Sound & Sense: An Open Thread
The first of a regular opportunity to learn what others are reading — and writing
Well, it ain’t a personal favorite, but Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) did give us “Ars Poetica,” a 1926 free-verse work that is perhaps the best-known American poem about poetry: “A poem should not mean / But be,” he famously concludes.
I have a theory (although theory is probably too grand a word; suspicion might be better) that general pronouncements about art are true exactly to the extent that their opposites are true. Thus, for example, “There is no ‘must’ in art because art is free,” said the painter Kandinsky, and fair enough — but it’s equally fair to note that art is created within its medium and more constrained than many other human activities. All art is revolutionary is as true, and false, as All art is reactionary. And maybe, as MacLeish says, a poem should not mean but be — that a poem is akin to something “palpable and mute.” Just as true, however, is that language must mean to be in the first place.
So, what are you thinking about? Reading? Writing? This is an open-mic thread, available to both free and paid subscribers, where we learn what’s in your mind these days.
I used to read only one thing at a time, start to finish, but both grief and parenting have made that hard, so I am currently allowing myself the freedom to “surf” through many books at a time. So I’m currently reading Dostoevsky’s “Demons,” “Creative Intuition in Art & Poetry” by Jacques Maritain, Scott Cairns’s collection “Slow Pilgrim,” “Ponds” by J.C. Scharl, and “The Sum of Trifles” by Julia Ridley Scott (this last towards an upcoming essay in the summer issue of Fare Forward).
For my book club I'm starting Paradise Lost, which to my shame I've never read, not even in college. Writing? I'm on my second draft of a screenplay which I hope will become a smash hit Peak TV series. I'm also editing a documentary about the Ramona phenomenon, which is a largely forgotten part of southern CA history but which lives in the hearts of local Natives.