The Hermit Poet

Earlier this quarter Chris Abani had each of us draft a 5-page essay on our personal aesthetic. Needless to say it was a somewhat painful endeavor. In the end I realized that I write out of three separate aesthetic visions — three different ways that I view writing and what it means for something to be good.

I wonder how many of us take our aesthetic vision for granted. Trying to give a formal shape to something that has always been almost instinctual impulse is difficult — at least for me.

The next few posts explore my particular approach — more accurately, my three takes on an aesthetic and a possible synthesis.