"The Art of Recklessness"

Another great thing I came home with from Vermont is a list of reading suggestions, both prose and poetry, and one of these books just came in the mail: The Art of Recklessness by Dean Young (I posted a poem by him the other day), recommended to me by Matthew Dickman. Matthew said that this book strongly influenced him and made him feel incredibly free. Matthew says that when we're making art, when we're writing a poem, it's the only time in our lives that we're truly free. He quotes Larry Levis, a poet who once said of poetry, "Out here I can say anything." I agree with this notion, yet I don't feel totally free yet, not in the way Matthew speaks of, and one of my goals this semester is to secure that creative freedom, to create beyond any limits, beyond potential. I've only just begun reading The Art of Recklessness and already I can tell I will gain much from it. Young opens with this:

Let us suppose that everyone in the world wakes up today and tries to write a poem. It is impossible to know what will happen next but certainly we may be assured that the world will not be made worse. I believe in the divinity of profligacy*. The creation of art, okay, just the attempt at the creation of art, as well as the appreciation of it, is both an enlarging and an expanding of the consciousness. To write a poem is to explore the unknown capacities of the mind and the heart; it is emotive, empathetic exercise and, like being struck by lightning, it will probably leave you stunned, singed, but also a bit brighter, and too your odds of being struck again then go much higher.

*I admit I had to look up the definition for profligacy, and here's what I found:

1. shameless dissoluteness*; 2. reckless extravagance; 3. great abundance

I then had to look up the definition of dissoluteness:

1. lacking moral restraint; indulging in sensual pleasures or vices.

Hmmmmm......I think I can buy into the divinity of profligacy. Sounds damn refreshing. And free.