I will not make any more boring art.

I will not make any more boring art.

Compiled by Frances Sjoberg on the occasion of the Conceptual Poetry and Its Others Conference, University of Arizona

CHARLES BERNSTEIN
1. In poetry, they talk about finding your voice, which is too often a way of evading the voices to be found in the writing.

2. Not only do I consider works of official verse culture to be poetry (which is not, for me, an honorific category), but also one of the key features of official verse culture [is] that it could necessarily include some poetry that I like quite a lot.

3. I prefer minerals to insects but I have been working on this with my ontologist.

4. As an alternative to National Poetry Month, I propose that we have an International Anti-Poetry Month. As part of the activities, all verse in public places will be covered over--from the Statue of Liberty to the friezes on many of our government buildings...Parents will be asked not to read Mother Goose...Religious institutions will have to forego reading verse passages from the liturgy...with hymns strictly banned...No vocal music will be played on the radio or sung in concert halls. Children will have to stop playing all slapping and counting and singing games and stick to board games and football.

5. Oddly, it is a form of dissent these days to hold out that art that doesn't get the market share can actually be as valuable as the art that does....I'm for the ketchup that loses the race.

6. Attention: Write down everything you hear for one hour.

7. There is still a great deal of conceptualizing that leads up to any intuition.

from The Poetry Foundation's blog Harriet