Sculptor Murray Dewart and poet Robert Pinsky on the difficulty of creativity and moral generosity
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On Feb 1, 2017, sculptor Murray Dewart and poet Robert Pinsky spoke at Pegasus Books in Berkeley, CA about their two latest works.
The first work was Poems About Sculpture, an anthology edited by Dewart that includes a foreword written by Pinsky. The anthology seeks to collect poems thematically and topically about the physicality of artistic creation. Examples include canonical favorites like John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” as well as contemporary picks like Adrienne Rich’s “Gerrit Achterberg Statue” and Billy Collins’ “Greek and Roman Statuary.” Following Dewart, Pinsky discussed his collection, At the Foundling Hospital: Poems. Named after the 18th-century hospital in London which cared for abandoned children, Pinsky’s collection examines the impact of loss on the formation of identity and culture. “We are all foundlings,” he emphasized during the talk, “We all feel like we are not cut out for what we’re doing, and endurance takes real, conscious effort.”
Pinsky’s hopeful affirmation highlighted one running theme for the night — duress inherent in creation. Both Dewart and Pinsky read Michelangelo’s poem (translated by Gail Mazur) addressed to Giovanni Da Pistoia about painting the vault of the Sistine Chapel. The poem expresses intense anguish and self-doubt in the face of such an undertaking, (e.g., “My haunches are grinding into my guts,/my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,/every gesture I make is blind and aimless… I am not in the right place — I am not a painter”), which is ironic considering the renown of Michelangelo’s artwork. Aside from the humor of history’s outcome, Michelangelo’s poem seriously describes the diligence required for creation. Dewart detailed the mashed hands that sculptors endure after laboring long enough at their craft, and Pinsky joked that despair and depression are “absolutely essential” to writing poetry.
Endurance under duress highlighted another theme connecting the talk — politics. Dewart and Pinsky explained that there is a moral generosity inherent in acts of creation, and that the generosity of creative work contains political implications. Dewart suggested that culture has the ability to “awaken the better angels of the national psyche” by providing a hopefulness for the future, and Pinsky noted that the work of past writers can challenge readers to advance the historical arc of progress. One example Dewart and Pinsky referenced was the famous lines from Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. In that poem, Lazarus wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, /The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” which are words still remembered and quoted as an ethical ideal America should embody. Pinsky added that the latest presidential election is an example of when the moral generosity described in Lazarus’ poem is required more than ever. There is the need to “civilize a space,” Pinsky said near the end of the talk, quoting the line from Gwendolyn Brooks which he also used in a recent inaugural poem published by CNN. He added that the world is imperfect — words can be used maliciously, and sculptures (such as fascist architecture) can be monuments to atrocities — but that does not mean “we should turn our back on moral generosity.” In both a creative and political sense “we are foundlings” that are forced to accept the world the way it is — “but we need to keep working in order to make it better.”
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Check out Robert Pinsky’s website here.
Visit Murray Dewart’s website here.
Look at the website for Berkeley and Oakland’s Pegasus Books here.
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