is the heart's blood-
a hammer softly tapping
making in the fluid (fire)
what winks out the eye of the glass
*
your body is a vase
and I am the silent lily
a cup (like a grave)
in the snow; the imagination
you've seen so often
where it ought to be
that you know longer see
or know
*
I am the mooncow,
the two-headed, the cloven-hoofed,
calved of the sky:
eating from the trough
of old, degenerate night
and drinking the lies of the stars;
we (none of us)
have been;
we (never) were.
------------------------------
Good evening readers,
I just finished this little triad which explores the relationship of beauty/myth and its existence in the world, and conversely in the observer, a little piece of what I've been grappling with lately. I won't really go into the structure I kind of hoped to achieve with it; I haven't stood away from it long enough to really delineate its components in the reality of the poem apart from how I conceived it in my mind.
I've been thinking a lot lately about that famous Donne line "I am a little world made cunningly/Of elements and an angelic sprite." Now, I've always taken that to mean that the poem is a microcosm, a little world apart from the larger; a space which you enter and which you must accept the basic rules and premises of in order to gain access. I think that this view may be held by many literary critics and readers. However, the second line "Of elements and an angelic sprite" deserves a second thought; it of course means that a poem, like a myth, is composed of interchangeable pieces, held in sequence by a structure (as Levi-Strauss would say, an armature), an animating spirit. On the psychological level, the 'elements' are various mental objects and symbols, and the 'angelic sprite' is the arrangement by the ego into a more-or-less logical progression. On the level of construction, the 'elements' are pieces of myth, signs (whether derived or innate) that are grouped under a common genealogy and arranged according to a selective principle that is consciously chosen and may or may not mirror the author. Now, the question that follows is whether the elements and the structure are, as I said, derived or innate. I obviously didn't create the notions of wine/bottle, flower/vase, mooncow/sky (or face/face, hoof/hoof, and is/is-not; further subdividing), but in some form, perhaps a vague and nebulous form, but a form nonetheless, these concepts are inherent in me as part of my endowment as a human being. So I think that we can safely answer that they have their origins in the innate, but borrow from the world of experience (derived from somewhere) in order to find their shape and express themselves. But this is aside. Whether I stole these ideas from other texts (as I am admittedly apt to do) or whether I conceived them in the vacuum of my mind, they are external to the poem itself. Whether they refer to some specific reality, some specific mental object, or signify only other myths, other signs, in an endless progression, they are a referent to something. I conclude from this that it is not fortuitous to view the poem as a closed plane, but rather only as a signpost, a point on the infinite grid(or globe; I rather like the globe idea better) of possible things and possible thoughts. To use Buddhist terminology, the poem should be the finger and not the moon. I think that a study of the classic canon will bear this out. For example: I would rank the greatest piece of drama as Hamlet, the greatest novel as the Brothers Karamazov. In these certain ambiguities are very conspicuous: the question of Ophelia's suicide, and the question of the murder of Fyodor respectively. We can argue ourselves hoarse, but there are only clues, and no conclusive proof in the text, either of Ophelia's madness or intent, or as to which brother is the murderer; I believe that this blurring of the final outcome and it's consequent onus on the reader to fabricate some part of the story is the precise reason for why these books lead into the infinite and thus into the beautiful, the sublime. Well we know that every generation has a different reading of Shakespeare, a different insight into Dostoevsky; but these works seem to persist because they are colored mirrors, allowing you to strain out the muddle and din of humanity and isolate the human spirit, see a bit of yourself as you really are. We all hate poetry that's didactic and moral; in fact, we only tolerate morality in art when it's discursive, when it frames the question, the dichotomy of life (life/death, I/other, poem/reality), and if it asserts a solution at all, recognizes implicitly that its own solution is tenuous (the fable is a glaring exception to this, but I believe that can be entertained as well in these terms, and is for another day besides). The primary function of poetry is thus, not description, but wonderment; not the entrance into its own world, or the world of its author, but the limitless world of thought and myth itself.
Just my thoughts;
Thank you, and goodnight.
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