Hermann Hesse

"Without words, without writing and without books, there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.







— Hermann Hesse

German Poet, Novelist and Painter

1877 - 1962

We often take for granted the words we speak and the words we write.  We are so busy with our lives that we fail to give thanks for one of the most important things that human beings share — language.  Without language, communication would be much more difficult and we probably would not have achieved many of inventions that have been created.  And at the heart of language are the words we speak and write.  Writers understand the power of words and the importance of choosing the perfect word for the moment.  The  wrong word used at the wrong time has destroyed lives.  

Ticino Landscape
(1920)

And words have such power that we have made some words off limits.  Polite society does not say certain words.  And many today strive to be political correct and when our TV and radio personalities cross the line, they are fired or forced to resign for saying certain words.  The old saying that sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will never harm is simply not true.  We all have stored in our memory banks words that were said by some authority figure like a parent or teacher that have emotionally harmed us for years and decades.

It is time to celebrate the power of words and language.  It is time we give writers their due.  They spend a lifetime working with words — seeking to understand and communicate that which is best in each of us.  It is time to believe in the great gift we have been given — language.

Terry McMillan

"Writing is my shelter.  I don't hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth."

— Terry McMillan

American Novelist

1951 -

What is your art for you?  Is it your shelter?  Your protection?  Your connection to the outside world? Whether we are writers, painters or poets, our art serves us in many ways.  Sometimes it provides us hope for a better world.  Sometimes it provides us with the strength to go on living.  Often it saves us from our own worst selves.  Some of us are better people because of our art.

Do you tell the truth with your art?  Do you share what needs to be shared.  Or do you hide behind your art?  Do you dig deep inside your soul and reveal the truth?  Or do you share only what floats on the surface of the water?

Rita Dove

"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful."

— Rita Dove

American Poet

1952 - 

If you stripped your art down to the bare bones, what would be left?  A line? A word?  An emotion?  If you look at the history of the arts, you will notice that artists vacillate between extravagance and simplicity, between embellishment and bare bones.  My style has been one of simple speech, with few big words or large flourishes.  If you distilled your art down to its essence, what would you find?  What is at the core of your art?

April is poetry month.  Here is a poem by Rita Dove.

"Teach Us To Number Our Days"

In  the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor

is more elaborate than the last.

The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs,

each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet.

Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky.

A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon

crossed by TV antennae, dreams

he has swallowed a blue bean.

It takes root in his gut, sprouts

and twines upward, the vines curling

around the sockets and locking them shut.

And this sky, knotting like a dark tie?

The patroller, disinterested, holds all the beans.

August.  The mums nod past, each prickly heart on a sleeve.

(By Rita Dove from Yellow House on the Corner, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1989)

Here is Rita Dove reading another of her poems.

The Power of Words

Do you believe in the power of words to change people?  Watch this.

James Galvin

"Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon...."

— James Galvin

American Poet

1951 -

In drawing and writing, we almost always begin with the line.  The line turns into letters which turn into words which turn into sentences.  And eventually the sentences become poems, short stories and novels.  The same is often true is art.  The line becomes an eye, then a nose and soon a face.  The drawing begins as a simple line much like what a child starts with.  The artist then transforms that line into a beautiful portrait, landscape or abstract painting.

When we begin the canvas and the paper are blank, empty, without much meaning.  As creative artists our job is transform that paper or that canvas into more.  To create something out of a simple line.  To communicate our vision of the world through a simple line joined with other simple lines — one built on another.

The same can be said about life.  Each moment we live is like a simple line.  We build a life through living each moment to the fullest.  And millions of moments become a life lived.  

Here is the poem, Art Class, by James Galvin.

Art Class

By James Galvin

Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,

Which is less than line,

Which is a visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications

Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,

Making us feel central.

But the horizon is an empty shell —

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.

As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,

The line draws us in,

Requiring further lines,

Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,

Urging shades, shapes, figures...

What should we place, in all good faith,

On the horizon? A stone?

An empty chair? A submarine?

Take your time.  Take it easy.

The horizon will not stop abstracting us.

D. H. Lawrence

"All my life, I have from time to time gone back to paint because it gave me a form of delight that words can never give.  Perhaps the joy in words goes deeper and it is for that reason more unconscious.  The conscious delight is certainly stronger in paint."

— D. H. Lawrence

English Novelist, Poet and Painter

1885 - 1930

Painting by D. H. Lawrence

Creative expression is not limited to one form.  Poets paint.  Painters write.  Actors paint.  What do you find joy in?  Words?  Paint?  Acting?  Don't limit yourself to one form or medium.  Explore and expand your horizons.  Creativity is open and free.  Perfectionism is narrow and limiting.  We sometimes don't try things because we want to be perfect.  Perfectionism is about technique.  Creativity is about expression.  If we allow ourselves to be confined by technique, our creativity will harden and shrink.  Creativity frees the soul and opens up new worlds.  Technique imprisons the soul and we die a slow death.  What do you take delight in?  What brings you joy?    

Robert Frost

"A poem . . . begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. . . . It finds the thought and the thought finds the words."

Robert Frost

American Poet

1874 - 1963

Does your art grow out of your emotions?  How often does your pain find expression in your painting, your poem or your story?  Does your joy find the words to express itself?  Many times we forget the original emotion that triggered the thought that ultimately finds its expression in our art.  Some art begins in anger, some in love.  And if we paint or write well, our audience feels the emotion.  




Here is my favorite Frost poem.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Christina Baldwin

"Story is the mother of us all.  First we wrap our lives in language and then we act on who we say we are.  We proceed from the word into the world and make a world based on our stories."

— Christina Baldwin

American Writer

The world we live in is the world we have created by the stories we tell ourselves individually and collectively.  Both personal, family and community history is made up of remembered stories that we have told ourselves over the years.  We make decisions about our lives based on the stories we believe to be true.  As creative leaders in our society, what stories are you telling in your writing and painting?  The stories that you and I choose to tell help shape the future of our world.