Scott Cairns

A poem that came up in class today.

Clive James on Poets (and other artists....)

At the beginning of class this morning, before students shared their first set of extended collaborations (images of the excellent things they made to be posted here soon), I (Chris) read to them some short passages from Cultural Amnesia (2007), a book of essays on significant thinkers and writers by the critic, poet, and television host Clive James [1939 - 2019]. The passages I read, from a chapter on the Italian philologist Gianfranco Contini, might provide a way to think of the work we study and make in this class:

The memorizing [of poetry] comes automatically with the intensity of the engagement. And so, ideally, it ought to do with all of us. We memorize something because we can't help it, and the thing we memorize was written with that result in mind. Poetry is written the way it is in order to be remembered. 

And, later:

The reader's mind [or perhaps the viewer's mind] has its expectations, which the poet [or the artist] will play upon in order to defeat.

Finally, a quotation from Contini himself, which feels particularly apt to VVP:

The departure point for inspiration is the obstacle.