POEMS
BY
JACOB WREN

ONE IS FREQUENTLY MISUNDERSTOOD

Fundamental to the ontology of making art is the fact one is frequently
misunderstood. /// But how misunderstood should one allow oneself to be? ///
Comedy should not be mistaken for bitterness, yet mostly that is the well from
which it springs. /// If one is understood too much it might also feel like a
misunderstanding. /// Like an x-ray that sees us as we really are (by seeing
straight through us.) /// Critical analysis can be like that x-ray, what it sees is not
precisely what is there, both more and less. /// X-ray as a kind of
misunderstanding, looking too specifically as a way of mis-seeing. /// But these
are not the misunderstandings I meant. /// Anything can be said to concern
anything. /// It is not assumed that the artist accurately knows what he or she
means. /// There is always the desire to find the meaning behind the intention. ///
The advertiser knows the exact intention of his or her work, but the artist does
not. /// Yet the artist has an excess of intention. /// Within the very nature of this
excess there is a gap, and it is this gap that interpretation seeks to fill. /// It is like
a person where you wonder if you really get them, if there is in fact more to get,
what they are holding back. /// They are a person but you are an x-ray. /// As if
wandering through an airport, the person must submit. /// The artist is holding
something back, cannot give you everything, but you will uncover the secret. ///
The secret is that the artist cannot possibly know everything his or her work is
doing in the world. /// (Or failing to do.) /// People are constantly telling me how
great I am. /// Meanwhile, I am dying of loneliness.





Some people like art and others like sport / some people like making art while
others prefer looking at art and some people like playing sports while others
prefer watching sports / some people like both making and looking at art while
others like both playing and watching sports / some people like making art and
watching sports while others prefer playing sports and looking at art / some
people like looking at art and watching sports while others prefer making art and
playing sports / some people treat art as if it were a sport, with clear winners and
losers, while others play sports purely for the pleasure, and consider who wins or
loses irrelevant / some people like art about art while others prefer art that works
treacherously to speak clearly of things outside itself, and though arguably any
given sport is always predominantly about itself, there is also a tendency to take
what happens on the playing field and use it analogously towards a greater
understanding of daily life and/or the world / some people don’t like art and use
their love of sports as a clear signifier to differentiate themselves from the kind of
person who likes art while other people who like art might do something similar,
only the other way around / some people who like both art and sports might use
this fact as evidence that they are well-rounded / but I suspect there are very few
people alive who have never considered taking even a slight interest in either
one or the other / nonetheless, there are always a few.





Evil is just bad choices
vehemently pursued
like a course in doing the right thing
where they teach you: think of the wrong thing
than do the opposite
but forget to teach you to do the opposite
there are pains you can escape
and pains that will pursue you
crimes that change your life
and crimes that go unnoticed
when will the wrongs be set right?
right after the next wrong goes
terribly wrong
I can be generous, but I can also
be small-minded and petty
does this make me like everyone else?





Performing, tradition and politics


To feel like a trained performing monkey
is normal enough in my profession
if one can say that it’s normal to feel

when bad ideas become traditions
we call it modernity
in this time when traditions barely last

if art is a mirror to society, of politics
than it is no wonder all this art sucks
there is the painful sucking and the pleasurable kind

why not both? the constant search for a
third way, as every third is folded back into
the second or first, into one trivial substance

too tired to fight, the exhaustion keeps fighting without us
a discussion needs neither a beginning nor end
an aphorism requires little more than brevity





It feels like being a loser
everything, especially writing this poem
everything the same as nothing
(if you want something you can’t have,
and want it all the time, it’s equally
dissatisfying as wanting it never)
this feeling of being a loser
buys into a set of social values I am
completely against
but I feel it, the feelings we feel
reject and feel again
and accept, reject and feel again
with everything I am asked
to do, I ask myself: do I have a choice?
in what way do I have a choice?
I see the winners, the bullies
the assholes, and reject them
wondering if they are happier
and see myself, reject myself too
the world, what is the
world apart from this world
we have created
it is many, many things
it is everything and we
so rarely see it
it is everything, at least
for a few more hours
this feeling of being a loser
of everything, much like
the many the things
already lost





Explanations are metaphors
we understand through approximation
experience short-circuits understanding
and we re-establish perspective through analogy
if one thing, or experience, is not like
another, what then is it like?
it is like itself but this explains nothing
we might say it is a question of
language, of wanting to explain
of wanting to understand
it is a question of desire
when you want
you want to know what and why
why and what happens next
requiring explanations
with no explanations there is nothing
therefore metaphors are the
engines of our heart
or the opposite
an empty heart can only be filled
therefore metaphors are the rusty armor
that paralyze experience
I’ve never used the word heart
in a poem before
and I’m realizing now
it is no coincidence it appears
among concerns of explanation
and metaphor
the technical heart pumps blood
but our own blood
is not what we crave

Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His books include: Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation, and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART, he has co-created: En francais comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Unrehearsed Beauty / Le genie des autres, La famille se cree en copulant, and the ongoing HOSPITALITE / HOSPITALITY series which includes Individualism Was A Mistake and The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information. In 2007 he was invited by Sophiensaele (Berlin) to adapt and direct Wolfgang Koeppen's 1954 novel Der Tod in Rom and in 2008 he was commissioned by Campo (Ghent) to collaborate with Pieter De Buysser on An Anthology of Optimism. He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art.