Que, Kooks and Censorship

Once a month, I write an article for a local magazine, Que! My column is titled Eye Am Art. Meeting the two guys that own this publication was a most fortunate day in my life. Que!, is satirical and hilarious. It pokes fun at our crazy, Costa Rican lives. Hence the name, Que!. In English that means ~ What! Which~ you will find yourself saying here a lot. Such as in my recent post John Denver and Cat Burglars. Check out the magazine. If you like to laugh, you will enjoy it.

Eye Am Art is serious. Each month I write about a local artist or I expound on the topic of aesthetics, or I just try to be encouraging of the arts. I have a Fine Arts degree and am passionate about all the arts. I’m an art cheerleader.

Coincidentally, this month I wrote about Poetry and censorship. As an artist, I am against censorship of any kind. Right now there is a House Bill in the works, SOPA. It is supposed to protect intellectual property rights. But as the bill reads today, it opens the door for repression. WordPress, as well as myself and bloggers worldwide, are protesting. That is why there is a STOP CENSORSHIP banner across the right corner of my blog. If you want to become more informed, read, One Cool Spot Blog, January 17th’s post.

That being said, I would like to share with you my latest column from the magazine.

                                        Poetry~The Word Arts—A Poet’s Advice

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words. This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel-but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling-not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody but yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself–in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a bit harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all the time-and when we do it, we’re not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world-unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

Reply to a letter from a high school editor; published in Ottawa Hills (Grand Rapid, Michigan) High School Spectator October 26, 1955

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This poem was sent to me by an anonymous poet. So, we printed it and I advised anyone who wants to write to do so, like no-one was ever going to see it. Writing should be a freedom of expression. It’s an art. Art is how we connect as human beings.

The editor and poet who wrote to the high school editor, giving advice did so in 1955. I doubt he would have been able to use those words, “blow up the world” today. He could inadvertently become responsable for some kooks bad behavior.

Now me, printing the above poem-I will not take responsibility for what happens in the line up.

That’s one reason I like it down here, you’re basically own your own.

I don’t know what the future holds. But I do know it has been portrayed in novels, such as 1984, as a place where all of our freedoms will be taken from us. And we will be controlled by Big Brother through the use of technology. Vamos a ver/we’ll see.

I feel, until then, I will practice the editor’s advice to a poet and be and individual, I feel.

And as far as the anonymous poem, I don’t want to feel any pain~so we are all warned no dropping in!

pura vida

STOP AMERICAN CENSORSHIP