I. Do. Not. Like. Poets.
This was my first impression halfway into the book. I don’t like their worldview, or the way they write about experiencing things. I bet these people would’ve been been miserable to hang out with. As the book opened in the setting of college, something about the mood of this book greatly reminds be of the movie “In the mood for love”. I think theres something very distinct about the tonality of college students hanging out and figuring things out in uncertain political times that seem to transcend cultures.
The question from the lecture was something I was thinking about, even as I was reading the book. I was confused why the narrator referred to these people as poets (Weider, Lorenzo, etc) when their explicit circumstance didn’t consist of writing poetry (lexical art I guess) themselves anymore. I think this ties into the broader question asking if the photographs that Weider showed counts as art. Personally, I think at the core of art is this notion of creation, or birthing something new. In this sense, Lorenzo just living out his life is art, because he is creating all these possibilities despite his limiting circumstance; this notion is what he himself recognizes as ingenuity. In a similar vain, the act of Weider to collect these photos and present them in the way he did was an artistic move. His action birthed this sort of effect, and was meant to be a statement. What precisely he was trying to convey, I am not certain. As I said, I do not like poets and they way they convey experiences. But regardless, it was meant to create a sort of reaction, and doing it the way he did meant something more than just “submitting a document to spread information” and thus in my eyes, it counts as art. Maybe not the images solely, but the act itself. Personally, I am not educated enough about the different kinds of art to make a claim on what kind of artistic category it falls under, but I think a fair point can be made that art often crosses these boundaries and that boundaries often times do not work well in the realm of art.
A question everyone: In your view, what counts as a poet, or what makes a poet a poet? How has reading this book influenced your perspective on this matter?