Orpheus

“Poetry is a form of power. It fell to early thought to make that power visible and human, and the story of Orpheus is that vision and that mortality.”

ELIZABETH SEWELL, The Orphic Voice p. 3

[3.xii.23.b] Let’s begin with the opening line of Elizabeth Sewell’s important and intriguing study, The Orphic Voice. The first words I saw when I opened her book (I was standing in a bookstore in Las Vegas, of all places) were : “For the misapprehensiveness of his age is exactly what a poet is sent to remedy”. I’d just walked three miles from my casino hotel, past wedding chapel row, to find this bookstore (tellingly called “Writer’s Block”), probably the only oasis of true culture in that city of spectacle. [That walk to the bookstore and my return is the subject of a novelette I wrote when I returned to New York.] Finding Sewell’s book on the shelf that day felt like I had gone on a long journey to discover something truly worthy of the effort. Such are the adventures we contrive for ourselves in the twenty-first century. After reading from The Orphic Voice for about ten minutes, breathlessly rifling through the pages of the book muttering, yes, yes, yes, I collected my treasure and made the three mile walk back to the center of sin. I spent the entire evening in my hotel room, drinking beer, reading Sewell, and filling page after page of my notebook with … yes! yes! yes!

Nine months have passed. I’ve read and reread and ,,, until very recently, I’ve been putting off doing what I know would be required of me if I followed the course that Sewell has so carefully laid out in her study. // Poetry is a form of thought. Writing in the poetic mode is a more complete expression than language that restricts its scope to what is logical. In order to carry out the plan of research that Sewell writes about, one must begin writing poems, or perhaps it’s impossible to begin writing poems : the only way to begin writing poems is if one is already writing poems. The poetic apprenticeship is a long one and it’s even longer now (in this age) when there are no poetic colleges. And I knew that I could not begin … whatever this text is that I will call “Orpheus” … I could not proceed without writing poems or continuing to write poems. Sewell writes that poems present themselves from time to time as working instruments of the inquiry and in conducting this research-work one discovers empirically that the mind knows, in poems, a little more than it knows it knows, so that a poem will often tell the thinking mind where to look next. [p. 409] If you are afraid of poems (poetry), turn back now!

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[5.xii.23.b] Since we are amassing a little library of poetics here ,, an entertaining companion to have on this journey is Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. The foreword to that book is worth reading several times, but if you don’t know Graves, the poet, already ,, these are the opening sentences of chapter one : “Since the age of fifteen poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric. Prose has been my livelihood, but I have used it as a means of sharpening my sense of the altogether different nature of poetry, and the themes that I choose are always linked in my mind with outstanding poetic problems.” I copy this here since it could with a few modifications stand as the opening sentences of my own work on ( of ) poetics ,, but only after understanding (as Sewell does) that poetry is the language of nature will my modifications make sense :: “Since a very early age the observation and study of nature has been my ruling passion … Science [and physics, specifically] has been my livelihood …” etc. Even though I did know explicitly that poetry was the proper mode of scientific thought/inquiry, I must have felt the essential importance of poetry since when (upon entering college at the age of eighteen) I complemented my study of Newtonian mechanics with a careful and thorough reading of De Rerum Natura by Lucretius. Coincidentally, without any formal guidance, I began studying the work of Paul Feyerabend, where, in his essay “Reason, Xenophanes and the Homeric Gods”, I learned that “Homer does not separate reason and myth, (abstract) theory and (empirical) commonsense, philosophy and poetry.” There was a time when the scientist was a poet, but something historical happened to separate the two and to erect a clear and impenetrable wall between their (now) distinct vocations. The question is what happened and why? Feyerabend approaches the question from the side of the philosopher-scientist (the lover of reason) and Sewell & Graves approach from the side of the poet, or (going back) from the even earlier side when the scientist and the poet were one, before they fell victim to what has become the Western gnostic tradition. / to be continued …

#ElizabethSewell #RobertGraves #PaulFeyerabend

[27.xii.23.a : mercredi] Everyone should be writing poems. If the working class is to recover the power of time travel, then we must write poems. Did not Lautréamont tell us to write our poems? And Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs? The message is the same : you must write poems ;;; and here’s how (!!) :: / Burroughs and Gysin proposed the cut-up/fold-in method, and that’s enough to get you started, but once you learn how to ride the bicycles you can invent new training whirly-birds. Turn now in your Orphic Hymnal to Section 9 : at the risk of repeating myself …

What you will learn in this course: how to write a poem. not interested? think again. what is a poem? and here’s the important (graal) question : whom does the poem serve?

working definition (a poem): poetry is a method of thinking, the method uses both mind and body. This is important, the body has to be involved in the making and it can be as simple as drawing a picture or cutting paper snowflakes with scissors. or even better !! dance! sing! don’t be shy!

(i) being a method of thinking .:. what’s it for ?? pick a problem any problem. problem? question/ there’s something that you are curious about : wonder … being a method of thinking, it’s good for anything, the Swiss Army knife (but not a knife, an anti-knife! and certainly not associated with any King’s Army) of figuring things out / don’t object just yet.

(ii) once you start (writing poems) you will build up dynamic structures (never fixed or abstract patterns), and it is through these living, adapting structures that set (place) you in relation to the universe/nature (outside) so that you (inside : a mirroring function) and the universe can each interpret the other. This is no one-way street, it goes both ways : the universe is looking at you when you look at it : the poet-scientist seeks relation, active relating, not at knife point ,, put your weapon down, bury it (or, better yet ! , use your knife to cut-up the Reality Show). If you listen, the universe (Nature) will listen and listening is very important since it’s in the act of listening where the poem begins : a tree in the ear

(iii) as the poem is written, the structure emerges (both inclusive and reflexive) as a habitation of the mind, a landscape (a world created by the world from the world) : the mind melds with whatever it is curious about and what comes out is an interpretative myth made of language and the structure of language arises from mutual (you and the universe) interpretation.

(iv) it doesn’t matter what kind of poem you write : you can use any form (hint: disguise your poem as a prose moment so as not to scare the Reality Show natives)

(v) there’s no such thing as a bad poem (well there are bad poems, but bad poetry isn’t what you’ve been told it is) (see also [8.i.24.b])

Most of what I riffed on above is a development of what Elizabeth Sewell wrote in the penultimate chapter of The Orphic Voice. Maybe I got some of the details wrong, but at this stage, it doesn’t matter because as we practice the method together, our ideas about it will continue to adapt and become more sophisticated, we’ll go deeper. Sewell says the writing of poems (practicing the method) is too important to leave to specialists. She writes: “You can use [the method] in any form, since [inquiring into the universe/world/nature and our place in it] is its deep purpose, and according to whatever level of achievement you can reach. There is no need to think that only superlative poetry has any right to survive or that lesser work is not good and useful in our common explorations. It lies to everyone’s hand and we have to return to it, not as a vague ornament of life but as one of the great living disciplines of the mind, friendly to all other disciplines, and offering them and accepting from them new resources of power.” [ESOV.405]

Unsure of where to begin? Write a poem asking the question. Ask the universe for help and then listen. You don’t need to take a long journey or climb a mountain (though that doesn’t hurt), it’s sufficient to sit quietly in your favorite chair coz the universe is there too. And if you hear something, write it down and let that be the first word of your poem.

[31.xii.23.d : dimanche] The only way to learn is by doing and one begins by copying and making changes, writing with training wheels. Keeping in mind that any form will work and the definition of what a poem is is elastic, similar to saying what a novel is : it’s a novel if I say it is a novel (true/false). But a novel is prose (although I’ve read novels in verse) and a poem is different than prose. It’s not just the meter and rhyming, but a poem is the fullest use of language whereas prose is somehow limited. In what way? (by logic/grammar ?) To be a poem, it should look like a poem, but even this isn’t a strict rule. There are no strict rules, but there are differences. For example, I know for certain I am not writing a poem now, but when I do this …

For as long as I can recall : 
     here I lie submerged
I make my bed in this swamp 
     out of laziness
I dream of waking, but 
     the effort of pushing
through these layers of mud … ugh.
when I open my mouth 
     to sing? cry out?
my throat fills with muck, 
     taste of the earth, decay
if I open my eyes, 
     the trees and the sky 
     are a watery blur,
          what can I see?
If I reach out my hand, 
     will you pull me up?
my flesh is saturated with water, 
     I can’t absorb any more
raise me up, give me a good squeeze
so that I may become light.

it is a poem. Why?