Why do we need new art? How free is the artist in making? And why is the
artist, and particularly the poet, a figure of freedom in Western
culture? The MacArthur Award-winning poet and critic Susan Stewart
ponders these questions in The Poet's Freedom. Through a series of
evocative essays, she not only argues that freedom is necessary to
making and is itself something made, but also shows how artists give
rules to their practices and model a self-determination that might serve
in other spheres of work.
Stewart traces the ideas of freedom and making through insightful
readings of an array of Western philosophers and poets--Plato, Homer,
Marx, Heidegger, Arendt, Dante, and Coleridge are among her key sources.
She begins by considering the theme of making in the Hebrew Scriptures,
examining their accountof a god who creates the world and leaves humans
free to rearrange and reform the materials of nature. She goes on to
follow the force of moods, sounds, rhythms, images, metrical rules,
rhetorical traditions, the traps of the passions, and the nature of
language in the cycle of making and remaking. Throughout the book she
weaves the insight that the freedom to reverse any act of artistic
making is as essential as the freedom to create. A book about the
pleasures of making and thinking as means of life, The Poet's Freedom
explores and celebrates the freedom of artists who, working under finite
conditions, make considered choices and shape surprising consequences.
This engaging and beautifully written notebook on making will attract
anyone interested in the creation of art and literature.
