All culture is pretentious, humans pretending to be something other than what they are, animals driven by instinct to live in groups, procreate, protect and edify their young and one another, and write poems about the experience.
Poetry is the most important aspect of culture. Through poems the great pretenders pass on the psyche of the tribe – the human social group. The tribe is always in motion, and its poetry moves with it, leaving fossils – preserved impressions. Poetry animates the culture’s pretentions by illustrating conflicts among tribal members and the tensions created by individual consciousness and the collective consciousness of the tribe.
Poetry then is the most pretentious of human acts, the most basic of masks. The poet is naked save the mask. Imagine sitting at home writing a poem while your father spends the day working in a coal mine. That is what D. H. Lawrence did. And in the film “Il Postino” (1994), Pablo Neruda is seen sublimating his desire for culture with a poetic tribute to a miner:
When I was a senator of the republic I went to visit the pampas, a region where it only rains once every fifty years, where life is unimaginably hard. I wanted to meet the people who had voted for me. One day at Lota there was a man who had come up from a coal mine. He was a mask of coal dust and sweat, his face contorted by terrible hardship, his eyes red from the dust. He stretched out his calloused hand and said: “Wherever you go, speak of this torment. Speak of your brother who lives underground in hell.” I felt I had to write something to help man in his struggle, to write the poetry of the mistreated. That’s how “Canto General” came about. Now my comrades tell me they have managed to get it published secretly in Chile and it’s selling like hot cakes. That makes me very happy.
from the film “Il Postino” (1994)
Much poetry does not fossilize. It’s not pretentious enough. The poet is a vagabond who strays from the tribe, or is exiled from the tribe for breaking cultural rules. Yet the poet is indispensable to the spirit of the human social group, even as that group ostracises and diminishes the poet through sarcasm and accusations.
Brazilian poet and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes wrote a poem titled “The Worker in Construction.” This poem reminds me of my father, a midcentury new construction journeyman plumber. And I am reminded not only of my father, but of my own poetic masks and other pretentions.
The Coming of the Toads 
Its all about pretention.
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In a word, yes.
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What about the future?
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I remember when I was 6 or maybe 7 years old going on small plumbing jobs with dad. We would spend an hour snaking a toilet or maybe clearing a drain. Sometimes a few hours. Most of the time he refused payment. I guess it depended on who the customer was. I remember asking him once, “why didn’t you take her money “ – his response was always something like, it didn’t take that long, or they really don’t have the money to pay us, so he didn’t even ask. I’ll never forget those small jobs that never paid. Or did they?
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I remember. He would also practice what he called “trade labor”; he’d do a job for someone who in turn would do a job for him.
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Does pretentious = false?
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I guess pretentious might be a confusion of what one is with portentous – what one is not. But in the context of the post, pretentious is not false; on the contrary, it’s the only truth given a definition of culture that thrives on denial.
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If culture thrives on denial, does this not make the artist within this context false? …OR are you saying….culture is false (by virtue of denial), and the poet true (by vitue of their opposition to denial) ? In the context of your post is preteniousness equivalent to poetic imagination?
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There’s no dichotomy. Everything is true. Nothing is false. The mask is real, as is the unmasked. But unmasked doesn’t necessarily mean uncovered, as in, aha gotcha. The poet loves culture. The poet is culture. And culture is living. Poetic imagination is exactly pretentiousness.
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If everything is true, then nothing is false – What then what of “truth”? It does seem truth is irrelevant to art. Art “is”.
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Art is naught.
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As in nothing? less than zero? – If so, does art have value…other than possible diversion, entertainment, amusement?
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Value is simply what we want; and what we want is often not good for us. Art value is no different than good country people or family values – more pretentiousness.
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“no different”, yet “pretentious” ? This sounds like art has less integrity than “family values”?
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I guess I wasn’t clear. But I didn’t mention integrity. There’s no hierarchy of values. Value is not synonymous with good. What we value is simply what we want. “Good Country People” is a story by Flannery O’Connor where we find they are neither good nor country. Good country people is a pretentious value.
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