Shaped by a Silky Attention
by Jane Hirshfield
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 A request for concentration isn’t always answered, but people engaged in many disciplines have found ways to invite it in. Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and their art; learning to come into steady presence, free from the distractions of interest or boredom.
However it is brought into being, true concentration appears — paradoxically — at the moment willed effort drops away. It is then that a person enters what scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described as "flow" and Zen calls "effortless effort". At such moments, there may be some strong emotion present — a feeling of joy, or even grief — but as often, in deep concentration, the self disappears. We seem to fall utterly into the object of our attention, or else vanish into attentiveness itself.
This may explain why the the creative is so often described as impersonal and beyond self, as if inspiration were literally what its etymology implies, something "breathed in." We [poets] refer, however metaphorically, to the Muse, and speak of profound artistic discovery as revelation. And however much we may come to believe that "the real" is subjective and constructed, we still feel art is a path not just to beauty, but to truth: if "truth" is a chosen narrative, then new stories, new aesthetics, are also new truths.
Difficulty itself may be a path toward concentration — expended effort weaves us into a task, and successful engagement, however laborious, becomes also a labor of love. The work of writing brings replenishment even to the writer dealing with painful subjects or working out formal problems, and there are times when suffering’s only open path is through an immersion in what is. The eighteenth-century Urdu poet Ghalib described the principle this way: "For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river. Unbearable pain becomes its own cure."
Difficulty then, whether of life or of craft, is not a hindrance to an artist. Sartre called genius "not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances." Just as geological pressure transforms ocean sediment to limestone, the pressure of an artist’s concentration goes into the making of any fully realized work. Much of beauty, both in art and in life, is a balancing of the lines of forward-flowing desire with those of resistance — a gnarled tree, the flow of a statue’s draped cloth. Through such tensions, physical or mental, the world in which we exist becomes itself. Great art, we might say, is thought that has been concentrated in just this way: honed and shaped by a silky attention brought to bear on the recalcitrant matter of earth and of life. We seek in art the elusive intensity by which it knows.
About the Author: Jane Hirshfield is the author of eight much-honored books of poems, most recently The Beauty, and of two essay collections, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World and Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (from which this selection is taken), and four books collecting and co-translating the work of world poets of the past. She has a special interest in the intersection of poetry and the sciences, the environment, and the recognition of the inseparability of the sacred and the daily.
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Shaped by a Silky Attention
How do you relate to the notion of great art being honed by “a silky attention brought to bear on the recalcitrant matter of earth and life?” Can you share a personal story of difficulty becoming a path toward concentration culminating in a labor of love? What helps you develop “true concentration?” |
| Rajesh wrote: This is a beautiful passage. I especially resonate with the statement “”Much of beauty, both in art and in life, is a balancing of the lines of forward-flowing desire with those of resistance -… |
| david doane wrote: Great art comes out of passion — passion that includes love of and commitment to an endeavor. Passion that overrides tiredness, pain, and hunger. Passion that dominates and carries one.&… |
| Kristin Pedemonti wrote: Great art takes great suffering or great joy & both take the depth of silky attention to achieve the outcome. As a Cause Focused Storyteller who seeks to build bridges between people and co… |
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Editor’s note: As another year begins, let us recall that each of us has the power to give — even when it may seem like we have little according to the world’s standards. When we give our heart and our love, we give the ultimate gift — as did the little drummer boy or the peasant in 
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