October 20, 2009

When I had my time as a poet, I was continuously appalled...

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When I had my time as a poet, I was continuously appalled by how marginal and irrelevant poetry was. I couldn’t appreciate the actualized pleasures of the activity – of reading, writing, engaging deeply with language – as valuable ends in themselves. Perhaps because, for the most part, I don’t particularly experience pleasure. (Or at least I have found my experiences of pleasure to be thoroughly ambivalent and anxious.) And I didn’t want the activity to be an end in itself. I wanted the activity to shake things up, shift the very ground of art, in some sense change the world. How could one change the world with something as marginal and irrelevant as poetry? It is only now I realize how dangerous it is for someone who doesn’t experience or understand pleasure to want to change the world.



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1 comment:

ellex6 said...

Sounds like you are poised for an interesting journey. I wish you a plethora of mind blowing pleasures.