'Luck Is That Part of Art Practice Replaces'

Spontaneity is overrated, in art as in life. Children are spontaneous and their productions are unlikely to please anyone but their doting parents. (I recall little of my sons’ wit and wisdom from their youngest days. Bright, entertaining kids but hardly Shakespeare.) When Hollywood shows a writer in thrall to his Muse, they give us a convulsive flurry of keyboard hammering. Visually speaking, writing is a bore. They seldom show forehead-wringing, perpetual revising, staring at the wall or consulting the dictionary. 

There’s an irony here, familiar to all honest writers. To lend poetry or prose the impression of spontaneity is hard work, while a spew of words is likely to seem wordy, labored and clumsy. So much for “spontaneous bop prosody” and our inheritance from the Romantics (Keats worked slavishly). The late Clive James writes in Poetry Notebook (2016):

 

“There is a dangerous half-truth that has always haunted the practice and appreciation of the arts: too much technique will inhibit creativity. Despite constant evidence that too little technique will inhibit it worse, the idea never quite dies, because it is politically too attractive.”

 

Thus, Allen Ginsberg is a bore, Alexander Pope remains a thrill. A new literary journal, Portico, publishes a poem by Boris Dralyuk, “Dino Dozes,”prefaced by a note: “In old age Dean Martin ate dinner every Sunday night at the counter of the Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard”:

 

“While Dino dozes Jerry pulls new faces.

Skinny’s backstage and mentions that the place is

crawling with scouts. They need their act to click,

so Jerry hones the fine points of his schtick.

Luck is that part of art practice replaces.

 

“But luck is Dino’s long suit. It embraces

his ease and swagger, looms like an oasis

before the average schmoes—they feel so slick

while Dino dozes.

 

“Next thing you know, he’s in the world’s good graces.

And then he’s not. These days Dino retraces

his groggy steps. One, two—ain’t that a kick?

All gone. Not that he cared for it to stick.

while Dino dozes.”

What ghosts may rise the Hamlet’s Scotch erases

 

Boris crafts a conversational ease, anecdotal casualness, a good story between friends. It could have been slop, little more than Hollywood gossip. Clive James goes on: 

 

“The elementary truth that there are levels of imagination that a poet won’t reach unless formal restrictions force him to has largely been supplanted . . . by a more sophisticated (though far less intelligent) conviction that freedom of expression is more likely to be attained through letting the structure follow the impulse.”