POETICKS

Many people, usually grinds, extol the virtues of plain hard work–the 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration school.  What’s stupid about this is the idea that the inspiration is due to genes, the perspiration due to strength of character.  What is stupid about it is that the strength of character required to do hard work is due to genes.  I bring this up because I commented on some Internet article pushing the idea that we all have the potential to be geniuses, saying something like, “the silliest belief about success in a field is that the will to rise to the top is not genetically-based.”  I repeat it here because it seems so obvious to me, but apparently to very few others. Where do they think the aptitude for hard work comes from?

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Earlier today Al Fireis passed on the following announcement to New-Poetry:

“The people of the Kelly Writers House are pleased to announce – in addition to many hundreds of other readings, symposia, performances, seminars, workshops, netcasts & community outreach programs – this year’s three Writers House Fellows:

“Does the house ever do artist outreach programs–by giving an artist with something fresh to say in a highly visible forum, for pay?  That said, I have to say that Albee has proven himself not an enemy of the arts by supporting (with money, I believe) the Atlantic Arts Center in Florida.  It mainly helps artists who don’t need help, but pays them to help artists (like me) who do need help, as sort of associates working together under the leadership of the artist who doesn’t need help.  If that’s the way it is still run.  I learned Photo Shop there, a program I couldn’t afford though I eventual was able to get a cheap version of it, Paint Shop.  It was a key to my development as a visual poet.

“Of course, my getting into one of the Atlantic Arts Center programs was a fluke.  Albee himself had used his influence to get Richard Kostelanetz a slot as a master artist, and Richard picked truly marginal associates.  All other master artists selected, so far as I know, have been mainstreamers, with  mainstream associates.

“Perloff, to give her credit, helped language poetry when it was otherstream.  She may well have done this opportunistically: Vendler had used Ashbery to stand out, so she grabbed Bernstein, or the language poetry people in general.  Which is fine with me.  I’d love such an opportunits to do the same for visual poetry, and will never understand why none has.  A few have tried but not gotten far with it.  Probably because few visual poets are academics, and thus close in one way to the mainstream.  More language poets had academic clout long before they had literary clout.

“As for Cheever, I can’t imagine what she has to say.  Reminiscences about her father, a one-time noted mainstreamer.

“Sorry for the Me-stuff, but the name Albee set it off.  Strangely important name in my life even though I’m not a great admirer of his plays, and probably have little in common with him in other ways, and once disliked him. I saw what may have been the premiere of his Zoo Story, along with Krapp’s Last Tape; disliked Zoo Story, very much liked Krapp’s Last Tape.  Greenwich Village Theatre when I was a teen-ager just learning my way into the arts, with high school buddies I’m still friends with, one of whom because a actor who got by but never became well-known, another who became a very wealthy Manhattan corporate lawyer, and a third who became a wealthy Bevery Hills cataract man.

“Sorry, again, but I’m feeling talkative–”writative?”  Took a pain pill with an opium derivative in it an hour ago.  Hip pain I’ll probably need hip replacement surgery to get rid of.  Also, I live alone.

“You know, I’m against the government’s subsidizing anything whatever, but if they’re going to subsidize the arts, I think they should make it a rule that any organization getting government money, even in the form of tax breaks, should be required by law to give at least one position a year like the ones Kelly House is giving to Albee and the others to someone who has never been given such a position by such an organization.  Or never gotten more for taking such a position than, say, a hundred dollars.

“One of my daydreams is of becoming a literary super-star invited all over to make guest appearances, and refusing to for a given organization until that organization has invited four or more marginal artists (or critics) to make similar appearances, paying them what it’d pay a super-star.  It would be going too far to make them do that before inviting any well-known artist or critic; I wouldn’t require more than their doing it for just one unknown if it weren’t the practice never to help an unknown (who doesn’t have somebody of influence pushing for him to be invited, or is representative of some allegedly underprivileged group, aside from experimental artists.

“Hey, looks like I’ve written my blog entry for today.  I’ve been so out of it for many months that I’ve been trying to force myself to at least write a blog entry every day.  Have done so for over a week. “

Poverty = |  |; wealth = |                                 |.

I don’t consider this a poem, I think of it as an aphorism and thus, informrature.

Amazing how little I’m posting to this blog of mine of late.  It’s been a full week since my last post; I thought only a couple of days had gone by.

Is there any profession that pays as little as poetry?

Is there any profession that scorns its most adventurous practitioners as much as poetry?

For the first time in ever so long, it’s nine o’clock and I don’t want to retire for the day!  That’s Very Nice.  What’s not nice is that it took an overdose of pain medication to make me feel that way.  Oh, well, that I’m able to feel this way is a plus, whatever it takes to make me feel this way.

Ergo: whee!