The Poet as Conduit Between Truth and Language
Art is the expression of our strongest convictions. Vulnerability comes when we materialize our innermost beliefs and feelings. Publishing them, or concretizing them, opens these beliefs and feelings to criticism, acceptance, questioning, denial. The artist, being aware of such possibilities, consciously takes the risk.
Sometimes the art itself makes us qualify our convictions. While we’re forming the art, it requires us to shape the art to suit the message. Sometimes the resultant expression is so compelling that others feel the emotional ties and savor the intellectual underpinnings as strongly as the artist. This is art in the raw.
Artists have no choice but to be the conduit between the truth and the medium. The act of creation is work. It requires little and it demands all. It requires everything and demands nothing.
Great art requires the understanding of universal principals. Appreciation of great art doesn’t necessarily require this understanding because the audience has been drawn in and affected by something true in the art. That truth can be about color or shape or texture or perspective. It can be about sensibility or curiosity. It can make us chuckle or cry.
Someone with less experience can produce something resulting in a piece that is very moving to an audience. The American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore houses such art and constantly turns over shows that support the notion that art abounds from all corners of our culture.
Sometimes it’s a great event in our lives that pushes us to the expression of art. The public connects with our art because of the shared experience or an empathetic connection to the experience. We establish a relationship with our audience and the response, positive or negative, invites the relationship to continue in some direction.
A few weeks back I wrote about taking risks with art and created three pieces without consideration for revision. Making myself vulnerable enabled one reader likewise to take the risk of submitting a poem for critique. I asked if he would consider publication and he consented. This is artist courage.
David Raubenstine indicated by way of introduction that he wrote poems and song lyrics when he was a teenager and young adult. A friend and he wrote together in high school. When he met his wife, he says he gave up writing for married life and eventually having family.
However, after eighteen years together, fourteen of them married, Dave’s wife passed away from breast cancer. The day he wrote to me marked the two year anniversary of her passing. Raubenstine is currently raising their eight-year-old son, Tyler. He says that he has begun to write again through all his pain.
Art is most times a vehicle for expressing feelings that cannot be articulated any other way. Raubenstine’s poem certainly utilizes his talent for language and rhythm to release some strong emotions in a manageable way.
The audience can easily follow the speaker's voice and sentiments, and identify with them in all their intensity, without feeling completely burdened, only highly sensitized. The speaker appeals to empathy while he carries on his conversation and wends his way through the intricacies of loss.
MOVING ON ?
They tell me I must move on,
But where am I to go,
That I should start a new life,
But This life is all I know.
How do I leave you behind,
Walk away from our past,
How do I ease my pain,
And let my heart heal at last.
Self pity is my greatest sin,
Apathy, my biggest crime.
Mountain of doubt stands ever tall,
Each day growing harder to climb.
I sit here in reflection,
Pondering the years we shared,
The good times and many sad,
Yes, I always knew you cared.
I mourn for you every day,
My heart consumed with sorrow.
I weep when they mention your name,
For us there’s no tomorrow.
Our son, our greatest achievement,
Our loving gift to each other,
A symbol of our eternal love,
A living part of you, his mother.
The answer to the question why,
Will always be a fruitless quest.
Only God knows his reasons,
For granting your eternal rest,
The morning you passed from this life,
My soul died along with you,
An empty shell have I become,
Void of all I once held true.
All the hopes and dreams we shared
Have vanished into the night,
Escaping ever from my grasp,
Fading slowly from my sight.
I want to live, but yet I don’t,
The battle rages on inside.
loneliness seeps ever deep,
Into this soulless shell I hide.
You said your body was tired,
You no longer had strength to fight,
The battle for you was over,
Your journey towards the great light.
This blanket of unhappiness,
I wear each day like a shroud,
It drains me of strength, of all hope,
I stand helpless beneath this cloud.
Will I ever move on they ask,
My answer will always be no.
I will forever mourn your death,
As it is the right thing, I know.
Kindly send comments and your poetry to michaeljhoover@gmail.com.
Art is the expression of our strongest convictions. Vulnerability comes when we materialize our innermost beliefs and feelings. Publishing them, or concretizing them, opens these beliefs and feelings to criticism, acceptance, questioning, denial. The artist, being aware of such possibilities, consciously takes the risk.
Sometimes the art itself makes us qualify our convictions. While we’re forming the art, it requires us to shape the art to suit the message. Sometimes the resultant expression is so compelling that others feel the emotional ties and savor the intellectual underpinnings as strongly as the artist. This is art in the raw.
Artists have no choice but to be the conduit between the truth and the medium. The act of creation is work. It requires little and it demands all. It requires everything and demands nothing.
Great art requires the understanding of universal principals. Appreciation of great art doesn’t necessarily require this understanding because the audience has been drawn in and affected by something true in the art. That truth can be about color or shape or texture or perspective. It can be about sensibility or curiosity. It can make us chuckle or cry.
Someone with less experience can produce something resulting in a piece that is very moving to an audience. The American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore houses such art and constantly turns over shows that support the notion that art abounds from all corners of our culture.
Sometimes it’s a great event in our lives that pushes us to the expression of art. The public connects with our art because of the shared experience or an empathetic connection to the experience. We establish a relationship with our audience and the response, positive or negative, invites the relationship to continue in some direction.
A few weeks back I wrote about taking risks with art and created three pieces without consideration for revision. Making myself vulnerable enabled one reader likewise to take the risk of submitting a poem for critique. I asked if he would consider publication and he consented. This is artist courage.
David Raubenstine indicated by way of introduction that he wrote poems and song lyrics when he was a teenager and young adult. A friend and he wrote together in high school. When he met his wife, he says he gave up writing for married life and eventually having family.
However, after eighteen years together, fourteen of them married, Dave’s wife passed away from breast cancer. The day he wrote to me marked the two year anniversary of her passing. Raubenstine is currently raising their eight-year-old son, Tyler. He says that he has begun to write again through all his pain.
Art is most times a vehicle for expressing feelings that cannot be articulated any other way. Raubenstine’s poem certainly utilizes his talent for language and rhythm to release some strong emotions in a manageable way.
The audience can easily follow the speaker's voice and sentiments, and identify with them in all their intensity, without feeling completely burdened, only highly sensitized. The speaker appeals to empathy while he carries on his conversation and wends his way through the intricacies of loss.
MOVING ON ?
They tell me I must move on,
But where am I to go,
That I should start a new life,
But This life is all I know.
How do I leave you behind,
Walk away from our past,
How do I ease my pain,
And let my heart heal at last.
Self pity is my greatest sin,
Apathy, my biggest crime.
Mountain of doubt stands ever tall,
Each day growing harder to climb.
I sit here in reflection,
Pondering the years we shared,
The good times and many sad,
Yes, I always knew you cared.
I mourn for you every day,
My heart consumed with sorrow.
I weep when they mention your name,
For us there’s no tomorrow.
Our son, our greatest achievement,
Our loving gift to each other,
A symbol of our eternal love,
A living part of you, his mother.
The answer to the question why,
Will always be a fruitless quest.
Only God knows his reasons,
For granting your eternal rest,
The morning you passed from this life,
My soul died along with you,
An empty shell have I become,
Void of all I once held true.
All the hopes and dreams we shared
Have vanished into the night,
Escaping ever from my grasp,
Fading slowly from my sight.
I want to live, but yet I don’t,
The battle rages on inside.
loneliness seeps ever deep,
Into this soulless shell I hide.
You said your body was tired,
You no longer had strength to fight,
The battle for you was over,
Your journey towards the great light.
This blanket of unhappiness,
I wear each day like a shroud,
It drains me of strength, of all hope,
I stand helpless beneath this cloud.
Will I ever move on they ask,
My answer will always be no.
I will forever mourn your death,
As it is the right thing, I know.
Kindly send comments and your poetry to michaeljhoover@gmail.com.