Artist Statement

The Poet—or Writer or Artist—and Scientist

Jesse Bier

In one essential respect, poets and writers are more like scientists than they are different from them. The poet, as my surest exemplar of creative writers, shares a fundamental motive and attitude with his otherwise opposite number. He does not, in the end, impose himself on his work, but more or less brings it out of its experimental self. In final measure, he discovers, he does not mainly invent. The innate structure of the thing he is evoking tells him, at least eventually, what the real end must be, what false leads must be discarded and true ones taken up, heading for a conclusion and theme dictated by the very work itself. The great or good writer submits himself to his work; he is not the superior triumphant creator but the humble, dogged discoverer of the material he has happened upon. In his ultimate humility he is very much akin to the scientist or mathematician, who crucially rules himself out of his work. He does not finally count, the work does, the elaborating structure does, the thing eventually outside of himself does, as it directs its own way, if only he will leave it to its logical development (which is true also for musical composition). 

A recent poem of mine, about vision, about the life-long wonder of human sight—in the retrospect of a talkative old man—may be an illustration. I wished to celebrate sight as the greatest pleasure and vindication of life, indeed as the most unbelievable and unimaginable gift we have in our days. I proceeded in this vein until it started turning banal. I even tried a divagation to ants and what that lower form of life might perceive and experience of their cosmos. But the poem itself did not want to proceed in the first instance nor follow and integrate the tangent. Finally, it wanted to say what I never intended—well, maybe caught a glimpse of, but veered off in my mind. The poem wanted to say, exclaim even, what a shame and equally stunning surprise is death’s abrupt and complete end to the gift life gives—how, in its way then, death is as unbelievable and astonishing as life. The piece wound up just about opposite of its opening motive and mood, but it did so, after all, in a logical progress or context—rightly, convincingly, and in its own marveling and not down-hearted vein.

In other words, it had taken over. I had discovered what it was leading to, and that had become my job. I was the removed, humbled discoverer, not the exalted or even controlling inventor/creator. In this basic way, the writer is brother or at least cousin to the scientist, not a stranger or rival to him.

 

*Poet's Addendum*

I am an intermittent poet, not a full-time poet who can probably write a poem at the drop of a hat. I don't have a hat. I compose only by fits and starts; mainly—yes—fits.

Mostly, I write poems—when they come out clear or suddenly strong—for my own amazement.