Authenticity
What does it mean for something to be 'authentic'?
Keely Adler and
Authenticity
Where we struggle to imagine a future beyond the contemporary shitshow, nihilism leads the retreat inwards; in art as in politics. “What good is a flourishing poetry market,” Watts asked, “If what we read in poetry books renders us more confused, less appreciative of nuance, less able to engage with ideas, more indignant about the things that annoy
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A big breakthrough for me – life as a whole – came when I figured out that making solid progress on creative work, and enjoying the process rather than hating it, is in large part a matter of being willing to be who you actually are.
Swept up in the Instagramization of the 2010s, the contemporary poetry world saw an exaltation of ‘honesty’ as an aesthetic priority. Poetry not as craft, but as ‘outlet,’ with the goal not of developing ourselves and enriching our understanding of the world, but of sitting more comfortably with how we already were and what we already believed.
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I heard this quote from the writer Harold Brodkey who said, “I don’t understand privacy.” I’ve always understood privacy very well, but it’s like—what’s the point of taking your secrets to the grave, or even your banalities? We have this chance to let ourselves be known to other people, to fill out the web of humanity that we’ve been spreading for
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What I want to say most is that I am not an improved or better version of myself than I was a year ago because that is no longer a goal — but I am a truer version, a closer-in version, a more expansive and open version, a less clinging-to-certainty version, and that, to me, counts for a lot more than seeking to endlessly upgrade myself.
the goal is not to optimize yourself, it’s to get closer to yourself