This poem originally was a response to a Poetry Thursday challenge back in 2006 to write a poem in someone else's voice. The poem had already been published and I just lazily used it for Poetry Thursday!
Major New ArtistI have spent the last six
years with incense sticks
burning holes in shirts.
Shirts of all types
from Hawaiian to pin stripes
but all have holes burned in.
All the holes are regular
extreme boredom does not deter
me from my art.
Some see meaning in the holes
they are but fools
there is no meaning only art.
previously published at the now defunct Mentress Moon
There's another one too, earlier in this blog here.
I posted another poem from the past on Crafty Green Poet today too, you can read it here.
5 comments:
I like this - the idea that art doesn't need to have meaning assigned to it. I often felt that way while deconstructing poems in high school English class - can't something be art just because it's beautiful?
I'm curious about the backstory of this poem. The narrator's putting incense sticks in his shirt pockets? Interesting
Crafty! I like the time involved, the silliness within the serious high-mindedness of the effort, and then that commentary on the hoo-hah we have to make of art that is so beside the point.
The hoo hah we make of art is often beside the point, but I suspect some of the art around is beside the point too - and shirts with holes burnt in them by incense sticks may fall into that category. I love the poem, though
HI there, thanks for the comments. My backyard, the back story - the artist is using lit incense sticks to burn regular holes in shirts, so there are holes burned on the cloth spaced say every three millimeters apart. I saw these shorts in an exhibition and did rather think they were beside the point and to be totally honest a bit of a waste of time. Though I agree with twilight spider that art in general doesn't need to have meaning to be beautiful.
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