[Michael Cantor]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

[i]
I also think that those who 'work their art', when they talk effectively about that work and that art, are not talking "in the abstract". On the contrary, they are reflecting on their working experience. And nothing is less abstract than experience, regardless of the style of language it is expressed in.

Nemo

I agree. But talking about your art means just that - talking about your art, or (assuming you're a poet) related poets or other artists, with the emphasis on craft. It does not mean rattling off a tour of philosophers and theories. I was at the Picasso sculpture show at MOMA a few weeks ago and it was mind-blowing (if I'm lucky, I'll get a decent ekphrastic poem out of it), and one of the things that struck me was how workmanlike it all was, how his art bent to what materials were available, how the painters and sculptors in that - or any era - influenced each other. That's what I mean by "working" or "talking about" your art; and I have to believe that if Picasso materialized he'd be full of very down-to-earth talk on what he was trying to do, and how the paint or wood or metal had to be handled; and he wouldn't spend a lot of time on Kant or Heidegger or pure theory.