Explanations Poem by gershon hepner

“Explanations can be neat,
and plausible and wrong, ”
said H. L. Mencken. They compete,
and cannot get along,
with the complexity of things,
defying explanation,
because the comfort any brings
is mere maladaptation
to contradictions that inhere
in people, texts and life,
which can’t be carved out with a mere
explanation knife.

Terry Teachout, writing enthusiastically in the WSJ of September 12,2008 about an exhibition of the work of the California artist Richard Diebenkorn at the Orange Museum of Art in Newport Beach, CA (“Make Room for Surprise: Why Obama is famous and Diebenkorn is not”) :

The failure of much of the art establishment to acknowledge Diebenkorn as a major modern master is a tale whose moral is worth repeating each time you walk intoa museum or concert hall. Don’t take historical narratives for granted. Yes, the best ones can make clarity out of chaos, but in art as in life, clarity can be deceiving, and history has a way of surprising anyone who suffers from the delusion that the world is anything other than messy. In the ever-relevant words of H.L. Mecken, “Explanations exist: they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every problem––neat, plausible and wrong.”


9/15/08