Poiesis: The act of Making (from the Greek, poiein); to bring forth into being something that was non-existent; to transform; whence arises the word ‘poetry’.
Medical terminology uses poiesis as a suffix to denote the making or formation of tissues/cells in the body (e.g. hematopoiesis)
In Art, poiesis is the creative act, Heidegger’s emergence from the void, that threshold trembling into form. Plato vs. Aristotle: Did poiesis beget physis? Was poiesis begotten of physis?
What interests me is not just the thing made but the process of making. Creation can be thought of as a series of decisions. It is the deliberate embodiment of meaning in Form which we call Art. This page is devoted to exploring that process.
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Why we need the Lyric
-The lyric is meant to be sung. With or without instrumentation it is inseparable from music, the purpose of which is to express the inexpressible. -The lyric is language compressed. All poetry is a condensation of language; the lyric exists at the event horizon between what can be said and silence. -The lyric exerts tensile…
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Re-birth
October is my birth month and it coincides with a time of great change in my life. This has led to some rumination on transformation and metamorphosis: The creative process is inherently destructive. The death of insects, plants and animals is the process of release–of bound matter losing hold upon complex structures and returning to…
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Near is, and difficult to grasp
April is National Poetry Month. I woke up on April 2nd and that was my first thought. My second thought was, what poem should I feature in my newsletter? Without prompting, Hölderlin’s Patmos came to mind. Hölderlin??? I hadn’t read him in years. I tried to think of another poem but could not shake Patmos…