I am in Columbus, Ohio at the annual convention of the American Council of the Blind. In a little over an hour from now I’m teaching a workshop on poetry and sound. What I’m thinking right now is just how little I know about anything. Poetry? I can’t tell you what it is! Sound? Wasn’t it Stravinsky said even a duck can hear? What makes something beautiful? Why does it matter?
“Hinx, Minx, the Old Witch Stinks!” (That’s what Theodore Roethke liked, the percussive nonsense of a brilliant childhood.) I know this is what I also like. Like Pete Seeger I want to dance all around the kitchen to logo rhythms of exquisite gibberish–save for one thing, I want to reveal the stubborn and necessary joy of consciousness.
Survival too. Did I forget to mention surviving? It’s a hard life and art doesn’t always help you live but it does most days and that’s a fact.
Do you see? Poetry is the most serious fun I know of.
Can a duck love poems? Only if it has crossed the street safely. (Blind joke.)
What makes something beautiful? Why does it matter? Because we’re all in this together. I love the fact that one of the organizations within the American Council of the Blind is called “Friends in Art”.
What do I know? Not much it turns out. But I can stamp my feet and make expressive vocables jump.
Old friends and new, we’re going to jump.
Planet of the Blind 