The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction– Dean Young
Poetry, is above all, an art. Those of us who write for a living tend to ‘sometimes’ lose touch with creative reality. We write as a Kantian means to an ends (metaphysical representations) such as book publishing deals, journals being read, awards being won; which in its simplicity is all well and good. However, where does the sentimentality go? The passion? The creation? Dean Young attempts to have us reveal to ourselves our own definition of creation by using recklessness as a backdrop for discussion. Young writes about Dada and surrealism and its influence on art and how it has the power to ground imagination. For me, young’s illustration is not simply about aesthetic recklessness and the contradiction therein; yet, it is about the balance between imagination, creativity, art, and the concrete literal world. Of course we can create an innumerable amount of creative works, but then we must walk the thin line of writing for ourselves as well as writing for the reader.
Poetry mitigates just as fire does, by witnessing its own necessary recklessness and senses of the sacred, its ability to combust the ancillary, to grow and make everything itself eve as it confronts us with the outcome of its conjugation, with ash, with death, (Young; The Art of Recklessness; page 7) Poetry. As fire. Such a powerful statement for Young to draw our attention to. At first, it may that Young will write an entire book that basically “preaches” to the proverbial “choir”, but here, the reader can see that he is writing truth. Poetry, like fire, can and does diminish, but it can also create, destroy, and consume the reader, as well as itself. Poetry, like the writer, knows of its power, but it is up to us to act correctly on the knowledge and power.
My favorite concept of Young’s is poetry’s atrophic force in the world and contradiction. This poetic weakening stems from losing touch with human existence, feeling, and creativity-the process. We lose touch with our sense of art in order to please the common good, if you will, “Poetic practice has changed throughout time to the increase of the riches of poetry in genera, by poets doing what they have told not to or sensed were discouraged/disallowed from doing. At the center of any artistic practice is a resistance as well as a contrary impulse to identify, to stand-off from the tribe and to be part of it, (Young, page 37). Young values this contradiction very much; he writes that poetry is an assertive force; it must be poetry on purpose, not by default, such as his Marianne Moore example. Obscurity and unrecognizability do not make a poem, but focus does. There is nothing wrong with abstract poetry, however, one cannot write something that only the writer understands, and perhaps they don’t either. That is once again talking about the barrier between creativity and concrete; the necessity for “others” to understand our senses and experiences as writers, poets. In his own creation of this book, Young challenges himself to do just that. He pushes himself into the prose realm in The Art of Recklessness as well. His ambition drives him through a world of not simply a book about writing, reading, and understanding poetry, but through a world of the art form as well.
People use language for two reasons: to be understood and to not be understood” (Young; page 38). This quote is an exemplary way to continue Young’s views on contradiction and Dada and to advance my own point about the balance between aesthetic recklessness and concrete reality. There is a constant struggle, negotiation between the communicative state and the expressive state, “They are the two forces that form must come to terms with,” (Young; page 39). In relation to the Dada and the Surrealist, they pushed the boundaries between accepted “form” and art. Surrealist art itself is more philosophical and metaphysical in nature then focusing on the concrete tangible world. Yet, that is the way that art should be, creation, beautiful, unique. Young cites a wonderful personal example of this when he accounts an artist he met, Charles Spurrier, was working in his studio at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, “His work was cataclysmic, patched together, slashed apart, set on fire. A piece was more temporarily abandoned than finished for the formality of a show, and if it wasn’t bought, it went back into the system, quite possibly to be sawed, painted over, or melted down from some more current work…The risk in Charles’s work was that it flirted with, even embraced, forces and attitudes toward materials that to some extent eradicated the art itself, yet this contradiction did not lead to canceling out,” (Young; pages 42-43). An elongated explanation for, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Recklessness allows for great art to be born. Great art to whom? It does not matter when we are creating for ourselves. We must move away from making things that are planned and allow art to happen through hazard and coincidence.
Although Dean Young’s contribution to The Art of series was albeit resounding, it did have some weak points as well. The writing was almost impenetrable and at first read the work was somewhat elitist in nature. Understandably, Young was using this work as a tool in order to make his own writing stronger. The reader got to both enjoy and perhaps ridicule the outcome as well. I found Young to be, at times, inexplicably pretentious. Although, he knows what he is talking about. This creation would not be something for either the faint of heart nor for the writer who believes that writing is work, Young basically dismisses the claims and says that writing should be for the self, reckless, inhabited, “It [poetry] itemizes as well as lurches; its coherence is not a matter of linear development or consistency but rather one furious momentum through gushes and spinning in obsessional eddies,” (Young; page 98). I as a self-proclaimed, newly re-birthed formalist poet, should shudder against some of the ideals that Young represents, however, I am also a realist and a devout reader of all works philosophical from Kant to Heidegger to Descartes to Nietzsche, thus I am bound by such philosophical evaluations to oddly agree with Young, surprising myself. That is not to say that I will cease in creating formalist poetry, but it will certainly be created in a new light, with brighter eyes and awareness. I believe that MFA students fall victims to spending so much time on craft that they/we forget about the art. We forget about the all-encompassing spirit of creation that has lead us to the university in the first place; we forget the feel of the page, the pen. I think that Young says it best when he says, “ Desecration makes visible what is intended to be invisible, marks over what is intended to be the final mark or blankness,”(Young; page 60). Coming from a psychology background, I can relate to this quote. Defilement, breaking down a barrier reveals what someone has hidden, hidden thoughts, feelings, desires, and writing is no different, which is why it is used in so many therapeutic techniques.
Perhaps what Young is trying to prescribe is a therapy session: a reckless, uninhabited, creative therapy session. When do I start?
*Certainly…A MUST read*
CosmopolitanMuse 