July 16, 2014

Much indignation on Facebook about Governor McCrory’s appointing a self-published poetaster from downstate as the new state poet laureate, against established protocols. Of our idiot governor’s misdeeds, that is perhaps not the least, though it does show the honor in something like its true colors, in that it never has had that much to do with poetry.

Good painting yesterday, though with revision and pentimenti, I’m not much further along than I was before.

Blessed rains yesterday, though in the space of a night weeds have popped up, juicy and brazen, where there were none.

J asked me to write a blurb for the cover of a book a local publisher is preparing. The book is a “project,” which is to say, very, very bad poems– awful, awful poems– which nevertheless exalt a political stance currently above criticism. What a dilemma! We in Academia often face the question of how to deal with great art by bad people, but less often the question of how to deal with execrable art by praiseworthy people. My inclination is to think that bad art is a kind of vice, and must not be praised for any end. Less savagely, can a person, however pure-hearted, really serve his quest by creating bad art? Were he sincere, would he not learn sufficient craft to say something worthwhile, or sufficient modesty to shut up and serve in another way? There is nothing in the work to indicate that the author actually felt these emotions or had these experiences himself. They are the expected things said in the expected way. The author knew what would get him praised by the thoughtless and enthusiastic of his party, and that is what he did. I wrote the blurb. I never praise the work, though I praise the intention, violating my own precept that they must be one. Sigh.

Related, I suppose, is the perception last night while channel-hopping that there are at least twenty channels dedicated to Christian evangelism, each with its sweatily enthused clergy witnessing to swollen congregations waving their hands as if trying to snag the Holy Ghost from the air. It’s best not to look at these things too closely, for looked at closely they are horrifying. No one goes to those sessions, or turns them on from their sofas, hoping to learn anything. They want to hear confirmation of what they already know. They want to be lifted from their seats by the rush of BELIEF that they felt genuinely once, maybe, and have been trying to get back ever since. They want to turn the visitation of the Spirit into a kind of appliance that can be turned on and off according to the mood. How often can the same scriptures be “illuminated”? How many stories of lives turned around by Mercy and Revelation can the body of believers stomach? Numberless infinitudes, apparently. The bad poet and the bad believers are alike in accepting–no, preferring–the knock-off to the real thing. I caught myself thinking that if only all these evangelists would shut up, if every holy book could be closed and every witness humbled for a little while, something like true faith might find its way through the silence.