[R. Nemo Hill]

I think the choice between consciously formulating a personal aesthetic as opposed to proceeding purely on an intuitive level is not all that black and white. Conscious & unconscious all play their part. And as poets I think there is no need to denigrate ideas which can be quite as beautifully formulated as poems--whether we agree with them or not. Sure some are great at talking more about things than doing them, and the opposite is true of others--so what? One is better than the other? I don't think it fair to penalize an artist for trying to think and speak clearly about their motivations; nor do I think it kosher to chastise someone whose praxis does not include such potentially narcissistic theorizing. Rather than criticize those who do things opposite to the way "we" do them, why not take the interdisciplinary approach and learn from them so that we can develop both styles of self-expression.

As far as the "non-producing artist", I am as uncomfortable with the phenomenon as others who I am disagreeing with up here. Yet the vast new world of virtual reality makes such a train of thought inevitable--and we ignore it at our peril. The fracturing of the world order that occurred during WWI led to a parallel refraction in the arts, a huge disruption with what had come before. The era when this so-named conceptualism first took hold of theory was another era of cultural shift, the 1960's. Our present technological revolution likewise seems bound to come with its own violent rifts, no? Art does not exist in a vacuum. I mean people are playing sports without moving from their chairs now, right--without moving a muscle other than their key punching fingers.

Personally, though I lament the loss of craft in all walks of life (I do make my living importing traditionally hand-loomed silks, after all), I am not comfortable with all this talk about the poem itself as the only important thing: I try to take a broader view of art than that--yes, consciously so--and think of the poem as the end product of another process, the evidence. It seems to me that focusing purely on the poem as object is more the marketing approach than using the poem as one piece of a wider psychological/philosophical mystery--merely the most tangible part of, if you will, a conceptual process. The possibility that it (the poem) is expendable, well, I'll consider it. I don't think I agree, but I'm not horrified by the thought; it doesn't make me angry at the bearer of that message.

And, Ed, it seems a little beside the point to insist on judging a conceptual artist on the basis of the material product he is blatantly rejecting the traditional valuation of. It's like telling a monk that has taken a vow of silence that you don't like his tone of voice. So should KG then not call himself a "poet'? Such a hair-splitting technical point seems moot.

I suppose the competition for resources and attention makes sense, Rose. And such a materialistic view can explain, I suppose, of the virulence of the reaction to KG. I'm not immune to envy, or the feeling that cultural approval is much too far from my own doorstep, ha! But on a deeper level there seems some sort of insecurity at work here as well: as if all our labor is to be proved pointless and not to be rewarded if some one can skirt it with such infuriating cleverness. I do think humility is the liberating answer to that conundrum--but I speak as one struggling with it constantly. If I sound as if accomplishments in this regard are otherwise, that is probably just evidence of my own deep insecurities and frustrations.

I trust I've said too much--%#&?

Nemo