Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

“Abandon—Good and Bad,” is new, kind, and absolutely thrilling. Looking at the opposites of abandon and exactitude, it illustrates the great central principle of Aesthetic Realism: Eli Siegel’s statement “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” Letting go and being accurate are opposites people are so painfully mixed up about. And the solution to this big matter in our lives is in all good poetry, all true art! That is what you’ll learn about in “Abandon—Good and Bad,” the urgent and exciting new issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known. 

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

I am very happy to say that with this issue of TRO we begin a serialization of Eli Siegel’s lecture Poetry Is Alphabetical. That 1971 work is a means of learning about two tremendous things: what poetry is, and who we are. The two, Aesthetic Realism magnificently shows, are the same subject, because to see what poetry really is, is to see what the largest matters in our own lives are: to see what poetry truly is, is to see how we most deeply and urgently are hoping to be. The reason is in this Aesthetic Realism principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

In the surprising, casual, yet definitive lecture we’re serializing, Eli Siegel uses the alphabet, looking at a word for every letter, to present what all poetry has. In the section published here, we are with the letter A. And he speaks about Abandon. So by way of a preface, I’ll comment a little on that matter of abandon as it has been in people’s lives.

Beauty & Trouble

Abandon has an opposite, which Mr. Siegel also describes, an opposite which is with abandon, inseparable from it, when an artwork or anything is beautiful. The opposite of abandon has various forms; it can be carefulness, control, discipline, or exactitude—but it is always, as Mr. Siegel says, a checking of some kind. Abandon and its opposite trouble people terrifically, because these seem at war in one’s life….Read more