the only good poet
One retreat after another without peace.
I have posted below a transcription (for better or worse) of a portion of dialogue from a 2005 episode of the South Bank Show, that might be of interest. The particular episode looked at the glamorisation of madness, and investigated if there were a connection between madness and the work of art.
Melvin Bragg. One of the things that this is, is a success culture and it's a money culture. Do you see these two as being a bar to the development - a fuller development - of people that you would like to see or hope to see...the money and the success?
Yes, I think one of the things that we might look to poetry for now...because poetry is marginalized, which is the best thing about it, it is freeing people now to work their own way. People are only going to be poets now if they really want to be, because there is very little money in it and there is very little glamour. That seems to me to be promising, because the only pay off now is writing a good poem, and that seems to hold within itself the possibility that people will be freer with their own thoughts. They will be less preoccupied by winning, or by being charming, or indeed by selling, because they've got nothing to sell. I think the new thing that might be happening is the new sane artist will not be seeking recognition; that, whereas the mainstream of artists are all going to be seeking recognition, and fame, and fortune, the new sane artist will actually disperse with precisely that quest in order to do their work.
M.B. Why is that important?
Because it frees you...Once you relinquish the market - and that doesn't mean to say you don't earn your living: you've got to earn your living. Once you relinquish, one way or another, the saleability of your art now, you are then freer I think to have your own thoughts; because in so far as you are interested in marketing what you do, you have to be preoccupied by a fantasy of what people want. It makes you compliant. It makes you inevitably servile to a fantasy of the audience; whereas, if you have no audience, that interest drops out.
M.B. But having no audience can often mean for some people that they haven't time to do the work they want to do: they have to work in a bank, teach...do jobs which tire them, and therefore, when they come to do the work they want to do, the energy isn't left over to do it.
I can see that, but I also think that may be now the deal: which is that people have to find other ways to make their living if they are going to produce real art. It seems to me that there is a kind of sane art that, without ignoring the complexities and difficulties of life, make one feel that the project is worth it. I mean art, it seems to me, is against suicide, and that's a value. It's like what Richard Ford says in The Sportswriter, "When you lose all hope, you can always find some more." I think that's what art is about, in a way, it's somewhere about hope. Even the most hopeless artists, who are telling us how terrible life is, are actually making us feel better, when we know how terrible it is. So there is something about art that involves acknowledgements of difficult things.
M.B. But is it art's job to make us feel better?
I think it could be one of arts jobs to make us feel that more life is worth having.
M.B. So you think that sanity is now the new project?
I think sanity is worth thinking about now because there are so few articulated alternatives, to either a glamorised version of madness or a despairing version of madness. So I think it might be worth producing descriptions of what about ourselves we think might be valuable that is not a version of passion, possession, elsewhereness, otherness, and so on.
Melvin Bragg. One of the things that this is, is a success culture and it's a money culture. Do you see these two as being a bar to the development - a fuller development - of people that you would like to see or hope to see...the money and the success?
Yes, I think one of the things that we might look to poetry for now...because poetry is marginalized, which is the best thing about it, it is freeing people now to work their own way. People are only going to be poets now if they really want to be, because there is very little money in it and there is very little glamour. That seems to me to be promising, because the only pay off now is writing a good poem, and that seems to hold within itself the possibility that people will be freer with their own thoughts. They will be less preoccupied by winning, or by being charming, or indeed by selling, because they've got nothing to sell. I think the new thing that might be happening is the new sane artist will not be seeking recognition; that, whereas the mainstream of artists are all going to be seeking recognition, and fame, and fortune, the new sane artist will actually disperse with precisely that quest in order to do their work.
M.B. Why is that important?
Because it frees you...Once you relinquish the market - and that doesn't mean to say you don't earn your living: you've got to earn your living. Once you relinquish, one way or another, the saleability of your art now, you are then freer I think to have your own thoughts; because in so far as you are interested in marketing what you do, you have to be preoccupied by a fantasy of what people want. It makes you compliant. It makes you inevitably servile to a fantasy of the audience; whereas, if you have no audience, that interest drops out.
M.B. But having no audience can often mean for some people that they haven't time to do the work they want to do: they have to work in a bank, teach...do jobs which tire them, and therefore, when they come to do the work they want to do, the energy isn't left over to do it.
I can see that, but I also think that may be now the deal: which is that people have to find other ways to make their living if they are going to produce real art. It seems to me that there is a kind of sane art that, without ignoring the complexities and difficulties of life, make one feel that the project is worth it. I mean art, it seems to me, is against suicide, and that's a value. It's like what Richard Ford says in The Sportswriter, "When you lose all hope, you can always find some more." I think that's what art is about, in a way, it's somewhere about hope. Even the most hopeless artists, who are telling us how terrible life is, are actually making us feel better, when we know how terrible it is. So there is something about art that involves acknowledgements of difficult things.
M.B. But is it art's job to make us feel better?
I think it could be one of arts jobs to make us feel that more life is worth having.
M.B. So you think that sanity is now the new project?
I think sanity is worth thinking about now because there are so few articulated alternatives, to either a glamorised version of madness or a despairing version of madness. So I think it might be worth producing descriptions of what about ourselves we think might be valuable that is not a version of passion, possession, elsewhereness, otherness, and so on.
Last edited by a moderator: