Thanks, Doug. What was (in the piece, "Word Icons") is an awareness of how
stripped bare of icons - with attendant architecture - we are in this west.
I got that consciousness particularly after being in Rome and inside a
number of Churches with all the adherent sculpture, painting and the iconic
architecture implicit to the rituals and celebration of Catholic belief. I,
as many Protestants before me, was totally smitten, infatuated, etc.
Along with that experience came the consciousness of how such adoration is
so minimally expressed in a west of simple churches; "Direct Faith" or
communication with God involved renouncing - as "we" know - most of all of
the icons, the intermediaries, including the complexities of Church
hierarchy. Comparatively, early on, the western US the west, as a religious
situation, is/was terribly barren. At best we were left celebrating the
sublime as manifested in the landscape (Beirdstadt, Carleton Watksins, Ansel
Adams,Weston, etc.) And, that celebration is more often now than not a
besmirched myth, replaced by environmental exploitation and destruction of
all sorts.
Curiously, Ed Rusha - raised Catholic - turns Hollywood and LA signage and
street maps into relative - perhaps bemused - signs of the Cross.
Yes, I think part of the aim of my piece, was to celebrate the ways in which
we - among the bereft of formal iconography (and now an increasingly bereft
landscape) - exploit a deep consciousness of the empirical
to make a transformative practice of art and poetry. And boy, not to be
self-piteous, does that take faith!
The importance of Jewish and Buddhist traditions - among others - to
becoming at home with the Protestant separation from the Church is another
important element in this story, as well. But today, I will not risk
articulating any or all of such!
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
> Stephen
>
> Read & enjoyed your peregrinations:
>
> You may feel that, there on the west coast of America you 'have no
> tradition,' but you do, of art, & at least you don't have one that
> keeps taking you out of the world to someplace else from which yuo can
> so not see it that you don't mind destroying so many others in it.
>
> Not such a loss, imho, as one might think.
>
> Doug
> On 18-Jul-05, at 6:52 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
>
>> Forms: Spirals, Thought & Such
>> Form: Poetry & The Garden
>> Iconic Words
>> On Translation: Sappho, Rexroth & Spicer
>>
>> Stephen V
>> Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
>>
>>
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
>
> NOT MUCH
>
> Not much you ever
> said you were thinking
> of, not much to
> say in answer.
>
> Robert Creeley
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