A Thought About Age and Poetry After Seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band During National Poetry Month

This past Sunday, I saw Bruce Springsteen perform for the 15th time. He is my favorite musical act, the best live performer I’ve seen, and one hell of a poet. Over the years, I’ve taken inspiration from him in a myriad of ways, from his skill adopting the voice of different characters, to his unique ability to stay in the right side of sentiment with out crossing the line into sentimentality, he has taught me so much about the craft of writing story and poetry. As I watched another incredible performance on Sunday with an E Street Band that sounds as good or better than it did the first time I saw him, I came to another realization: we need more poetry from older poets.

The creative industry in general trends younger. Everyone looks for The Next Big Thing, and much of the media coverage related to debut albums and novels, under-a-certain-age lists, etc., and while I get the appeal of the prodigy, there are subjects about which young people are not generally equipped to write well. Listening to this concert, I was struck by how much Springsteen’s later work—especially the songs from his crisis albums, The Rising and Letter to You—spoke to me. The song Ghosts, for example, stands up to anything else in the show, and is, in my opinion, the best song about the effects of the pandemic.

Springsteen is an especially good example of what an older poet offers. He has had a long and sustained late-career renaissance, which started with The Rising, his 9/11 album. While there was always depth and political meaning in his songs—even when they were nominally about cars and girls—but his later work has a depth and maturity that speaks to me as I get older. Thunder Road and Badlands remain both timeless classics and great poems. They have a timeless quality and bring the house down every time he plays them, but the guy who wrote those isn’t the same guy who now discusses the issues of the day with Barack Obama.

I still love the songs I grew up with—and seeing a favorite act perform the songs I grew up with is always going to be a highlight of this type of show, but hearing the music of an artist who continues to grow as I grow adds to the experience.

In a way, it’s a shame that only artists like Springsteen who were successful in their youth get to have an audience for their mature work. I wish we got to read more debut poets who’s writing has matured after their youth.

Bruce Springsteen at UBS Arena

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On Mister Rogers and Creative Play

The 20th anniversary of Fred Rogers death passed earlier this week. Aside from making me (and I’m sure a bunch of other people my age) feel both sad and old, it was, as these anniversaries often are, an opportunity to revisit the incredible influence Mister Rogers and his show had on my generation, and to remind ourselves how relevant and important his message remains today. I read so many tributes to his lessons about kindness, selflessness, self-affirmation, and acceptance of others, all of which are well-deserved. These are lessons which are, if anything, more important today given the current state of society, but one thing I did not see, which I would like to address here, is the way he encouraged us to be creative, to play, to make believe.

Every episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood included a trip to The Land of Make Believe, a portal-fantasy world accessed by his model trolley, where Rogers’ puppet characters interacted with the human actors to address the theme of that week’s series of episodes. The stories were fantastical, often featuring characters visiting from The Purple Planet or making use of a magical boomerang, and worked to reinforce the lessons Rogers taught in the real-world segments of the show.

The importance of make believe fit with Rogers belief in the importance of play. Rogers said, “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”

The inclusion of both the real-world and fantasy elements separated Mister Rogers Neighborhood from the other major educational programs of my childhood. Most programs were either entirely fantasy, like Sesame Street, where humans and Muppets existed in the same world, or entirely based on a non-fiction conceit, like Reading Rainbow.

Mister Rogers always emphasized the difference between what was real and what was pretend. It is was important to him that kids knew the difference. For example, he would only let Big Bird guest star in The Land of Make Believe segment because Carol Spinney, the puppeteer who created and performed Big Bird did not want to reveal that Big Bird was pretend on the non-fiction portion of the show. While one can debate Rogers and Spinney’s views on presenting fantasy to children, the dichotomy which Rogers drew between the real and pretend segments of the program reinforced the concept that The Land of Make Believe constituted play time.

Despite this dichotomy, Rogers would often take elements of the make-believe portion of the show into the real-world setting. In one episode, he creates a pet on a stick puppet and sings the same song to it that King Friday sang to his pet on a stick. He would also often engage on other forms of creativity, like drawing with crayons or playing with a toy truck.

As a creative child, I appreciated the emphasis on creativity and play. In a world which seemed to devalue it as I grew older, it was nice to see a respected adult make time for it each day. As an adult I appreciate it even more. The older we get, the less time there seems to be for active play. So much of our time gets taken over by work and responsibility, and play disappears from most of our lives. Adult leisure time consists largely of passive activities, like watching television and movies, listening to music, and reading, which though it requires a more active mental participation, still has a predetermined ending (and path to that ending) created by someone else. Even more nominally creative activities, such as wine and paint nights, often offer a step-by-step processes where the participants all end up with the same painting at the end of the night. Very few adults engage in real, unstructured, creative play.

Art is one way adults can engage in creativity and play. I’ve written about the way my writing functions as play in this space before. Kurt Vonnegut, who is a much greater authority on writing and art than I, also advocates for creativity–real creativity for creativity’s, not commercial success’ sake.

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake,” the famous American author wrote. “Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

Many adults say they want to be creative, and yet say they do not have time for it. The answer, as is it so often, is to do what Fred Rogers would do: Make time for make believe. Acknowledge its importance, and schedule creative time as part of your day. Yes, the “real” part of your life is important, but so is your creative time.

Make time for make believe.

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Process and Perfection in Matisse’s Red Studio

Last week, I saw the Matisse’s Red Studio exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. The show features the painting after which it is named, but also focusses on the artist’s other works, especially those featured in the Red Studio painting. It is a really good exhibition and I enjoyed it immensely as an art lover. I also learned a lot about Matisse’s creative process, and as I often do when examining another creative’s method, found things I can incorporate into my own writing process.

The MOMA’s gallery cards are exceptional. Instead of just listing the name of the piece, the artist, and the medium like most museum’s do, the labels which accompany the art at the MOMA often include full paragraphs about the work which contextualize the piece and give some insight into both the importance of the work and, when known, the artist’s process or artistic vision.

One can learn a lot by reading the cards. For example, I learned that not only was Matisse a tinkerer, he often left vestiges of the original, or drafting, stages of his work in the final piece when he revised. Take, for example, this painting.

The position of the leg was obviously changed, which can be seen in the extraneous line near the lower half of the extended leg. There is also evidence that Matisse tinkered with the position of the figure’s arm (on the same side of the body), which he attempted to disguise in the shadows.

Here is the same painting with the relevant areas highlighted.

In many of the other paintings, the viewer can see pencil lines, presumably from the sketches he made on the canvass before he started to paint. They are not noticeable at the distance from which one usually photographs a painting, but up close, you can see them clearly. Here is an example:

What struck me most about these pieces was not that Matisse revised so much as part of his process. The world of the writer–and I assume the artist as well–is oversaturated with advice about revising one’s work. Revision is part of the process and it is par for the course. Rather, what stood out to me was that these vestiges remained in the final piece.

Many writers, many artists, many creative people in general, will work on their pieces in a futile pursuit of perfection. I have been guilty of doing so myself, working on a piece right up until the deadline, trying to make it as perfect as possible before submitting it for publication. I make sure to give myself deadlines, to seek out open call with hard deadlines, and rarely self-publish because I often get in my own head about revision.

There is an old saw in the creative world, “Finished, not perfect,” and like most oft-repeated advice it has become cliché and, in doing so, has lost much of its impact. It’s something people say, post about on social media, and hang up on posters in their classroom, and then ignore when it comes to their own practice. Seeing the Matisse pieces on the wall–and reading the gallery cards–is much, much more impactful.

Because, here’s the thing: No one notices the mistakes when looking at the paintings on the wall. Those who did not take the time to read the gallery cards, most likely, did not notice them at all. I certainly did not until I after the labels pointed them out to me. As someone who sees every mistake in everything I write, even–and especially–after its published, there’s a powerful lesson in that.

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