On Prose and Poetry
that Open the Heart  

     This weekend, I was inspired by Robert Henri's The Art Spirit. Quotes from his book appeared in Doreen Gildroy's column in the May/June issue of The American Poetry Review.   Like the above lake, his words reflect my own experience.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day,  when we seem to see beyond the usual.   Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.  If one could but recall their vision by some sort of sign.   It was in this hope that the arts were invented.    Sign-posts on the way to what may be.     Sign-posts toward greater knowledge.

*

The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture—however unreasonable this may sound.  The picture, if a picture results, is a by-product and may be useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has past.  The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence.  In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trance, the footprint of the state.

      These result, however crude, become dear to the artist who made them because they are records of states of being which [one] has enjoyed and which [one] would regain.  They are likewise interesting to others because they are to some extent readable and reveal the possibilities of greater existence.

*

There is an undercurrent, the real life, beneath all appearances everywhere.  I do not say that any master has fully comprehended it at any time, but the value of [their] work is in that [they] have sensed it and [their] work reports the measure of their experience.

It is this sense of the persistent life force back of things which makes the eye see and the hand move in ways that result in true masterpieces.