12. ARTISTS/POETS/

WRITERS

I dedicate this section to the many artists, entertainers, writers and poets who have enriched the individual and community life of both the Baha'is and the generality of humankind. The poetry here represents a sense of my appreciation of their contribution to the work which I produce as a writer for, however much a writer, a poet, works alone, he stands on the shoulders of thousands of others. I will begin this section with some poetry and then go on to some ideas of the first significant essayist Montaigne who had, for me, some useful ideas to help me in my own artistic work and who began writing his essays about 400 years before I began mine just at the time when the European world began shifting from its base in tradition and revelation to one based on experience and science.

ALL IN ONE GO

Picasso, or perhaps it was one of his close friends, once said that his energy, the energy he put into a painting, is all transferred into it "in one go." Much of painting, to Picasso, was a breaking down and a remaking of something as he attempted to transform it. What was true of Picasso and his painting, as expressed here, is also true of the construction of my poetry, except for the long epic poem, epic prose-poetic opus, I am working on where the energy is spread out over many years. If I consider the total oeuvre of my poetry and prose output as one long poem, then the energy was not put out "in one go." There were many goes, over many years, as I made and remade things to my satisfaction and dissatisfaction, to and with my pleasure and my anxieties, tranforming my world and leaving it the same.

The tradition of self-portraiture in painting is also mirrored in my writing as a part of the tradition of autobiography. Self-portraiture begins with Albrecht Durer in 1493 and autobiography with St. Augustine in 426 A.D. -Ron Price with thanks to ABC TV, "Magic, Sex and Death: Part One on Picasso," 9 June 2002, 3:35-4:30 pm.

You can't put it all down.

The essence is never conveyable

and the corpus of self-portraits

always rests uncomfortably on

some of inner land’s unreality.¹

I construct my self-portaits

somewhat like an artist

with the real me somewhere

behind the words, behind that

likeness which tells only some

of the psyche and the self-worth.

The calculation, choices and

manipulation are all part of

construction and it is far beyond

my corporeal vessel, some

scrutinized self, some fashioned

being its infinite variety of meanings,

its statement of self-analysis.

There is richness and ambiguity here

amidst the fluctuating fortunes of life,

the complexities and the multitudinous

renditions of my days, our days, these days²

1 A Sufi idea of 'the inner land of unreality compared to Revealed Truth' referred to by Baha'u'llah in Seven Valleys, USA, 1952, p.28.

WHAT IT MEANT: THE BALANCE

Russian poet, Boris Pasternak(1890-1960), had some views of the poet and poetry which resonate strongly with my own approach to the poetic process. Pasternak felt the poet must respond submissively "to a high and lonely destiny." He must "contribute in some vital way to the life of the times." At the same time, he must not project himself as a poet or be consumed by the fact of his being a poet. I like to think I achieve this balance between contributing in a vital way and not projecting myself, or at least I try to, by, on the one hand, sending my poetry formally to various Baha'i libraries and individuals and creating a website; and on the other hand, by talking about this being a poet or writing poetry as little as possible, but going on with my employment, my life and my activities with a serious industriousness and light-hearted humour.

Being a poet was, for Pasternak, mysteriously connected with destiny. Pasternak was seized by an irresistible urge to write poetry. The act of writing poetry took possession of him in his early twenties. In my case I was nearly fifty when this 'urge,' this 'possession,' grabbed me strongly. Poetry seemed to come naturally, although whether others found it natural or meaningful was another question. The pitch of intensity that my emotions and perceptions had been brought to in my earlier days was challenged into education, career, marriage and family and building Baha'i communities. Now, the impetuous flow of language, intensity and energy was released into a poetic eruption of several million words in the years 1992 to 2002. -Ron Price with thanks to Olga Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak,Collins/Harvill, 1978, Introduction.

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DRIVING ON OUTSIDE THE MARKET

On "Arts Today," a national radio program in Australia, the work of Australian sculptor Robert Clipel was discussed. Clipel died in 2001 at the age of 81 and a retrospective exhibition was arranged to commemorate, to celebrate, to inform the community of his work. There are some similarities between his work, what drove him and his philosophy and my own. For this reason I write the poem below. He was a most inventive and self-directed individual, highly cerebral, highly intellectual. His creative drive sought expression in his work and was the most important aspect of his life over several decades. He was strongly drawn by the multitude of possibilities around him to give them expression in art, his art. His central aim was to build up a language of forms, a language that was diverse, individualistic, new, self-critical, coherent and combined the technological with nature. His interest was in producing art not marketing it. He was unquestionably a man obsessed with his vision and his art. -Ron Price with thanks to "Arts Today," ABC Radio National, 10:05-11:00 am, 14 January 2002.

I came to my work much later, Robert.

I'll have to live to be a hundred to get in

my several decades of art. So, I'll just

have to take it a step-at-a-time.

Everything I heard today about you

animates me and my work even your

aim to synthesize the technological

and nature—but in a different way.

I'm into one big meta-synthesis, Robert.

and the possibilities around me just go

on and on and on as I link them to this

thrusting creative drive. Perhaps when

I'm gone there will be one great retro---

spective and someone can market all

of this, these thousands of poems, this

obsession, this vision, this art, this me—

but I can’t imagine people buying my

work—they can get it all here for free!

Ron Price

14 January 2002

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BREAKING THE SPELL OF WORDS

There were elements in the script of this television documentary, "Michelangelo: Self Portrait(1475-1564)(1989)" which were taken directly from Michelangelo’s diaries and other writings. These quoted pieces seemed to have a direct relevance to my own poetic work. Sculptured works, this great artist once wrote, are born in that cloudy region between idea and marble. Poetry, for me, is born in an equally cloudy, quite mysterious, region between idea and word, idea and words on a page. Michelangelo’s goal, he said, was to break the spell, the mystery, the enigma, the distance of marble; mine is to break the spell, the mystery, the cold flatness, the emptiness, the distance, of words. Just as Michelangelo painted with his mind not with his brush, I write with my mind not with my pen or keyboard. Art, Michelangelo wrote, is the only thing which makes us recognize ourselves and find ourselves as whole beings. His path to God was made in stone. My path to God is made through poetry; as I say this I recognize that this is only partly the case. Part of my journey to my Lord is made through those many manifestations of my religion in my daily life over a lifetime. I see this journey as ‘all of a piece.’ Poetry is just one piece, an important one, a pleasurable one, but not all the pieces.

Michelangelo learned to carve with his feelings and so, too, do I write with my feelings. The following poem draws heavily on the ideas of this outstanding artist who was intimately aware of the importance of feelings in his writings. -Ron Price with thanks to "Michelangelo: Self Portrait," SBS TV, November 21 2001(1989), 9:30-10:30 pm.

This is not about passing the time,

but about exploring eternity¹ in these

earliest days of my life, about the

process of thought and the excitement

of intelligence, the lonely impulse of delight²

with an endless stream of ideas which lure

me on and on returning day-after-day,

bringing with them an arduous deeply

satisfying joy. This is about writing for

myself: for I have no fame, station or rank;

I am not asked to sign petitions, join deputations,

address meetings, appear in the media,

I can simply continue working quietly, silently,

with the minimum of obligations, telling the truth

about the world and keeping an eye on

the greatest drama in the world’s spiritual history.³

1 J.B. Priestley, Literature and Western Man, 1960 in Braine, op.cit., p.141. This was Priestley’s view of the purpose of art and literature.

A CONGLOMERATE

John Ruskin writes about the theory and practice as well as the condition of the artist. He says that "those who have the keenest sympathy are those who look closest and pierce deepest." Those who "are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of sympathy," those that possess the greatest intensity and genuineness, produce the highest art. Isolation and alienation, though, are, for Ruskin, the natural conditions for the great artist.. He writes about the artist, Turner, who felt no one understood or saw the meaning of his work. and, like all great spirits of the nineteenth century--Scott, Keats, Byron and Shelley--died without hope. Great artists, Ruskin continues, have to work at their art all their life and, perhaps, they will become 'a vehicle for truth'—perhaps. --Ron Price with thanks to John Ruskin in Ruskin's Theories of the Sister Arts, George Landow, Internet, 4 November 2001.

I shall not die without hope, but....

I write with whatever passion,

tenderness, genuineness and

intensity I have been endowed,

tarnished as it all is by life's

walls of self and passion.¹

The rock of my days has a deep

moss upon it and great fissures,

some conglomerate, great chunks

from everywhere over the long haul

of time and its eras, ages, epochs,

stages, periods in some endless drift,

some endless fossil record which has

only just begun a biostratigraphy on

its mysterious, punctuated equilibrium.

Receiving feelings, as I do, within a centre

of wondrous reflection, where I stand serene

watching from afar off in a world of isolation,

where sometimes the barking of dogs is loud

on every side and sometimes the Sun of Oneness

shines²---will my shrouded soul ever unite with

beauty’s rose and that Stealer of all Hearts???¹

1 Baha'u'llah, Seven Valleys, p.19 and 57.

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The following six points represent a perspective on my work "Pioneering Over Four Epochs", on my poetry and on what I am attempting to do with this written opus. Most of the material below in this non-essay, non-article, this brief summation of some of Montaigne’s ideas, was found in an article "L’Humaine Condition" by Erich Auerbach in Michael de Montaigne’s Essays, editor, Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, NY, 187, pp.11-39.

1. I depict a lowly and unillustrious life; but that is of no consequence; even the lowliest life contains the whole of things human. Every life affords material and occasion enough for the development of moral philosophy and any sincere self-analysis. The study of a random individual like myself is, therefore, justified.

2. I present myself in my entire person and I am one of the first in the Baha'i community to do so. I am not a specialist; I give myself to various roles in life, but I merely lend myself for a time. My heart and mind I must reserve, at least in part, for this work.

3. Is it not presumptuous to present so limited and individual a case, so undigested, insignificant and simple a product of nature before the public? No, it is simply a starting point for a departure into, a study of, the human condition. The detailed investigation and description of one single specimen, myself, takes place in the context of momentary, often accidental, contingencies, a random indiscriminateness, and relies on observation, memory and imagination.

4. Noone is as fully conversant with my life as I am. No Baha’i, as far as I know, has gone so extensively into the subject of their own life, carried out their purpose so exactly, so completely. The moral precept Know Thyself is an epistomological one as well. My study of others and of the world must begin in the depths of my own self-knowledge. It is preposterous to derive a concept of a whole individual from a few climactic episodes as historians often do. The fluctuations and alterations in a person’s inner state are essential to a holistic view. We must possess a flexible, elastic and broad inner consciousness in our analysis of self and others.

5. My essential requirement for this exercise is unreserved sincerity. Certain conventions restrict what I have to say; as I grow older I permit myself certain liberties which people excuse in the old. My second requirement is not to get so caught up with my interests, family, job, desires, worries, friends, inter alia that the reality of myself is obscured and the full consciousness of a life that is distinctively my own melts away.

6. My book, taken in all its various genres, and I are one thing; he who speaks of the one speaks equally of the other. Although some attempt is made to examine cause, motivation, the deeper sources are known only to Him. My task is to describe and my aim is to be taken seriously. My tone is of a lively but unexcited and, I like to think, richly nuanced conversation with a reader that I anticipate one day will read what I write. At the heart of my manner is a spontaneous sincerity and an earnestness as I discuss the condition humaine and my part in it Pioneering Over Three Epochs. Of course, these qualities are impossible to quantify.

The above six points summarize my slightly edited statement of Montaigne’s position in his Essays. They are useful as a point and counter-point to my own autobiographical work and its analysis of self and other. I would like to make some general statements in relation to the above that will illuminate my own work.

1. While I agree with these six points, I think that the vast majority of the human race is at this stage in its social evolution either incapable, disinterested or simply caught up in a diveristy of other interests that come to human beings as they journey through life, to engage in the kind of written examination Montaigne or I undertake.

2. It seems absolutely essential for a writer, a poet, to be to a degree aloof, detached, from the situation he finds himself in life. To put this a little differently, writers need to be able to unburden themselves by the act of writing. They make words of much in life that they touch. They are outside themselves or, perhaps, inside themselves when they write, facing an external vacuity. They convert themselves into a high-tension wire to transmit a message. They are, in some ways, more a creation of what they write more than the creator of what they write. The words make, define, create, the experience in a curious and surprising sort of way. There are a hundred phrases and sentences to describe the writing process. These are some. My poetry explores this question, this process, ad nauseum.

3. As any reader of my Journal will find, I find it difficult to discuss the inner life. What Montaigne says here is one of the best methods of approaching this ‘inner life and private character’. I have a five volume Journal or Diary with two volumes of photographic commentary, but none of this material is on this website. At this stage of the development of this site the writing in this Diary is either too personal or too irrelevant to include.

4. My approach to discussing the human condition or, as the French say, le condition humaine, is very much Montaigne’s. I do not find it difficult to avoid an endless discussion of the surfaces of life. Some writers, like Thomas Mann, write about the quotidian realities ad infinitum in their Journals. Poetry helps me get to the depths, to the general and the personal in one swoop of words.

5. I have yet to talk about my own feces, my hind parts, the many sordid details of life, as Montaigne did. My preference is to leave out these personal features of my life. Many aspects of the contemporary scene are so complex, intricate and vast that I can’t imagine ever poeticizing about or commenting on them in my Journal. It seems to me, as it did to Montaigne, that it is depth not breadth that is the goal.

6. While the thrust of what Montaigne says is true, there is something at the core of man, the soul, that is a mystery. In all the writing, however deep and profound, man, myself, is a mystery.

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ALONE IN A ROOM?

When people go to the theatre and become an audience they try to create stories about themselves, try to describe their lives and make sense of their experience. This activity is an antidote to the day to day experience of the electronic media which provides people with stories ready-made. Increasingly, too, at least since the 1970s, theatre has been about spectacle, about having the audience become part of the life on the stage, about ravishing the eye, the ear, the soul of those who come to join in and become part of what is a mass experience.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 8 June 2001 with thanks to "Changing Stages," BBC 2000, on ABC TV, 9:30-10:30 pm, 8 June 2001.

One thing about writing poetry, which contrasts it with live theatre, is that the poet creates his own stories, describes his own life and attempts to make sense of his own experience. His poetry, too, is an antidote to the electronic and the print media which fill the world of society today. The stories I make are not ready-made, do not enjoy any embellishments of colour, sound and electronic communication, are not part of a mass experience. I make everything myself from the resources of my world. The experience of poetry is not spectacle, not a mass activity, not about having one's eye, ear and soul ravished by someone or something else but, rather, doing the ravishing oneself. I am on my own, alone, in a room. I people my solitude, my world, my entire mise en scene. I am choreographer and director, producer, everyone you see in the credits at the end of a movie. Sometimes I feel ravished; sometimes lonely. --Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 8 June 2001.

The tickets go cheap here,

you're all alone on stage,

with no lighting or sound effects,

no song-and-dance band,

no amplification,

no drinks during intermission,

no checking out the ladies,

no massage of the senses,

just an endless creation of stories,

description of a life,

definition of a world,

alone in a room, on my own,

trusting in the leavening forces

to leaven my being

and furnish it with power.

Ron Price

8 June 2001

VENTILATED THOUGHT

Yesterday I came across the poet and the poetry of R.S. Thomas(1913-2000) for the first time. There were many messages, many lessons, for me in the words of this Welsh poet whose poems tease "away again and again at fundamental questions about God, existence, nature," et cetera.¹ Thomas humbly shuns epiphanies and the related focus on the elevated self, so unlike my own works which seem to seek out ephiphanies and elevate the self in their general autobiographical emphasis. At the age of 48, though, Thomas' poetry took a new direction. This was evident in his book of poetry, Tares(1961). The direction was toward a more philosophical and more autobiographical poetry. Indeed, one of the criticisms of his work has been that it is merely "fragments of autobiography in prose" in which the lyric spark is lost and the poetry become prosaic. In the poetry after his late forties Thomas' "thought has been whittled down to the bare bones." My own poetry also took a new direction in my late forties, in 1992. I leave it to future analysts to define the qualitative shift but, beginning in the winter of 1992, I began to wrote an immense quantity of poetry. -Ron Price with thanks to Brother Anthony, "From Cardiff to Canaan: R.S. Thomas and Geoffrey Hill," Studies in Modern British and American Poetry, 1997, pp.5-29.

We had arrived at an auspicious juncture¹

I had, by this time, worn myself down, thin,

by this period and its unique significances.

I reached out for the tree of poetry,

its eternity, an eternity I did not then know,

and it gave to me, somewhat insensibly,

the green leaves of time² or was it

the fruits and blossoms of a consecrated joy.³

As you said, R.S.:

It had become too late to start

For destinations not of the heart.

I must stay here with my hurt.⁴

While that was true back in '92,

the story is so different now

as I approach the year '02,

but the battle still goes on

as that quickening wind

continues to ventilate my thought.

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A REVELATION OF AN INNER WORLD

Allen Ginsberg was one of the most famous literary figures in the USA during the ninth and early decades of the tenth stage of history(1953-1997). He lived to the age of seventy(1926-1997). His poetry was strongly autobiographical in the tradition of Walt Whitman. In this poem I follow Ginsberg through the first half of the second Baha'i century. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 16 July 2001; and "No More to Say and Nothing To Weep For: An Elegy For Allen," ABC TV, 10:45-11:35 pm, 15 July 2001.

The decisive moment came,

for you, on the eve

of the celebration

of the close of the first

Baha'i century.¹

You developed a sense of oneness,

one mind, one universe,

as early as the year

Canada had its first NSA.²

Your famous poem Howl

was banned by US Customs

the year the Guardian died.

The best minds of my generation³

hardly got near this new

and embryonic Cause in those years

of that Ten Year Crusade.

By the time I pioneered

you were in India chanting.⁴

But poetry was, for you,

what it has become for me,

a revelation of an inner world.

And that utopian dream

of your mother-crazy-then

destroyed by madness,

starving hysterical naked³

can be seen up-on-the-hill.

Can you see it, Allen?

Can you see it?

Kerouac would have seen it

as part of that 'beat-beatific.'⁵

Old poets do write about death,

each in their own way,

but not for me a Rimpoche,⁶

rather a leavening force

that leavens the world of being

and furnishes a power

through which I manifest wonder.

THE HAND THAT HAS BEEN DEALT YOU

Some artists have a compulsion to make their works of art, poetry, sculpture, etc. This compulsion involves a condensing of energy and a spreading out of their vital forces. They often possess an ambition to move forward in and through their work to the end of their days. They often, too, are restless people on the move with their art being a point of stillness in their lives. Memory and feeling is often, if not always, at the base of their work, their poem or their portrait. As much as they borrow from others they try to work out their own style, their own way, what is essentially them. -Ron Price with thanks to "Arts Today," ABC Radio National, 10:05-11:00 am, 12 July 2001 and the guest panellists discussing (I) the work of British painter Luciana Freed and (ii) Australian artist Tom Roberts.

Realism in poetry, as in life,

is about deftly playing the hand

that has been dealt you

and to do this in poetry

requires the liberation

of the excellent, the profound,

the beautiful and the true

in the subjects so that

they may not lie dormant,

but penetrate human consciousness.

And so I try to draw people

toward a world,

a world plunged into ideas,

a world deep down inside,

a world of stress and strife

where I find something

that has an appeal to me

and, I hope, will delight

and bring wonder,

appeal to the mystery

and sense of solidarity

in people's lives:

the dead to the living

and the not yet born.¹

1 Joseph Conrad, 1897.

Ron Price

13 July 2001

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SILENT STANDING ON MY FEET ALONE

In the years between my becoming as Baha'i and pioneering, 1959 to 1962, Dame Mary Gilmore lived the last three years of her life. She lived to be 97. She was an Australian poet, patriot, radical pioneer and social reformer who had been awarded the D.B.E., Dame Commander of the British Empire, for achievements in literature and social reform. That year was 1937; the year of the inception of the 'Abdu'l-Baha's teaching Plan. For those three years, 1959-1962, she was virtually confined to her flat. When it was her time to go, she said she wanted to be "fresh and quick; still like a cup held out/To catch some word, some thought might find/This ever hungry, ever wakeful mind. Bill Wilde's description of her final years led to the following poem. -Ron Price with thanks to W.H. Wilde, Courage a Grace: A Biography of Dame Mary Gilmore, Melbourne UP, 1988, p.461.

When your last sands were running out

you wanted to be able to take one last,

long, remembering, backward look of love

for all you knew, then, like some leaves, fall.

To be silent and stand on your feet,

alone, as you had been all your days,¹

was the template you wanted

for your future beyond the grave

where you wanted to go on

without any ties, everyone free,

no hampering, whatever and wherever

you were, nothing possessive, no ownership.

And you fought on right to the end,

trying to extract one more thought,

one more comment

you might give to the world,

proof of your usefulness in life.

It 'twas as if you could not stop

for death and so he stopped for you:²

gentle-wise, a dropping of weary hands,

a closing of tired eyes,

a slipping away in peace,

a simply letting go,

a falling asleep, asleep,

peacefully, dreamily.....so.³

1 This was how she saw herself and this image seems like one that is useful to me at this stage of my life, if not for the first forty years of my pioneering.

PERSISTENT RESOLUTION

Simon de Beauvoir describes the "dogged resolution" of some artists well into old age. She says this sense of persistent resolution arose, for some artists, "from their consuming passions" and for others "from a feeling of personal dignity." Some came to see their life, in old age, as a challenge, as an assertion of values like courage and endurance. This was the basis of the prodigous work habits of men like Renoir who retained his creative powers, felt he was making continual progress and was filled, as a consequence, with feelings of great happiness. -Ron Price with thanks to Simon de Beauvoir, Old Age, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1972, pp.313-4.

I, too, feel a dogged resolution,

ragged at the edges, especially

after four or five hours of words,

flattened, fatigued with the years,

with persistent and consuming passions

in a small place, a tiny town

at the end of a river by the sea,

this corner patch of the world,

where I really hoe into it,

day after day, hour after hour,

finding a personal identity and charm,

where I make a little progress,

often quite indefinable,

where arise, unbeknownst to others,

feelings of great happiness.

Ron Price

21 May 2001

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ORDINARY STARS

Brian Gallagher, in his analysis of stardom in the American film industry from the 1910s to the 1940s, writes that many of the stars had strong identities and metaphysically complex personalities. But they worked within a simple, easy to understand, formulaic system that was stardom. It was not so much that they played a character, but rather that the character was them. They were bigger than life. They defined life. It has often seemed to me that the disciplines of 'Abdu'l-Baha and the early pioneers in His Divine Plan, pioneers during the years 1919 to at least 1937; and perhaps beyond, to say 1946, the end of the first epoch of the Plan, were also stars in quite another sense.-Ron Price with thanks to Brian Gallagher, "Some Historical Reflections on the Paradoxes of Stardom in the American Film Industry: 1910-1960," Professor of English and Film, City University of New York, on the Internet, 2001.

We had our stars, even then,

our Mary Pickfords,

our Charlie Chaplins;

ours didn't make it

to the big screen;

our Greta Garbos,

our Buster Keatons,

our Bette Davis's,

our James Cagneys,¹

they made it to another screen,

another set of pictures and images,

defined by that Definer,

Who set it all in motion,

in an easy formula to understand,

simple, tangible truths, in words

for Martha Root,

Keith Ransom Kehler,

Louis Gregory,

Clara Dunn,

Agnes B. Alexander,²

our stars had strong identities,

metaphysically complex personalities,

filled roles too, just like you and I

on yet another screen,

in technicolour now,

with lives unscripted,

flawed and plausible,

with their predictable wonder

and their quite ordinary lives.

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AROUSED

Writing has provided me with the focus, the discipline, the direction and purpose I needed, on retiring from the world of employment and formal education after forty years(1959-1999), to translate the values and beliefs of my religion, my faith, into a form of action that would return to me the joy I had lost slowly and insinuatingly over the many years of giving as a teacher and give to that joy a voice. "For to miss the joy," as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "is to miss all."¹ Artistic expression, the creative act of writing, had been slowly aroused in me for more than a decade of my working life by a number of factors not the least of which has been the attractiveness, the enigma, of death² and, I like to believe, faithful souls who have gone on and who serve as leaven that leavens the world of being, writes Baha'u'llah, and furnishes the power through which the art of writing is made manifest.^{3 -} Ron Price with thanks to ¹Christopher Isherwood: Where Joy Resides, editors: Don Bachardy and James White, Methuen, London, 1989, p.v; ² Jeffery Berman, Joseph Conrad: Writing As Rescue, Astra Books, NY, 1977, p.53; and ³ Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, Wilmette, 1952, p.161.

The spirit of man

prompts me

to leave some trace of myself

on this earth,

to recapture history,

its recurrent strains and discords,

a solemn consciousness and joy.

Only by trial and error

can I find the combination

of material and method

to release my true voice

across the emperean

where foul impurities

also fill the air.

Ron Price

24 May 2001

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WRITING ABOUT IT

Barry Coskie, Australian theatre director, in discussing the performance of Shakespeare’s plays in the countries of the world, said that Australians are not an idea culture, a society that enjoys the discussion of any great outpouring of serious ideas. There are, of course, exceptions, but generally the culture is inarticulate insofar as ideas are concerned. Thusfar Shakespeare has not gone down well in Australia for this reason and also because Australians are not able to relate the ideas in Shakespeare to their world, their society. I think the same can be said of Baha’u’llah’s Writings.

I have found what Coskie says to be my experience of Australian culture as well, although I have found Australians are very clever and enjoy talking about the everyday world of food, houses, gardens, making things, television, sport, relationships, often ad nauseum. I have met people at BBQs, at parties and social gatherings, in classrooms and at meetings of various kinds, who seem to have an infinite capacity to chat about the quotidian. There are also four to five hours of serious interviews on ABC Radio National every day. On a one-to-one level, too, I have found, from time to time, a seriousness which is intense, purposeful, clever, humorous, detached, energetic and a delight. Through over more than a quarter of a century, 1971 to 1999, combined with several other factors, it wore me out. -Ron Price with thanks to Barry Coskie, "Arts Today", ABC Radio National, 10:05-11:00 am, 7 January 2000.

You wrote¹ from the age

of thirty to forty eight.

I was only starting, then,

getting to the point where

I was burnt out again

from what seemed endless

talking and listening.

By the time you died,

I was dropping out

to do my writing,

raiding the inarticulate

domains of life with

I am that I am,²

where I tell, too,

how hard true sorrow hits³

and how much better is

ruined love,

when it is built anew.⁴

____