There are those who see the poetic & those who see the practical: In the Real World, social prestige & political power are left to computers, as are sex & writing.

Creative inspiration is not only used to make verse: There is supper to be made & things to be moved. In this movement there are practically no stretches of water. There are no mechanics & no mysteries. No signs of creativity. & voila! Poetics is practical: & even more inhabitable than San Diego.

In the past music was IT, EVERYTHING. Inspiration was from the muses (read: music). Simple. In the past poetics & practicality fueled the same animosity. To make letters (production bores us, fabric bores us, invention bores us, writing bores us) was to point (the "where" of poetics). To make letters (in the world of "action") was to prattle (the "where" of practicality). Poetics was a disgrace. It was kept in the vault of "specialists" & "Come on up to my place for the practicals". But there were those who saw inspiration in everything.

I scribbled this essay for the first time in 1988. I was in a vault writing No One A-Bandons Me!. This version is the bravest (read: NEW WAVEST) &, in two words, the clearest. My first essay, "The Poetic & The City," stated poetics was NOT a business--but I had disembarked on a moth-eaten vision of business & a moth-erly vision of poetics in practical society. Today mannequins are singing: Accept computer-made verse! But I've seen plenty of the creative process & I've observed poetics in physical practice (practical physics).

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I'm sober today, if a bit submerged in the practical, & I know the lessons of poetics. Also, I am privileged: I live in poetics & I see the lessons of practicality.

Don Cheney
San Diego, CA
January 1989

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