In the arts, by contrast, no limitless sequence of works is ever implied or looked for. No work of art is necessarily followed by a second work that is necessarily better. Given the methodologies of science, the law of gravity and the genome were bound to be discovered by somebody; the identity of the discoverer is incidental to the fact. But it appears that in the arts there are no second chances. We must assume that we had one chance each for The Divine Comedy and King Lear. If Dante and Shakespeare had died before they wrote those poems, nobody ever would have written them.
Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics, https://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/faustian-economics/
We started with that quote. Which is, a complete shock to me.
Before I started poetry, not even two years ago, this would have never occurred to me. What I would have said was something like this: given enough monkeys and time, even they could type Shakespeare.
I find myself agreeing more and more with the likes of Wendell Berry. There is only one Wendell Berry. A unique mixture of time and place that gives him his worldview. The same is true for yourself and me. I volunteered in the military. I have two degrees in Computer Science. The temptation is for me to renounce the previous me, but the better approach is to integrate old-josh into new-josh.
With the military, I’ve been able to make a pretty clear break. I’m pretty sure the Navy doesn’t want me back. But technology wants me in almost a more sinister way. I should be more patient with myself. It took me over a decade to be able to finally be able to do something like this:
But Wendell Berry, please take a seat for our substack poets this week. Starting with Ricardo Guzman Jr :
And what a lovely unsolicited poem for another poet. Substack can seem very serious sometimes. But before I called myself a poet I always had a soft spot for limericks on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. We can have fun. I’m pretty sure I have a Robert Bly book where he wrote a poem for David Ignatow and vice versa. I am always happy to see Brother Rob ‘s Curious George avatar pop up.
Andrea Curran was next with:
And hey, we met at an open-mic so just goes to show you the benefits of getting out there. Apart from that, I enjoyed the imagery of her poem quite a bit.
We read Huck next:
Keeping with the water theme, what a nice one this. Some really nice third-eye-dreaming themes. The poem itself has a dream-like quality to it and I mentioned it reminded me of a Jung-like dream recorder.
X. P. Callahan returns with:
And this one has that classic knife-twist that X.P. is so good at. When you read this on the screen you may forget that it’s part of physical book of 54 poems of 54 syllables, which is even more impressive.
There was a Paul Kingsnorth podcast I was listening to and he mention that in the U.S. alone it was several million deaths since the invention of the automobile. He was making this point in the context of technologist only ever advertise the positives. Is the car worth millions of deaths? It makes me wonder how many people have been killed by email now.
Closing us out once again is Bence Ádók with:
I tried to do some research on a Keening Call because I was unfamiliar. I found this:
And I really must thank Bence here because without his poem I would not of looked into this tradition. And all he did was subtitle this a Keening Call and with those two words he is tapping into a lineage of humanity celebrating death and life.
And this is what I think people like Wendell Berry, Paul Kingsnorth, Mark Boyle and the like see. Paul asks, whom does this technology serve?
Language is technology. But I think it’s clear from Bence and these other poets today, they are using it in a way to serve life.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Pre-orders for my book Wasted Blood are now open. You can simply pre-order by sending at least $40 in cash, discretely, with a return address to:
Josh Datko, P.O. Box 273029, Fort Collins, CO 80527-3029
