“Daub Wreck,” oil on cardboard, a few inches wide and tall (JMN 2024). Sometimes you have stranded paint and a dirty brush. What’s to do but run riot?
… The gravity of curiosity. Our lives should be lived in interrogatives rather than imperatives. It’s more magnanimous to move through the world with wonder than with unearned certainty… [Poems] encourage us to ask the complicated questions, both of ourselves and those around us. They expect us to embrace all of our foolish wisdoms.
(Adrian Matejka, from Editor’s Note, Poetry, November 2024)
Matejka’s remarks reminded me of a comment I’ve heard attributed to Wittgenstein, which is that in order to create we must follow our nonsense. To “follow nonsense” has an oxymoronic feel almost as explicit as that of the phrase “foolish wisdom.” An important qualifier, I think, is the restriction to following our nonsense and not someone else’s. These phrases have an appeal that makes me giddy. I read in them an exhortation to locate my inner holy fool and bare that fool. Easier said than just do it. I should follow up with Matejka’s starting words in his Note, which speak of the upfront investment:
Poetry is mostly like other arts: work and more work, curiosity and contemplation, studying and more studying.
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Apt and useful thoughts that make me think! Thank you, Jim. And I love your ‘Daub Wreck’ – it zings!
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You’re kind to my daub! Thank you, Sue!
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The daub looks like a great still life
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An encouraging thought. Thanks!
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