We who have gone in search of beauty

We who have gone in search of beauty

For ourselves, or others, on the dole

Of what the muse abundantly provides

With little succor, only with demands

For more canvas, brushes, paint,

Or a mine of stones to chisel,

Rents to pay and transport to and from

The hovel you would travel to in Maine,

Or all that you must eat and feast your eyes

On books of reproductions from the past

Aligned with nothing they have taught in schools

Other than “don’t now do what was done before.”

How have you your own time measured out

To mete out beauty from a stunted time?

Just as you your measure take, it moves. 

Beauty alone is not its likeness now. 

It wrestled once already for its meaning

Immortalized for others in mute form, 

Illusioned like a perfect memory and bliss. 

Today there is no longer need of this. 

What you cannot afford to make your art,

They have in great abundance; who might part

With millions, climb far mountains, take

A class in art, and quit before you make

Of them, the slave this art has made of you. 

Brother, can you spare a dime of inspiration?

We have gone after you and found

The self-same artist on a mountaintop

And asked him what he’s doing, what he’s painting,

When it’s clear and we can see ourselves. 

We have our iPhone camera at the ready 

And only need a block of time to edit

Everything we didn’t look at while snapping up

The memories of a lifetime we will share

On Facebook. Canvas! Brushes! Stone?

We didn’t come this way to fall behind

Technology and all it’s given us to do:

Moon at every spectacle staged for show

From royal weddings to our landings

On the moon. Who would wait for Turner’s

Take on things; we have news and networks 

For such things. And all the addled paint

That Church could scumble, isn’t needed

As we have no interest in the jungle,

Nor of global warming, nor Impressionism

Gloating over light and color: we’ve got 

Money on the next big thing — a trip

To Mars! Please consider what the pottery

Says of us: a Campbell’s soup can

And a plastic vase of pop. 

The oceans gather it in eddies 

Large as Wales, and as you paint

The movies move about, narrating everything

Your ancient painters couldn’t dream about. 

So as to beauty, formal and relaxed,

You have no special dalliance with the past,

But up against the great improvements of your age 

You need to sink your sculptures into glass

Or turn your Mona Lisa into holograms. 

Bifurcate the modern from the now

And give us future art so early it is out. 

Make it hard to contemplate, a gunshot

Or an artist crucified to a bug (VW),

Or Jeff Koons’ balloon sculptures made of chrome. 

At least they still remember classic chrome!

And so to beauty we are now divorced

As we cannot marry or enforce

The rules of old to now, or to the future;

Everything’s reduced to price and profit. 

Give us new, the brand, the trademark scan,

The only one of these, the chit for wealth

Without which there’s no beauty in the bank,

No pampered yacht cruise to Capri,

Nor fashions you can wear and fling

As bundles of your waste to render shock

In others not so greedy for a frock. 

Polish these, your stones of comprehension

And mock the office, if not the sheer presumption

Of what it means to make a work of art. 

It isn’t going to be what they call art,

But something so well made you cannot do without. 

Your age is in your phone, your tv view,

Your market bringing you the bottom price

And capital distributing its gains

Unevenly but thickly over all. 

What poverty? What golden age of old?

You’re in the middle of the latter days. 

Nothing can impose itself on you,

Least beauty that might make you sad

You aren’t as lovely as Sargent’s Madame X. 

Bring on the pomp and ceremony of your life,

Forget the past, it wasn’t all that ripe. 

Effulgence wraps its languid arms about

And drags to drowning all your sorrows out. 

A problem? Take a pill, or rather

Wire yourself to this transductor

And smile it out. Beauty is only

Beauty talked about. Fame is what you need,

So get a media consultant and arouse

The sleeping giant of our networked

Consciousness. Sell when thus established

To your sponsors; everything’s a concept,

So are you. And so I bring down curtains

(What are those?) on the past

And record the speed of change at last. 

You who think that art will wait it out

Are parked at the rocket port

Waiting for a pack of mules. 

Surrender to your video display;

Even that’s too old, your DVD, no!

Your digital display! Curses, foiled again. 

The old hat, hatless, will not cure

Baldness, at least of that we’re sure. 

John Sevcik

Questions 

1. In this poem that questions old forms of art as irrelevant now, the poet slips in and out of an old-fashioned meter and rhyme scheme, as well as affecting a need to satisfy a British audience. Why would this be an effective strategy? Why not?
2. Is the poet’s mockery out of place? Should there be a micro-aggression warning before the poem, or in the margin every time it occurs?
3. Are your feelings hurt by this attempt at poetry? Would you read this poem a second time for meaning, or rather write a poem of your own in response?
4. Should this even be included in a course on poetry or art? What are your feelings about how the teacher presented this material, and should he be granted tenure, or simply let go to teach in an art center somewhere else?
5. The invisible administrators who generally have less qualifications than  they can confer on you would like a raise. Would this course material justify, in your opinion, a raise, or firings across the board?  
6. Please submit your answers in the envelope on the side desk, return your pencils, and have one of your (micro-aggression warning:) “class-mates” return the surveys to the marketing representative at the front desk?

The starry night

Turn on the lights

And we don't see the stars!

So bright is our home. 

But that makes us forget

When we fell in love;

We were rapturous as the stars.  

And that was before

We needed reassurance of our strength:

Four corners staking out our yard

And a bright electric light

To frighten new lovers away. 

No. Turn out the lights,

And let God light our way

From every point of view

With every intensity of flickering pulse. 

John Sevcik

The Illustrated Man

From Manhood Lessons of My Youth

It was a magazine book about astronomy

For earnest amateurs — a black sky

Constellation map you could cut out,

Glue to a round cardboard 

And affix an oblate window with a sprocket pin

And turn to any sky at any time of year, 

At any time of night,

Or even in the day you'd see

What wasn't visible because the sun's

Blanketing sheet of day-sky blots out

All rivals but the moon and clouds. 

It was in there how to build a telescope,

How to grind the mirror out of a round 

Pyrex blank, against another round

Green plate-glass beveled blank

Up through the carborundum numbers

Ending at the finest emory dust;

Then on to pouring a pitch lap

And polishing with jeweler's rouge

Till it became a spherical pond of clear glass

That still needed deepening with rouge

To bend into a parabolic form —

And this was called figuring. 

That's all I thought about, because

A grown man was illustrated,

Sleeves rolled up, polishing and figuring

His telescope to be. 

Eventually I did the same as he,

Though only in 8th and 9th grades. 

I didn't realize how much the illustrated man

Was guiding me to manhood and quiet work,

Like my pal Joey's dad two houses away 

Who never spoke, but sometimes

Coming home from work would shoot

A basketball in his driveway

In a grace of repetition at the hoop. 

Men's work, I found, could be

imitated,

But not manhood. Not just yet. 

Manhood was the giant whose role I played. 

My mirror in its frosty curvature

Celebrated graduation as a hazy past;

A new school, a new beginning —

The ladder up to manhood extended,

And then, when I attained first light

The summer after freshman year

My wonder at the moon's bombarded texture,

And the rings of Saturn, or the nebula of Orion hunted down,

Or M 11 and the myriad Milky Way 

Stunned me into childhood for life. 

The illustrated man had grown younger

Until we met — the amateurs of science,

Forever in the transport of those stars. 

John Sevcik