Art on the Line is a collection of essays by writers and artists speaking about where their social commitment and their art intersect. That is, these essays illuminate the aesthetics of "engaged literature," and include work by writers from the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa who believe art can move people to action.
Art on the Line provides the aesthetic understanding to fully appreciate the kind of work Curbstone publishes in general and will stimulate thought and discussion about the enjoyment and function of literature from the point of view that has its roots in the work of Bertolt Brecht, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.
"Basically the poet must keep faith with poetry, with beauty. He must take the content that his outlook on life and mankind imposes on him (as the great responsibility that goes with coexistence, with living together) and steep it in the abundance of the beautiful. And here there's no room for subterfuges or the inversion of terms, The poet is such because he makes poetry, that is to say, because he creates a beautiful work. While he does something else he will be whatever he wants to be, except a poet. Which certainly does not imply, with respect to the poet, a privileged position among men, but only a precise placement among them and a rigorous limitation of his activity, the same that would also take effect in specifications of the capacities of doctors, carpenters, soldiers and criminals."-From Poetry and Militancy in Latin America by Roque Dalton
Jack Hirschman was born in New York City in 1933 and has lived since 1973 in San Francisco.
