A Statement: All Art is Vision

After seeing Huichol yarn paintings in Galeria Uno in Puerto Vallarta: The art of the Huichol shaman is created only when in a peyote trance vision. All art, then, is vision. This is different from the way most art is created by Western artists who are in the grip of the “art production assembly line."

For many years I searched for this clue to my own approach and understanding of art. It is what I intuited in late 1960s when I began experimenting in my writing, when I attempted to write outside of the narrow linear and rational mind, when I was absorbed in experiments attempting to short circuit the rational mind. Now a shamanic approach has been articulated to me, an approach that I can identify with.

I place my heart in the visionary’s approach. My identification of myself as a poet has always been outside of the mainstream of the poetry community. I was never very much a part of any poetry community as they rarely expressed my concerns in poetry.

Written on 19 November 1984, Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico; Huntingdon, 1991; Montreal, 2008.