How to Paint

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

The title “How to Paint” brings back memories of mass-marketed
“learn to draw at home” kits with their simplistic and mechanical
explanations of how to become an artist. The irony is that these prose
poems, which are based on Chris Harris’s down-and-out experiences in
Vancouver and New York, really are about the lessons he learned on his
way to becoming an artist, and are not about mechanical technique (and
cannot be picked up at one’s own pace in the comfort of one’s living
room). The lessons come through pain, joy, loving, and hating; their
meanings strike home as unanticipated moments of enlightenment:
“Waiting in New York City and freshly sober, I recognize for the first
time the peace of waiting. Enjoying an exact moment of Now as if sex.
Just this Now and no more and thinking, I am here at last.”

The writing is often surreal and disturbing. It puts forth the
proposition that anyone who wishes to become an artist must risk
everything and be willing to suffer the consequences.