![\"IMAG1083\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMAG1083.jpg\")
<\/a>Rorty and one by Cornel West, put philosophy into the day and the next to last essay in ModPo just went into cyber space. \u00a0It’s below, if you’re interested*. \u00a0The assignment was a few posts back.<\/p>\nSaw two good movies tonight, too. \u00a0Once Were Warriors is a difficult movie to watch since it shows domestic violence in as raw a way as I’ve seen. \u00a0About Maori’s living in contemporary New Zealand Warriors has a long tragic arc which only lifts near the end and then to recognize the role of tradition in a tribal people. \u00a0Most of it is grim and much of the grimness comes from self-loathing generated by rootlessness, abandonment of the past for a present with no cultural handles. \u00a0It’s definitely worth seeing. \u00a0The funeral of Grace had me in tears.<\/p>\n
Then a longer, unusual Hollywood movie, the Place Beyond the Pines. \u00a0This Ryan Gosling\/Bradley Cooper movies has a surprise narrative arc as a major character dies halfway through the movie. \u00a0This is a movie about consequences, too, like Warriors, but here the past is not so cultural, it’s personal and it skips a generation before it comes to ahead. \u00a0I liked the longer plot line, an unusual choice in a mainstream Hollywood movie. \u00a0An actual adult movie. \u00a0Also worth seeing.<\/p>\n
*All That’s Left Is Letters<\/strong><\/p>\n The title \u201cWhy I Am Not A Painter\u201d answers the existential why of the poem\u2019s second line before the poem itself ever starts. O\u2019Hara is not a painter because he writes poetry. For example, here\u2019s one titled \u201cWhy I Am Not A Painter.\u201d The poem is his work as the painting hung in the gallery is Goldberg\u2019s. Thus, O\u2019Hara is a poet and Goldberg a painter.<\/p>\n He thinks he would rather be a painter, but he says, \u201cI am not. Well,\u201d This is, I guess, a soft end-stop, a sort of pause here and think construction which suggests a wry answer to the question. He is not well, at least not well enough to be a painter.<\/p>\n The two long stanzas provide an alternative narrative to the usual description of the creative process and in so doing give an insider\u2019s look into the difference between painters and poets.<\/p>\n \u201cMike Goldberg is starting a painting\u201d, this line in the continuous present, puts us with Goldberg and O\u2019Hara until in the third to last line the painting is finished. What has happened? O\u2019Hara dropped in, had a drink, noticed the painting had the word SARDINES in it. He leaves, comes back, leaves, comes back. Then he returns and it\u2019s finished.<\/p>\n O\u2019Hara asks, \u201cWhere\u2019s SARDINES?\u201d In what I read as a plaintive or mock plaintive note, he notes, \u201cAll that\u2019s left is just letters,\u201d \u201cIt was too much,\u201d the painter says.<\/p>\n In the alternative narrative of a painter painting, we get no description of the painting itself save for the word SARDINE and then its absence in the final work. Even one word was too much.<\/p>\n So, having shown us a painter at work, O\u2019Hara says, \u201cBut me?\u201d The poet. What does he do? Well, ironically, he thinks of a color: orange. He writes a line, then a whole page of words, not lines. Like SARDINE this is at the beginning of the creative process. As with Goldberg, O\u2019Hara lets days go by, then he says, \u201cIt is even in prose, I am a real poet.\u201d I don\u2019t understand this line except perhaps as irony meaning something like, I\u2019m a real poet so even prose is poetry.<\/p>\n The twist comes at the end and like a magician there is a big reveal. When he names his twelve poems, he calls them ORANGES in spite of having not mentioned orange in any of them. \u00a0When he sees Goldberg\u2019s painting in a gallery, it is named SARDINES.<\/p>\n Painter and poet are alike in what they leave out, but different in that with Goldberg \u201call that\u2019s left is just letters.\u201d O\u2019Hara, on the other hand, has words. That\u2019s the key difference between the two, when their work is done, O\u2019Hara has words and the painter only letters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Samhain Moon The wood got split. \u00a0The Latin trounced me. \u00a0Two essays on pragmatism, one by Richard Rorty and one … Continue reading Two Good Movies<\/span>