Paradise Procrastinated

I figure anyone reading this blog must be pretty desperate for something to read. So, even though I seem to have lost interest in my own thoughts recently, that's no reason you should go hungry. And since my own progress with Milton has been a little slow thus far, here's a link to a good article that just came out in The New Yorker. The very fact of such an article in 2008 kind of makes me happy. (Here's a sentence to whet your appetite: "The best-known portrait of his mature years makes Milton look like the dyspeptic brother of the man on the Quaker Oats box.")

This article comes along at a good time for me, because it helps me psych myself up for finishing (which is to say, reading about ¾ of it for the first time) Paradise Lost. I haven't even gotten to "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso". I'm just about to re-read Vendler's chapter on Milton from Coming of Age as a Poet, though.

I did, however, watch Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which is a poetic epic in its way. So I haven't been totally unproductive. (Plus, Nausicaä is way cooler than Adam.)

Also, I read a book about Freud and Einstein, so it may be that I'll be ranting about psychoanalytic theory instead of poetry when I get back on the blog-wagon. Can you feel the excitement?

Don't say you haven't been warned.

It turns out mystics really do still have a place in our culture

Did you know that there is a "Joan of Arc" brand of canned goods? I'm trying to imagine the mental process of the marketing whiz who came up with that brand name. It must have been something like

Virgin saint + visions of God + France vs. England + heresy + martyrdom = Beans!

Burned at the stake = good cookin'?

Beauty, truth, blah blah blah: Part II

In which the author resorts to the "undergrad term-paper interlude" that, in an earlier post, he promised to spare his readers.

***

So, since I don't really have any new thoughts today, I'm posting a more detailed version of my response to "Ode on a Grecian Urn" from last week. I guess I get a little pedantic when discussing this poem, but it's only because I care.

***

The ending to this poem is very famous, but these days the consensus seems to be that Keats dodges the questions he raises and is full of sh*t. This blows my mind. As far as I can see, Keats resolves his poem perfectly; he doesn't answer the original questions because they are quite simply the wrong questions. To put it oversimplistically (which is something I'm pretty good at), his "point" is that the truth conveyed by art, which may be the only truth that's really possible, is (at least experientially) nontemporal rather than temporal. Critics whose orientation is 100% social-historical miss this point, because they can't conceive of anything that doesn't exist in time.

The questions about what is happening in the urn's images cannot be answered. Such knowledge died with the urn's creators; such knowledge belongs to the mortal, temporal world, as does the plaintive speaker of the poem. Keats asks the questions in order to display the tragic fact of their unanswerability. He invites the reader to try to imagine these narrative, temporal details, so as to then pull the rug out from under the reader, forcing her/him to make the same shift the speaker makes. "We can't know those answers," he implies, "but maybe we can know something else." So the speaker turns to the kind of truth that art can and does communicate. Its "silent form . . . [teases] us out of thought," so that it is possible to apprehend something that has variously been called both beauty and truth. Art can't save us from death, but it can show us something that never dies.

Basically, this is just a variety of Platonism, which rubs some people the wrong way (or, perhaps, doesn't rub them at all). Some might say the ending is a false consolation; such critics would argue that the proper conclusion, once the speaker has realized the impossibility of truly knowing the temporal world, is to admit that there is no such thing as truth at all. For them, "heard melodies" are the only melodies there are. But Keats wants to redefine beauty and truth (or at least return them to a quasi-Platonic sense). This isn't the kind of beauty that has "ugly" (or anything else) as its opposite; this isn't the kind of truth that has "false" (or anything else) as its opposite. In other words, it's not about judging what is or isn't "beautiful" or "true"; the judging mind has no place here. It's about being struck between the eyes with a perception of reality so powerful and so fresh that it seems reality has been properly and genuinely communicated. It's a different order of experience. For Keats, art can provide this. An experience of seeming timelessness is available to consciousness, and Keats somewhat desperately seizes upon this option as a consolation for the pain of loss and time. But it's a legitimate consolation.

The great thing about Keats is that for him, beauty always resided smack dab in the midst of the most sensual experience. In his version of Platonism, one does not leave "this world" behind in favor of some de-sensualized intellectual dimension. Rather, one finds beauty here and now, and in so doing one somehow transcends temporality even while immersed within it. No ladder is necessary, because there's nowhere else to go—certainly nowhere better than here, as long as one has poetry to provide the unheard melodies.

I like to think of this poem in combination with a much more informal little poem called "This Living Hand":

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

I find this one especially haunting. It makes his search for timeless beauty and truth in "Grecian Urn" that much more poignant. The final truth of "Grecian Urn" is that one can partake of eternity through art, but one must be alive to do so. That beauty is truth is all we know and need to know on earth. For Keats, eternity is only for the living.

For God's sake, Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period.

I love that line.

Okay, so instead of reading Milton and Coleridge and the like, I've been watching Woody Allen movies. But those are classics, too. (Some of them, anyway.)

What I like most about Allen's best films is that they present such an idiosyncratically complete version of reality. Films such as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors feel as if Allen somehow transferred his soul directly onto celluloid. (Whether or not they really do express the "real" Woody Allen is irrelevant; more important is that they seem to.) The women, the doomed relationships, the jokes, the jazz, the New York intellectuals, and just New York generally: these things all combine so perfectly that I just envy the hell out of Allen for being able to make art that way.

This is what makes an artist great: s/he (re)creates a reality that reflects the essence of his/her personality. This is as true for poetry as for film: When I read Blake, for instance, I am allowed to live in the world as Blake saw it. This is appealing because it's the reflection not of the everyday, confused, ordinary personality, but of an intensified, essentialized personality; it's the reflection of how it feels to be fully aware, fully focused, and fully alive. No doubt William Blake shuffled about in an ordinary, confused state most of the time, as do we all. But sometimes his personality coalesced so as to make possible the reality that we find in his poems and paintings. All that he thought and felt and obsessed over came together in the work. This appeals, I think, because we all want to tap into the equivalent intensification of our own selves. Once we know what this feels like from experiencing great art, we have a better chance of coalescing this way ourselves. And then one's whole experience of reality changes, if only temporarily, because the world we see is the world we are.

Also, I like the specific milieu of Allen's films. I like the humor, and I like the intellectually pretentious characters. I think I may be a Woody Allen character, or maybe I aspire to be one. He has a brilliant short story called "The Whore of Mensa," about a call-girl service that provides beautiful women who, instead of having sex with their customers, have conversations with them about stuff like Dostoevsky or Hegel or the symbolism in Moby-Dick, etc. If such a service were real, I would use it.

I guess part of my interest in Allen's work is a sort of nostalgia for that sort of intellectual culture, in which literature majors actually talked about literature instead of just theory. I'm nostalgic for it, even though I never experienced it when it really existed. I want to think about symbolism and meaning, not all this gender and class crap. I feel kind of betrayed by the current English-dept. climate. But I digress.

I'm still planning to delve deeply into English lit., and as I do so I will try to focus on how the poets in question manage to transfer their essential souls into the writing.

You're Goddamned Right Beauty Is Truth

I guess I missed yesterday's blog entry. Oh, well; calendars and schedules are for squares, anyway.

***


Today's blog entry is participatory! Here's a litmus test for your intellectual/spiritual orientation: What do you think of the ending to Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? More specifically, do you agree with the ending, or is Keats full of it? Does this ending resolve the poem, or is Keats dodging the questions he raises?

In case you haven't memorized the poem, it goes like this:



ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
By John Keats

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.





I'm not going to drone on and on with my interpretation, because I don't want today's blog entry to degenerate into an undergrad term-paper interlude. Suffice to say, I can't believe everyone doesn't sigh with assent upon reading the ending of this poem. People usually either sigh with assent or scratch their heads, nonplussed. Which makes me scratch my head. While I'm sighing.

You make the call.

I Prefer Poems That Aren't Shaved Down There

I hadn't planned to start off with thoughts on Shakespeare, but what the hell.

One of the reasons I read poetry is to steal from other poets. But how does one steal from Shakespeare? I do think he (whoever he was, Stratford or Oxford) was a bona fide genius, but part of his allure also results from his placement in history. He wrote at a time of unusual opportunity, when the modern English language, our English, was just being born.

Here's a partial list of words he coined: compromise, dwindle, madcap, tranquil, lonely, submerge, undress, cold-blooded, champion, torture, swagger, and bloodstained. A longer list can be found here. And then there's the way he used the words . . .

The English language is always changing, always alive. However, our language is still basically the same language that Shakespeare and his contemporaries originated. Poets can still mess with language a great deal, but is it even possible for anyone today to write as freshly as Shakespeare? Even if someone of equal genius appeared today, I think he or she would might not be able to achieve equal results. I fear the language is just not molten and protean enough anymore. Has it cooled and hardened? It seems to let less in, at least without a fight. An author who uses neologisms these days often seems merely eccentric or, at best, "experimental."

And yet that's still just so tempting. There's a lot of pressure on poets now to use what Eliot called "the language of the tribe." God forbid anyone uses language that isn't familiar and contemporary. But that limitation dulls the English language, it seems to me. Even "experimental" poets often use very limited diction. How can poets write poetry as lexically lively as Shakespeare's without seeming merely eccentric? How can poets preserve the richness of the language without seeming quaintly anachronistic?

The last major poet who tried to keep the English language thick with non-ordinary vocabulary was Hart Crane. His approach to Modernism was to drop Elizabethan and Romantic language directly atop the phenomena of the modern world, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, willing them to co-exist. If only he had (fully) succeeded. Think of the possibilities that would be available if his version of modernism had taken. Instead, we got W.C. Williams and his goddamned wheel barrow. (Nothing depends on that f***ing wheel barrow! Nothing, I say!)

In an earlier post, I announced my preference for curvy language. To that, let me add my allegiance to furry language. Let me further say that current diction is often the equivalent of a woman who's shaved down there, and that, in literature as in life, I prefer the forest to the plain.

I think I shall be among the English poets

Unfortunately, in my case that means only that I hope to spend a good chunk of summer reading them. I mean the classics, baby.

Many, I am already familiar with; I'll be deepening my awareness of those poets. (You go, John Keats!) Others, I'm sad to admit, I have not read in sufficient depth. Usually, such poets are the ones I admire but don't exactly enjoy. (I'm looking at you, John Milton. I'll finish Paradise Lost this summer if it kills me. Though hopefully it won't kill me, seeing as that would interfere somewhat with my progress in the doctoral program. I do enjoy Milton in short bursts, actually, but I've never been able to get through that whole poem.)

I am one of those old fogeys who think poets should be very well read not only in contemporary poetry but in the canon, as well. Because I am not satisfied with my own experience in that area, I feel a need to dive head-first into the treasure house.

Strangely, some contemporary poets don't have much interest in the older stuff. I'm not just talking about the kids who say, "I don't read poetry; I just write it." I mean real, authentic, card-carrying poet-union members who never spend any time reading anything published before 1980. To each his/her own, but it's just strange to me. I would rather read "To Autumn" or "Tintern Abbey" or just about anything by Shakespeare than read about 90% of what gets published these days. (Not that the new stuff isn't good; it's just that some of the older stuff is even better.) At any rate, I like being aware of the history, however mythic, of my vocation.

(Also, the advantage of writing about older stuff is that I can say anything I want without the danger of running into the author at AWP or someplace!)

Since I've already pretty well spewed my whole kooky philosophy of everything here on the blog in the last 10 days or so, I have to come up with something else to write about. Thus, I'm hoping that blogging my thoughts on the elders will be both helpful to my project and at least a little bit interesting to any readers I might still have. Besides, if I promise to write about this stuff, I have to actually do the reading!

However, if I'm to maintain my interest, I'll probably have to abandon chronology and read whatever suits me at the moment. (Otherwise, I might never get past Shakespeare! I love Shakespeare, but there's just so much there.) Then again, I may get anal and proceed in strict chronological order.

(I am including the Americans, beginning with Whitman, whom I'll get to eventually. But I'll probably stick with the Brits at first.)

So, for a little while I shall speak of poetry instead of vague musings about gods and brains and the nature of matter. Delicious.

Doesn't This Guy Ever Think About Anything Else?

I'm told obsessiveness is a good quality in artists.

***

Gods live in the psyche. Even if initially sparked by survival stress, fear of death, or childhood trauma, the figures and occurrences of myth have evidently become permanent inhabitants of our bodies and minds. These phantoms, far exceeding their possible origins as delusional responses to the hardships of life, animate our whole experience of the world. As some children exceed their parents (quick: name Einstein's mother and father, or Da Vinci's), these figures are the stars, in every sense, of the imagination. The gods now imagine us.

They may not always appear as persons. Like the Biblical God, they may appear as natural symbols: fire, a whirlwind, darkness. They may appear as habitual thought-constellations: Ares within road rage or political partisanship, or Aphrodite lurking inside flirtiness or the delight in the lovely shapes of things.

I could go on and on, but you're better off just reading Jung and James Hillman.

However, aside from featuring mythic personages (which in this case is what I mean by "gods," including figures such as Orpheus, Odysseus, etc.), myths display processes. In all myths, the gods act. They do stuff. The story shifts from one to another and back again, then on to still another.

Narrative theory tells us that such stories are the way humans order and make sense of the world, which is not wrong. But what especially intrigues me about myths is the way they mirror psychic process, the way one thought merges into another and another and another. (And by thought, I mean any content of mind, whether intellectual or emotional.) And not just stories; lyric poems also have a progressive logic that is equivalent to that of story.

I have tried in the past (unsuccessfully) to find a way of representing this in language, switching between registers of diction and of feeling in order to parallel the shifts within the myths. Every myth is an interaction of multiple mythic figures in narrative-temporal sequence. What interests me is not just which archetypes are present, but how they interact, in the way that chemicals interact with each other. Two otherwise harmless chemicals, when combined, make a big boom. The same is true for gods.

This still seems to me a good basis for what I want to do in poems. I like to shift between various registers, and I'd like to somehow use myth (however loosely) as my template for how to best arrange these shifts, how to place them in relation to each other, how to let the various tonal sub-voices move throughout the poem.

Music also seems a promising model, but I don't really understand it well enough to use it (yet).

The project of reconciling active involvement with these myths while paying attention to the findings of the scientists is not easy. Lately, it is kicking my ass. The conclusion I keep coming to is that the needs of the psyche must be honored, whether or not they are found to be reducible to brain mechanics. So, this is how I preserve the gods. They remain the way the universe likes to imagine itself. What is necessary is not to believe, but rather to care. Without this care, we cannot imagine intensely. The best answer I have to the question of what to do with these myths: just sit back and behold them, participating when invited.

What I Think About When I Wonder About Poetry

I once read, in a book about postmodernism, a statement something like "Of course, we can no longer believe Romantic ideas about the imagination." (The "of course" is the worst part.) While it's true that imagination must now be understood as produced by the brain (and the body generally, I suppose) rather than just being some sort of airy mystery, I don't agree that the Romantic idea of imaginaton is otherwise so obsolete.

Shelley thought that poetry was essential for political change, because poetry activates and exercises the imagination. Without imagination, one can't imagine a better world. Without imagination, one can't imagine the suffering of others, and without that basis for empathy, there's no impetus for change. This idea has fallen out of vogue, but it seems to me rather irrefutable. Reading Marxist literary theory is not enough. Watching CNN is not enough.

To put it differently: Poetry makes psyche happen, and psyche makes everything else happen. At least in the human world. (Of course, psyche makes poetry happen, but I won't get into that whole chicken-egg problem.) It's no accident that the presidential candidate who's most associated with change is known for his pretty words and actually wrote some poetry in his college days.

So, when I wonder if poetry is really worth anything, I remember that this potential for psychic transformation is why I fell into poetry in the first place. Other arts can do it, but poetry almost cannot not do it. The scientists speak of "neuroplasticity," the ability of the brain to change its usual patterns of experience and response. This is a kind of liberation.

But what kind of poetry is best suited for this? Some poetry opens me up more than others. How can I write to best unclog those psychic pipes?

With Our Very Special Guest Star . . .

I don't really have much on my mind today. I'm sick of the whole culture. I'm sick of earth. Blah.

So, I'm just going to link to a very cool article in The New York Times that is relevant to my discussion of the brain from a few days ago. This guy actually seems to know what he's talking about.

Enjoy!

Promises, promises

What it all comes down to is that I want very much to write, but I have a very hard time figuring out what to write about. Even with all my thematic and formal ideas, still I struggle to find something concrete upon which to base individual poems.

I wish I could just write about my life situations. Unfortunately, my weird teflon karma prevents me from having normal human life situations. Nothing sticks. So, I'm left playing poet-philosopher. Or philosopher-poet. Or whatever. Don't get me wrong; I am genuinely interested in the themes I try to work with. But sometimes I wish I had more than themes to write about.

On the other hand, at least I'm not just one more soldier in the confessional-poetry army. The trouble is, many readers, even experienced official poetry experts, seem to equate poetry with some sort of personal emotional lyric utterance. Bah to that, I say. Being is a perfectly good subject to write about. Being and Psyche. Being and Psyche can be sexy. I promise!

God, Popeye, and the Ground of Being

God: "I am who I am."
Popeye: "I yam what I yam."

One and the same? You be the judge.

***

Today I'm thinking about God. More precisely, I'm thinking about what to do with the idea of God. Jung has demonstrated fairly clearly (in case current events are not proof enough) that religious symbols, and religiosity itself, are integral to the human psyche. It's not as simple as whether or not one "believes." Archetypes don't go away because you don't believe in them.

The way our retarded culture usually presents the issue is "Sunday School vs. Atheism". According to this version, if you have outgrown the childish Sunday School version of God, also known as "supernatural theism," then the only alternative is flat-out atheism.

When Joseph Campbell was asked by a street-corner evangelist whether he believed in God, Campbell answered, "You don't have time for my answer." Indeed, it's not a simple question. It all depends on what one means by "God" and what one means by "believe."

If one means by "God" the transcendent/immanent sacred ground of being, and by "believe" one means "to orient one's mind toward the object in question," then I believe in God. (I try, anyway.)

Though I am a Buddhist (let's say a Reform Buddhist), I am also, technically, Catholic. I am very interested in engaging the symbols of Christianity, though I have no use for obedience to any particular church or authority. I think humans must be religious in order to feel fully alive, and religion must, primarily, connect people to what is sometimes called "the transcendent." It's not enough to worship potatoes or something; true religion has the effect of establishing a sense of connectedness to the sacred ground of being. Because the symbol tradition that most Westerners are comfortable with is that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, those symbols must still be used, somehow.

So, that's yet another of my little sub-projects within the larger project of "poetry." How (and why) to figure God. Therefore, don't be surprised if little bits of myth stuff from the Bible and other, more apocryphal sources appear more frequently. The trick is to do it in such a way that I don't alienate all the heathens out there in the literary community. (Ha!) (Though I sense my mystical content may already turn off, or just baffle, a lot of readers.) I feel there is truly some cultural usefulness in working with these symbols. My underlying ontology may be quasi-Buddhist, but (more of) my symbols should be Judeo-Christian.

Besides, I can only talk generally about luminosity and numinosity so many freakin' times.

Why Michael Is Not a Novelist

It may be that what I really need to do in future poems is simply include elements that I have previously left out. One such element is narrative.

A year ago today (in terms of day of the week, at least; technically, it was a year ago Wednesday) I began a summer fiction workshop. I look back on that class fondly. It's nice to just stretch out, creatively, and write page after page of narrative prose. Every now and then, I really think seriously about writing fiction instead of poetry. But I always end up coming back to poetry.

I've concluded that I really have no aptitude for fiction, at least for writing it regularly, because my orientation to life is too far away from the mindset necessary for a fiction writer. Here's the formulation I've come up with as an explanation: Fiction's concern is primarily social; Poetry's is primarily psychic. (This is probably not a new discovery, but I'm slow, so it's new to me.)

That is, most fiction is concerned with social situations, dilemmas, and institutions. Characters have problems with family or other loved ones, or they have class struggles, or whatever. Even if they are trying to determine their identities, they do it in social terms. There is psychological growth and all that, but it's usually expressed in terms of social occurrences. Just today, I spent some time on Amazon.com and the New York Times Books page investigating a contemporary fiction writer who's getting a lot of very good press right now. I really want to share in whatever her fans are experiencing, but she writes in a territory into which I cannot follow. Which is true of most fiction. I admire it, but I can't quite go there.

Poetry, on the other hand, is usually more concerned with the way an individual psyche transforms (or fails to transform) life experience. This experience can be social in origin, but the poem transmutes society into soul. When I read fiction, I often feel a powerful need to find some proof that there's more to life. That this can't be all there is; there must be something more. I guess uncovering that "something more" is why I write, and why I write poems in particular.

Of course, I'm grossly oversimplifying. In truth, there is a lot of overlap. Fiction writers often include some very lyrical passages that have nothing to do with the social world. My favorite fiction writers achieve a lyricism and psychic intensity that rivals that of my favorite poets. And poets regularly write about relationships and other social intrigues. And I'm probably projecting my own situation a bit, since for me the needle points somewhat farther toward the "psychic" side than is true for most people.

But the fact remains that poetry is likely to remain my literary home. So, the thing to do, when I feel the fiction itch, is to infuse my poems with some sort of narrative. Good for my poems, good for me. We'll see how that works.

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the brain!

I don't know if anyone is reading these daily posts or getting anything from them besides me, but I'm going to keep on truckin' anyway. I'm learning some good stuff about what I think!

***

It's not just cosmological science that I eagerly misinterpret and/or oversimplify. I also find myself drawn to include findings from biological studies. About a year and half ago, I bought a big biology textbook to use as a sort of grand compendium of possible metaphors and/or symbols. (I haven't read it yet, but it was still a good idea.)

In particular, neuroscience interests me a great deal, at least in the popularized form that I can sort of understand. If I am interested in mind, I can't very well ignore what scientists are discovering about the brain, all of which overflows into the problem of soul and spirit. Currently, my position is that I accept (more or less) the proposition that reality, including consciousness, is founded upon a material basis, but I also keep in mind that (to my understanding) no one quite knows what matter is. So the statement that "all is material" actually points to a lot more mystery, even Mystery, than is commonly allowed.

At any rate, even if mystical experience is fully dependent on the brain, it's still a necessary and (at least sometimes) accurate mode of consciousness—maybe the brain at its peak functioning, in fact.

One thing neuroscience makes clear (at least in my version of it) is that the world we typically experience is like a little movie produced by our brains. It seems to derive from sense perceptions of what is presumably a "real" world, but the version we experience is smoothed out and altered according to our neuropsychic needs. A lot is left out. So, the idea that the world we experience isn't quite reality turns out to have some validity after all.

Anyway, I just like reading this brain stuff. For me, it is a way of resituating Tantric and Romantic ideas about the primacy of imagination in a more securely 21st-century context. What we get is our brain's imagining of life, which, because the brain is part of that life, is life re-imagining life. This makes me happy.

I do think, however, that poets (and other artists) must continue to tap into intuition and imagination directly. Artists should not be mere followers of science; they just should not ignore it. Psyche has its own rules, is its own system, and is more significant, even if not foundational.

And, to be honest, I do suspect there is some sort of energy (or whatever you want to call it) that is unmeasured (and perhaps unmeasurable) by science, which mystics (even if using their brains) can perceive.

Holy! Holy! Holy!

Let There Be Cosmology

Another idea that interests me is that artists (poets included) should keep up with the cosmology (in the widest sense) of the times. Should poems reflect the world—or, more accurately, the idea of the world—that contemporary people actually live in?

This becomes an especially thorny question in 2008, because obviously not everyone agrees as to what the world is. Some people believe this world was created by, and is presided over by, God. Some think the world is nothing but matter. Some people are aware of the discoveries/hypotheses of quantum physics, such as string theory and M theory and etc. Some are not. And most people, no matter which of these other groups they fall into, also subscribe more than they think to a basic animal faith in the uncomplicated solidity of things. Is this relevant to poetry? Is it apparent in any given poem what version of the world the poet lives in? What should poets do with all this?

One very interesting angle on this is to, in some way, write about the clash of cosmologies that is occurring now, about the desire to reconcile string theory and religion and the ordinary common-sense, animal-faith reality we all experience everyday. This is something I want to explore in poems. Another way (which I have already tried to do, but which I hope I will do more successfully in the future) is to roll these all up into a single plump mega-cosmology.

To put it another way: if the poet's job is to re-imagine the world, must a poet in 2008 keep informed about what the sciences say, and what the religions say, and etc.? Must the scientific imagination be included in the poetic imagination, somehow? My vote is yes, though allowing for the fact that some poets (myself at the top of the list) will inevitably misunderstand the science.

Some will argue that no such awareness is necessary, but I'm not so sure. I very much disagree with the view that there are only a few basic subjects for poems: love, mortality, nature, etc. I think poems can be about anything, but even if one accepts the idea that there are only a few subjects to write about, it must be recognized that the poet's cosmology will color even those traditional topics. A poem about death written by a poet who believes in Heaven is very different from one written by a materialist atheist. A love poem written by someone who believes the whole "soul mate" thing from the Symposium will differ from one written by someone who thinks we are only dying animal products of the Big Bang. More subtly, a nature poem written by someone who simply takes sense perception for granted in an ordinary, animal-faith way will differ from one written by someone steeped in the frothy subatomic mysteries of particle physics.

It seems to me there are two basic ways to incorporate cosmology. The first, as noted, is to actually write about it, foregrounding cosmological ideas in the main content of the poem. The second is to let cosmology serve simply as backdrop. This happens whether the poet likes it or not, so my project is to keep aware of this as I modify my writing style (if in fact I manage to do so). I study Buddhism and other religious mysticism and stuff like string theory (in its popularized, de-mathed form), but do these things make it into my work?

I fear that the lazy, consumerist brand of materialism has crept so fully into this culture that, even though my head is filled with thoughts of Buddha Nature and dimensional membranes, I really live—and write—as just one more citizen of Cheap Plastic Strip-Mall America.

All this is to say that I really have to try harder, when I'm writing, to remember what world I mean to imagine.

Instead of brackets, gods

I almost forgot to do today's daily post, which is not a good start to my daily posting regimen. But better late than never, I guess.

No funny pictures today. Just words.

***

Today I'll just try to focus my previous blog's topic a little better. So, if I'm going to use Graham as a template because I share her interest in mind's relationship with "world," then my task is to figure out how my own philosophical/intellectual orientation would play out differently.

• I am interested not in "mind" so much as in "psyche," as the term is used by C.G. Jung and James Hillman. That is to say, as the term bleeds right into its sister-word, "soul."
• Consequently, archetypes and myth are of great importance (though I haven't figured out in what way I should use these). Graham references myths sometimes, but I want myth to play more of a foundational role.
• Mysticism, particularly my version of the Buddhist non-dual variety, is the foundation of my view. Thus, while Graham seems to imply a certain dualism between mind and world, I view mind as an extension of world. (Or vice-versa, depending on my mood.) The human psyche, since it is the world, cannot truly be alienated from the world.
• Hence, human language cannot distort "reality," because it is fully part of reality. Nature makes brain makes language, so language=nature. How can nature distort nature? How can reality not know reality? Words are made of earth and sing the earth. Language can only complicate and (further) transform reality. So, the suspicion and skepticism of language that sometimes troubles Graham (as well as a lot of other contemporary poets) is not an affliction I have.
• (That last point may be the most important; I'm more inclined to celebrate consciousness than to be anxious about it.)
• To sum up, more Jung, Hillman, Bachelard, and Trungpa, less Heidegger and Wittgenstein and etc. (Though I do like Heidegger.)
• So, instead of phenomenological brackets, gods.
• Generally, as a Buddhist and a post-Catholic, and simply by temperament, I hew to a certain ontological and epistemological optimism.

I'm really just thinking out loud here, brainstorming. What all of this translates into in terms of actual poetry, I have no friggin' idea. I'm not even sure this does have any relation to poetry. And the bullet-pointed summary I just provided is so drastically oversimplified that it is of limited usefulness. But maybe you get the idea.

***

The instructor for one of the classes I'm taking at UIC in the fall has recommended that we read Kant and Hegel on aesthetics over the summer. The prospect of reading these two kind of makes me want to throw up—especially Kant, who is not known for being an engaging stylist. This quasi-assignment actually makes me want to review my Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of whom are actually very readable. I am more partial to some Germans than to others. Inevitably, snooty bastard that I am, this shite will make it into my new poems. Especially Schopenhauer. He's not my Facebook profile stand-in for nothing. (And I would argue that his pessimism is actually inessential to his overall philosophy, but that's another discussion.)

***

Really my goal is to be a combination of William Blake and Susan Sontag. (Oh, Photoshop . . . )

Prayer to St. Jorie Yeats

St. Jorie Yeats
Patron Saint of Meaningful Form


***

First, to anyone who might have stumbled across this blog while Googling "Dylan Thomas" or the title poem (or something else):

Welcome.

I know this isn't what you were really looking for, but I get at least half a dozen of you accidental readers every week, so I hope you keep reading and find something interesting. Especially since I have, like, three or four readers otherwise. (Welcome to you too, my intrepid three or four.)

***

So, last month some other poet-bloggers did the "poem-a-day" thing, where they wrote a new draft every day and posted it to their blogs.

I'm not going to do that; my poem-maker doesn't work on the "daily" setting, and I sure as hell wouldn't post my early drafts anyway—for your sake as well as mine.

However, the daily part does interest me, so I'm going to try posting little essay thingies every day, at least for the rest of May.

***

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I might change my poetry style a bit. I'm a little sick of the kind of poem I've been writing for a little while now. Even though I am a bit wary of the seemingly compulsive innovation—or faux-innovation, as it seems to me—that plagues a good chunk of contemporary poetry, I would like to arrive at a form that somehow better matches my content.

But how many viable ways are there, really, to handle poetic form? Back in the days when traditional metrics ruled the roost, it was easy to come up with flashy ways to disrupt the tradition. Now, what's left to disrupt? Bruce Lee once said something like, "All the different martial arts styles are conditioned by the basic limitations of human anatomy. A human being has two arms and two legs, and there are really just so many ways one can realistically and effectively use them in combat." Beyond a certain point, one might just be waving one's arms around.

What can I do to my sentences and lines and etc., to enliven my poems without lapsing into nonsense? My primary exemplar in this project is Jorie Graham. I admire the way she warped poetry to match her own intellectual and emotional preoccupations. The stylistic moves she's made are not at all arbitrary; they have everything to do with her philosophical investigations into the relationship between self and world. Like them or not, one must admit that her styles are perfect expressions of her personal cultural experience. (As far as I can tell from reading her biography, anyway.)

She started off writing much more conventionally, then took off in a new direction. How can I make that leap? What style fits my weird little blend of Eastern mysticism and philosophy and depth psychology and etc.? I feel like this should come naturally, but when I write, my thoughts dribble out in the same old form. Thus, I have to take the poetics bull by the horns and conceptualize a new style, at least to the point of having a working, provisional model to try out.

Another poet who interests me a great deal these days is W.B. Yeats. His way of including myth and esoteric religious material in poems about everyday life appeals to me, as does his attention to language. In some ways, I think my overall poetic project is very similar to his. At any rate, I love how densely packed his poems are, and how pleasing on every level—discursive, sonic, imagistic.

What I want is to come to some happy medium between the kinds of writing epitomized by these two poets. One problem with a lot of poets who open up their form (Graham included to a slight extent, though MUCH less so than her imitators) is that the language gets slack and the poem gets bland and boring. I want to keep my poems densely packed like Yeats's, but also formally inventive and fresh like Graham's. I want to be a perfect hybrid of Yeats and Graham—or, more accurately, of the different kinds of projects they symbolize for me. Hence, St. Jorie Yeats:



So my job is to study Graham and infuse her Jorie-consciousness into my own soul. But I don't want the new poems to be all about the new form. There's a lot of formal innovation out there these days, but much of it seems to me just as arbitrary and unrelated to the poem's content (and poet's psyche) as is any more conventional, traditional form. I don't want to be one of the "Look at me! I've abandoned left alignment!" type of poets, or a member of the "I'm confused, so you should be, too" school. Even Graham painted herself into somewhat of a corner by putting all her eggs in the "formal innovation" basket, so that with every book she had to find a new way to top herself. Perhaps because she hit the wall with Swarm, her books since then have been increasingly less "out there." I want to freshen my form without the form being the point.

And I want to enjoy the writing. There will be joy.

Easy to say, hard to do. I will pray to St. Jorie Yeats for a vision of my poems to be.