Poetry

[obnoxion]

I had a different problem, as I did not learn any approach to poetry in school. I would have needed to learn at least one or two rigid methods to analysing poetry. To say that a poem can be anything, seemed like a diplomatic way to say they are nothing. Understandably, the most lamentable fault in most Finnish amateur poems that I have read, has been their lack of structure. And I must say that it is a big difference between a poet who has discarded a style he or she has once mastered, and someone who has never had the pleasure to learn discipline by practicing writing within the limits of well defined form. The path of practice (or the lack of it) often shows. Now, it is not the only thing that counts. Sincerity is more important than structure. But for most writers, free form is a shakcle.

It kind of dawned on me, when William Blake wrote that the God of the Old Testament is a Poetic Genius: The strict details of laws function like the structures of a style - They channel the creative inspiration through the thight channels of the structures, and this builds up the energy, like water in a fire hose, and multiplies its force. So a strict structute can make a little inspiration great. But if there are loose stylistic structures, a massive idea can simply vanish into the formless whiteness.

[Heith]

As someone who does not really contribute on the conversation but is following it with bated breath, I must say that this is wonderful. I am learning a lot -interestingly, I believe I understand you both a lot better from a psychologic and religious approach point of view now.

This is my favourite thread I think!

[Mimesis]

T.S. Eliot said:

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions knows what it means to want to escape from these things.”

Whilst this is a hard statement to entirely agree with in its beginning - although I can see where the intention lay - perhaps this is also the case with writing in poetic form and structure. It takes one to have wrestled with it, and thus to know it, in order to be able to abandon it effectively, without losing the reason for it being there initially.

A lone bird who lives and flies in a flock but has lost the very flock it flies within, becomes a bird drunk on freedom and possibility, and thus loses its purpose and probably ventures to death as a result of this loss. However, a bird flying well within its flock maintains its rhythm and purpose, but its individual freedom of flight and movement is not lost in this, and still it flies in sporadic and beautiful shapes and form.

Something similar was expressed quite nicely by Kurt Brown in ‘The Measured Word: On Poetry and Science’.

In it, the thought of A.R. Ammons, who was a twentieth century American poet, that by “writing in traditional forms one submits their work to the arbitrary rule of authority", is denied by comparing the writing of poetry to a test using boid’s, which is some artificial computer programme. This test saw these boid’s following a form and structure which they had been built upon the premise of, but rather than forming a universal flock and collective rule, the rule became localised and referred only to what each individual boid could ‘see’ and thus react to within its own vicinity.
The conclusion of this comparison was the thought that ‘the rules of formal poetry do not generate static vases, but the same kind of bottom up, self-organising processes seen in complex natural systems such as flocking birds, shifting sand dunes, and living trees.’

I like this relation of poetry to the natural world and the way within which it both works and expresses itself. Nature, after all, is based upon very rigid form and structure, but from it, expresses itself in such wild, spontaneous and limitless forms.

[obnoxion]

I have not yet delved deep enough into T.S Eliot, so I cannot say much about that. But from what little I know of his personality, he seems very relateable character. His christianity, not least his enjoyment of observing the High Mass being performed, seems to me to be a very similar to the way I relate to both religion and art. I feel the structures to be energetic and very much alive. The structures, I would say, are the very form of freedom, (in a similar way that an outcast granny can be for a Tantrika the sublimest form of Emptiness).

I can also relate to how T.S Eliot valued his privacy, and did not make his private life available, even amidst of accusations of living in an ivory tower. It is an unreasonable demand that every one who does something extraordinary, must succumb to publicity. In a way I am happy that publicity is such a common thing in our age, if it only eases the preassure for those who value their privacy.

I am familiar with the sentiment of A. R. Ammons, and it really crystallizes what puts me off West. The one who refuses structures as arbitrary authority, succumbs to absolute tyranny. I do not think man has a choice of total freedom in this life, but only a choice between authorities. So this freedom of A. R Ammons can be in my eyes only a covoluted relationship to some authority, or a form of blindness.

Nature is a perfect example of form that is both living and energetic. Every tree testifies of an Idea, yet each is completely unique.

The mere idea of outline is the very manifestation of Shiva: The idea of an outline must be one of the most dominating structures of consciousness, and I would compare it the most primal form of the formless Lingam. When we observe nature, outlines are everywhere, as the very fabric of manifestation. But when we approach the things themselves, the outlines vanish, and nature is unveiled as an unrestrained play of energies. And thus the Lingam, so firm and real and concreat, is revealed as pure spiritual idea, fully etheric to the senses. This realization (if one can call it thus) has actually dawned on me while viewing Cezanne's art.

The eye is holy, I'd say, and should not be related to illusion. It is our relationship to the eye that is problematic. We should not separate what we sense and what we think. The thought and the sensation are one. The nature we see is never not a thought.

[Nayana]

From Lautréamont's "Chants of Maldoror":

"Yes, I feel my soul padlocked in the bolt of my body and it cannot get out and flee from the shores lashed by human waves, no longer witness to the livid pack of miseries relentlessly pursuing the human lizards over the sloughs and pits of immense despair. But I shall not complain. I received life as a wound, and I have forbidden suicide to heal the scar. I want the Creator to contemplate the gaping crevasse for every hour of his eternity. That is the punishment I inflict on him."

Although this is prose, I hope it finds its place here; from my knowledge, this work counts as a poetic novel or a long prose poem. It is a fascinating, yet sometimes almost troubling read.

[obnoxion]

He is my bright diamond,
good days, and auspicious stars,
and evil planets, too.
He is ambrosia untasted,
butter in milk, juice in fruit,
melody in song.
With Uma as half his self, he is
speech on my tongue.
My Father in Karukavur
is the source of all things
and the eye that beholds the world.

-Appar-

This extract is taken from Indira Viswanathan Peterson's "Poems to Siva - The Hymns of the Tamil Saints". Appar is perhaps the most famous of the 63 Nayanars or Shaiva Saints. He lived in the 7th Century Tamil Nadu. He was originally a Shaiva, but converted to Jainism, and became a respected head of a Jain Monastery in Tiruppatirippuliyur. But eventually Appar began to suffer from colitis, which was only cured by Shiva's intervention. His style of poetry is called Tevaram, and it is still sung in some Shaiva temples in Tamil Nadu.

One of the aspects of this devotional poetry I find especially charming is how they describe the mythic events of Shaiva mythology happening in their own backyards, in the country side of Southern India. I think a certain anachronism is almost unavoidable in vital religious art. The same thing can be seen, for example, in Filippo Lippi's "Adoration in the Forest", where the Christ Child is born in the middle of a Germanic or Nordic Forest. This kind of focusing on the ever-present archetypical aspect of the religious personae distills, I believe, the more essential aspect of a Faith, than the historic-cultural forms that tend to attach themselves especially to exoteric practice. The milieu of the sacred events must be allowed to ascend to symbolic sphere. And this is one of the most central functions of religious art, I think.

[Mimesis]

I have not yet delved deep enough into T.S Eliot, so I cannot say much about that. But from what little I know of his personality, he seems very relateable character. His christianity, not least his enjoyment of observing the High Mass being performed, seems to me to be a very similar to the way I relate to both religion and art. I feel the structures to be energetic and very much alive. The structures, I would say, are the very form of freedom, (in a similar way that an outcast granny can be for a Tantrika the sublimest form of Emptiness).

Similarly, with regard to his actual poetry, I am not overly familiar with T.S. Eliot. I have read him in part, but have never been particularly moved. However, I do really appreciate his approach to both form and, predominantly, his observations of the Catholic Mass and his relation of it to art.
Very much like yourself, I find his approach to breathe energy and life into both the form he writes within, and the lofty ideals that he regards both his art and his religion in. Them being one and the same is something that I can relate very much to.

Have you also heard of David Jones?

Again, a poet whose poetry itself has never moved me particularly, but whose relation of it to religion I really appreciate and relate to (at least in a thematic and contextual way).
He observed prayer and the Catholic Mass as a work of art, thus in turn accepting that works of art can/are also works of spiritual formulae.

I also really like how his poetry seems almost liturgical in its rhythm, even in its moments of not dealing with topics of religion, but rather of war. There is this thread of spirituality not always in word, but in rhythm and form that runs through his work, regardless of its content.

Perhaps obviously so, as Jones and Eliot wrote in such similar, almost simultaneous times, but the ways in which they both join art and religion in this way, and use form as well as word itself to communicate this is very relatable.

[Mimesis]

Eden's Medicine
Peter Redgrove


He has a taste in his mouth
Of early apple from Eden’s medicine; wild-eyed
He regarded the thunder of heaven, its ominous
Independence; the deep sanity of the rock;
The happy madness of the marsh; the black roses
Of reference that root below the sense’ reach;
The horse, the hooves ripping at the turf;
The flimsy and infinite child; the city
Curving round the train, inhaling train,
Exhaling train; a continued deep sound
Like a leather drum beaten softly, a wet
Bellows softly plied, the tide in the blowhole,
The sea breathing in the blowhole;
He saw like his own the eyes
Of fishes in the thunderstorm, the cold precision
Of ruched gold foil, pleated, unstormy, outlasting storms,
Open to all their troubles as the produce of the thundercloud
Smashes its mile-high windows all around
For we call each other down
Into sleep by sharing images aloud,
As the belies of the whales flood with fish,
Silver rivers of similitudes within;
The unweaned child smells of honeysuckle
In the nights, as you do. Catching thus
These images in the webs of our bodies,
Our embraces commingle, like magnetism,
And we have put on just such an aerial tunic.
The centre does not stir, the pores open
Giving forth persuasion and affection, that began
In kisses woven together
Mingled in one robe like gossamer
From the Head even to the Feet; the two wheels
Of flashing silk enwrap each other,
Each drinks from the drinker at the root centre.


Peter Redgrove wrote some fantastic prose - much better, or moving should I say, at least to my preference, than his poetry - but there is something in his poetry, particularly here, which I think also adopts this idea of form, rhythm and function itself taking on an almost liturgical and spiritually rhythmic presentation, before even the words themselves are considered. This in relation to what we have discussed of T.S. Eliot and David Jones previously.

[obnoxion]

In one of your previous messages, you made a beautiful comparison of poetic form to a flock of birds. Actually, watching birds migrate can also be a pranayama-practice, as the hamsa-mantra, onomatopoetic of the sound of inhalation and exhalation, is also a name of a white, migrating bird (it has never been quite clear to me if it is a swan or a goose…).

I like this relation of poetry to the natural world and the way within which it both works and expresses itself. Nature, after all, is based upon very rigid form and structure, but from it, expresses itself in such wild, spontaneous and limitless forms.

It is an exercise in breaking a natural boundary to practice pranayama by watching birds: a migration to South is the breathing in, and the migration to the North is the breathing out. This can free the pranayna-practice away from the potentially dangerous concentration on the bodily specifics, and help to create an expansion of the sense of self. Such a natural analogy can be enlarged, for example, to consider the sky as the expanse of the mind, wherein our concrete life happens as thought processes. For are not all our conscious sensations always also forms of thought?

Anyway, Peter Redgrave seems to do just such a meditation in his poem Eden’s Medicine: Wild eyes are compared to thunder, sanity to a rock, a foolish glee to a marsh; the vastness of the phenomenon of an ocean’s tide fits into the narrow confines of the whale’s blowhole. So, this is, I think, just like comparing the mind to a sky, and rhythmic breathing to the migration of the birds. And the tide in the blowhole seems, like the city curving around the train, to introduce the flexibility of the mind to the rigorous limits of the landscape – perhaps even comment the vital emptiness of the phenomenon by describing their interconnectedness.

I had not heard about David Jones before, but he seems to be a real find. I have not yet read his poetry, but I find his painting fascinating. I am especially fond of the paintings of backyards he has made. They have in them some Catharctic element of a sacred labyrinth, and a mind tends to wander on a pilgrimage by watching them. And yet these series of mundane backyards are very grounding, creating serenity. It is a healing vision to find that one's backyard is actually a vision of holiness.

It is always a pleasure when poetry and painting are united, like in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (I could recommend Lindsey Smith’s “Pre-Raphaelitism: Poetry and Painting”, which is a cheap little book with a lot of substance. Also, Penny Florence’s “Mallarmé, Manet & Redon - Visual & Aural Signs & Generation of Meaning” is a great book on a little know project of symbolist (Redon) and impressionist (Manet) painters illustrating Stephane Mallarmé’s poetry.)

[Mimesis]

Actually, watching birds migrate can also be a pranayama-practice, as the hamsa-mantra, onomatopoetic of the sound of inhalation and exhalation, is also a name of a white, migrating bird (it has never been quite clear to me if it is a swan or a goose…).

It is an exercise in breaking a natural boundary to practice pranayama by watching birds: a migration to South is the breathing in, and the migration to the North is the breathing out. This can free the pranayna-practice away from the potentially dangerous concentration on the bodily specifics, and help to create an expansion of the sense of self. Such a natural analogy can be enlarged, for example, to consider the sky as the expanse of the mind, wherein our concrete life happens as thought processes. For are not all our conscious sensations always also forms of thought?

What a wonderful way to consider the practice of pranayama and observance of bird migration; thank you.
And in a poetic context, it actually has a synchronisation with something that I was really interested in studying a number of years ago, whilst at university.
How I wish I could have had your insight and understanding then (and now), as this speaks very much of the key that I sought then.

I was studying the rhythm and metre of the ancient Greeks - in both their music and poetry, of which there was/is little, if any distinction between - and then its use in the much later compositional works of Olivier Messiaen.
Essentially, I came to think that it was within the compositions that Messiaen based around/made from bird song that his understanding and use of ancient Greek metre lay.

In short, ancient Greek metre (poetically and musically) was arranged in ‘feet’, which predominantly comprised of two rhythmic stresses; a long and a short syllable, arranged in different orders and amounts, depending on the poetic/musical type. Embellishments and specifics of how to relate these were used, but essentially one would interpret the metre of a poem or a piece of music by the rhythmic stresses identified by these long and short syllable markings.
Therefore, only rhythmic stress was suggested, rather than rigid form dictated by the note lengths, commas and many forms of grammatical and compositional instruction that tell us how to create, and to interpret creation, today.

Looking for the known use of such free metre within a composer working within the confines and instruction of modern Western classical music is therefore almost fanatical and certainly idealistic at times. One can almost interpret anything as one wishes, so to find the actual root of this free metre is almost impossible.
But it is within Messiaen’s compositions that derive from birdsong - which I feel are so much more like poetry than music - where I think the key to this is. He took something so metrically spontaneous and dynamic, and employed among the most free form of understanding metre that we as humans have developed, to express its beauty but not limit its form.

Thinking again about this in light of your insight of bird migration being a form of pranayama; perhaps poetry is also(?).

The lose rhythmic stress here being the inhalation and exhalation - so poetry, guiding us through the expanse of the mind, as well as its outer forms.

....but I find his painting fascinating. I am especially fond of the paintings of backyards he has made. They have in them some Catharctic element of a sacred labyrinth, and a mind tends to wander on a pilgrimage by watching them. And yet these series of mundane backyards are very grounding, creating serenity. It is a healing vision to find that one's backyard is actually a vision of holiness.

I could not agree more. There is a kind of juvenile, naked honesty in his painting, which finds holiness in the moment of everything; even the smallest of things. His poetry I find to be very similar. Not at all juvenile, but laced in the view of holiness and meaning clothing every moment. When he writes of the most subtle of winds moving a leaf to the smallest degree, he does so with the same depth and severity with which he observes art and, for example, the high mass.

(I could recommend Lindsey Smith’s “Pre-Raphaelitism: Poetry and Painting”, which is a cheap little book with a lot of substance. Also, Penny Florence’s “Mallarmé, Manet & Redon - Visual & Aural Signs & Generation of Meaning” is a great book on a little know project of symbolist (Redon) and impressionist (Manet) painters illustrating Stephane Mallarmé’s poetry.)

Thank you so very much for these recommendations; I will be certain to explore them.