Most days I think about art not as a co-determinate of politics or of social influence but rather as the vehicle for the representation of line and color; of objects and shadows. These fascinations must always come first. Then comes the compulsive thaw when we see what we’ve been about as Jackson Pollock once famously said. For poets this secondary stage is the place of the head with all it’s distortions and playfulness. In other words, it’s what you feel about the shadows makes the poem.
Here is an example, a fine poem by the Estonian poet Jaan Kaplinski, translated by Sam Hammill:
This summer is full of insects.
As soon as you go to the garden,
a cloud of flies buzzes around your head.
Bumblebees nest in the birdhouses,
wasps nest in the hazel,
and as I sit at the window
I hear a buzz I cannot name,
whether the voice of bumblebees, wasps,
or electric lines,
a plane in the sky, a car on the road,
or the voice of life itself that wants
to tell you something from the inside out.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 