"All the arts, poetry among them, are magical."
from WRITING POEMS 4th Ed. (1996) by Robert Wallace&Michelle
Boisseau.
Are we shamans, magicians, the genie of Aladdin's lamp or Blackstone, Doug
Henning, David Copperfield?
Are we illusionists? Is Art illusion? One might look at a portrait by
Rembrandt or Leonardo and disagree. Looks like a woman and a man to me.
But is that really a smiling woman or a Flemish merchant there, or a two
dimensional arrangement of different colored oil paints that simulates eyes
flesh jawline and hair?
And what about the paintings of Heironymous Bosch, Salvador Dali or John
Biggers? Where did they see those things?
One might contend that the frightening and lurid images of the trenches in
Siegfried Sassoon's World War I poems have the power of battlefiled photos.
But aren't those lines telling of failed attacks, and muddy bodies and
gorged trench rats just arrangements of words on a page made to conjure up
the same?
That greatest of great war poems, THE ILIAD, was composed by Homer hundreds
of years after the siege of Troy occurred. Did he proceed from oral
histories, dreams, or did he make the whole thing up?
The poems of Blake and Ginsberg might prompt one to say, as to Saul after
his experience on the road to Damascus, "I have no doubt that you saw and
heard it my friend. I just wonder was it really there?" As I write these
notes, do I see before me on my kitchen wall a vision of the cosmos, a
galaxy in a tile square--or is that just the reflection of my nieghbors
nightlight shining through pebbled glass?
Is the artist a hypnotist? If so, does he first hypnotize himself?
Let us say we are common prestidigitators and not Merlins. Are we doing
tired card tricks and pulling the rabbit out of a hat at a birthday party
for five year olds--or sawing the woman in half--or making an elephant
appear or disappear?
Chris Hayden
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