readers do want translation. I do love reading poetry but I must admit that sometimes I just want a good feeling and don’t care at all about a deeper, richer experience. Just like fiction when sometimes I want something meaningful and other times I want candy. The idea of observation changing what is observed is also a major component of quantum physics. I wasn’t aware that it was part of clinical observation too! Very cool. I do think it is true and Phillips expresses it so nicely.
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Wonderful! “all kinds of happy”
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Thanks 😀
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SNAP, I went to a lecture last week by an Australian writer Andrea Goldsmith. Her topic was the imagination. She said that several things are needed for the imagination to work including solitude and privacy but she also named the importance of restlessness. She commented on how we are pathologising all sorts of behaviours that are part of a full life – like seeing restlessness as hyperactivity rather than something of value. I’m thinking of writing this up …
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whisperinggums, what a coincidence! I do think we are pathologizing a lot of things these days that are perfectly normal. Given the book I am reading I would be really interested to hear about the lecture! 🙂
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I’ll see what I can do! Ihope to be going to another lecture tomorrow which seems also to be on imagination so I might write them both up.
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Oh yes please! 😀
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Okay, this I need to read right now. Love that kind of book and love the premise of this one. Graywolf are fab, I think.
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litlove, it is turning out to be such a marvelous little book, quiet and thoughtful.
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Oh, how interesting. I agree, some element of restlessness is necessary — when I’m writing, I always have something I’m trying to work out. I don’t think it even has to be restlessness with your life situation; even just feeling restless about ideas is enough to make art.
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Jenny, yes, a mental restlessness, a curiosity, a desire to know, to find an answer to a question, a solution to a problem. It took me a bit to realize just what he meant because he doesn’t exactly spell it out but comes at it from various angles. He has lots of interesting observations and insights!
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Did you start a subscription of some sort with Graywolf press? I always forget they are here in the Midwest and publish lots of really interesting-sounding books–like this one. I am always curious about creativity. My teacher for my class (who is a writer) that I took last fall/spring mentioned he wrote in part to have something memorable left behind in the world–that mortality argument. Maybe that is subconsciously why I like to stitch–though I totally imagine my work ending up in some sad garage sale someday!
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