Archive for May 2009
The Red Vineyard.
What is the difference between an artist and an entertainer?
The entertainer is a capitalist – plays for his bread – like a busker at a bus station, filling his hat to the brim with quarters. He lives on his work with the pressure to please and to put time – most of his time – into his magnum opera.
The artist knows eventually no one or others may reap financial benefit from his work. He toils in part-time labor he detests, or he must be supported by the government or a patron. There is no deadline or pressure, except for time passing into oblivion.
All performers are some ratio of the two, but most are mainly artists, as the horde of “art” collects in the corner of a room while the artisan is away, using his hands, not his head, to maintain a living wage.
Poem: Grass, by Carl Sandburg.
READ MORE ABOUT IT:
As featured in today’s Jeopardy! episode:
“Grass”
PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Source: Bartleby.com Modern American Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer.
