I think one of the ways I have come to cope with the authoritarian personality endemic to religious fundamentalism and to the spaces where I have also had to deal with them in organizational life across a wide spectrum of society, has been to develop a more moderate orientation myself. This has been difficult since I am myself an intense and serious person but, over some four decades, I think I am finally beginning to achieve a balance, a softer tone with the heavy dudes of life. The following prose-poem also deals with this subject, I hope in a helpful way.
_________________________________
THE MODERATE
By 1962 in Australia, when I was just beginning my pioneer life in Canada, a cultural recrudescence was underway. Australias first chair in Australian literature was established at the university of Sydney in 1962. Robert Hughes started writing his The Art of Australia. There was what Australian writer and journalist Christine Wallace called a golden generation.1 Germaine Greer was part of that generation. She was one of the few women, at that time, who could put men down in a confident, easy and amusing way. In 1962 she joined the theatre group at the University of Sydney. She was 24. I was 18. She became an over-the-top, anti-authoritarian writer as all Australians are, according to Greer.2 Prices(that's me!) evolution as a writer was very slow. He was only beginning to find his literary feet thirty years later. Whatever over-the-topness and anti-authoritarianism there was in his writing, and especially his poetry, Price felt was due to the Australian influences on his life. As he saw his writing, as he saw himself, he had become a moderate; the intensity was finally put in its place; it's aggressive edge softened at last. --Ron Price with thanks to Christine Wallace, Greer: Untamed Shrew, McMillan, Sydney, 1997, 1p.105; 2 p.288.
Theres an honesty
that has been added
to my poetry,
a telling it as it is,
telling it straight
and anything funny that you find here
is due to the Australian compulsion
to coat everything they can
with humours paint;
since you cant coat everything this way,
there is a delightful balance
between the light and the serious.
I do not achieve this balance
in my poetry: mores the pity.
Ron Price
3 November 1999
_________________________________
THE MODERATE
By 1962 in Australia, when I was just beginning my pioneer life in Canada, a cultural recrudescence was underway. Australias first chair in Australian literature was established at the university of Sydney in 1962. Robert Hughes started writing his The Art of Australia. There was what Australian writer and journalist Christine Wallace called a golden generation.1 Germaine Greer was part of that generation. She was one of the few women, at that time, who could put men down in a confident, easy and amusing way. In 1962 she joined the theatre group at the University of Sydney. She was 24. I was 18. She became an over-the-top, anti-authoritarian writer as all Australians are, according to Greer.2 Prices(that's me!) evolution as a writer was very slow. He was only beginning to find his literary feet thirty years later. Whatever over-the-topness and anti-authoritarianism there was in his writing, and especially his poetry, Price felt was due to the Australian influences on his life. As he saw his writing, as he saw himself, he had become a moderate; the intensity was finally put in its place; it's aggressive edge softened at last. --Ron Price with thanks to Christine Wallace, Greer: Untamed Shrew, McMillan, Sydney, 1997, 1p.105; 2 p.288.
Theres an honesty
that has been added
to my poetry,
a telling it as it is,
telling it straight
and anything funny that you find here
is due to the Australian compulsion
to coat everything they can
with humours paint;
since you cant coat everything this way,
there is a delightful balance
between the light and the serious.
I do not achieve this balance
in my poetry: mores the pity.
Ron Price
3 November 1999
