thoughts On Sound Poetry (cont'd)

In trying to reconcile my feeling that sound poetry often lacks deeper substance with my emergent desire to bring a certain academic reasonableness to my own work, I found that working with the written word and incorporating some aspects of the written word into my conceptual work has been a transforming experience for me as an artist. I have learned a lot about the commonplace inferences we make about words and word meanings at the same time as realizing how, as an artist, one can influence the viewers’ thought processes, as well as emotions, in a multitude of different ways. An artist can and does have a role to play in society if he so chooses to. Being a real artist is not pursuing a superfluous pastime. A true artist must earnestly produce work but may also strive for definite outcomes. To me, these meaningful pursuits require not only inspiration and hard work, but deep intellectual thought and high dignity as well.