All events and experiences are local, somewhere. And all human enhancements of events and experiences--which is to say, all the arts--are regional in the sense that they derive from immediate relation to felt life.
It is this immediacy that distinguishes art. And paradoxically the more local the self that art has, the more all people can share it; for that vivid encounter with the stuff of the world is our common ground.
Artists, knowing this mutual enrichment that extends everywhere, can act, and praise, and criticize, as insiders:--the means of their art is the life of their people. And that life grows and improves by being shared. Hence, it is good to welcome any region you live in or come to or think of, for that is where life happens to be--right where you are.
This passage caught my attention because long have I been intrigued by poetry and poets of place. I have envied poets whose writing is steeped in a particular place (some associations in my mind include Philip Levine/Detroit, Susan Firer/Milwaukee, Frank O'Hara/New York, Ted Kooser/the Plains, Kathleen Norris/South Dakota). It seems like many poets have a city or region that influences their work.
No single place has infused my writing, nor do I feel like I "belong" to any particular place, perhaps because I have lived in a fair number of places. What constitutes home anyway? If I had to name one place that consistently feels most like home, southern Wisconsin (Madison/Milwaukee) would be it, though I suspect it has more to do with the fact that it's my birthplace and home to family and less to do with a connection to the place/land directly. Still it is the closest connection to a place I have (and yet it doesn't permeate my writing). All the other places I've lived, I've felt like a visitor. If I lived in Kentucky 20 more years, I would probably still feel like an outsider, perhaps contributing to why I feel inauthentic grounding my writing in a place.
What I take from Stafford is that if we are present to the place we are now (whether as a native or as a visitor), we can inhabit that place; we can serve witness to it as only individuals can.
1 comment:
I can relate to the feeling that no place feels like home. I think that Colorado is the first place I have lived, and I have lived many places (in the Mid-West), that I felt was home. But it almost raises the question, could I feel at home anywhere? Denver is a bit of a culture shock. Maybe I just feel at home in places where I am more likely to feel like a foreigner.
Post a Comment