Some ramblings on the poetic -- Miz Eustice
Poetry seems to be borne of and to live more in the realm of imagination than reason if the mind can be so generally categorized. Or perhaps it should be said that it is some mixture of heart and brain. I’m not sure. Sometimes I think it's divine. I’m not sure where else its strange greatness could come from. I’m not even sure how to describe what poetry is. It is not just its form, its sounds, it is more than the sum of its parts. I read somewhere once that poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
Poetry is not like reason, it is not a power exercised by the will. Perhaps one can will oneself to write poetry, but not great poetry. It is more within the general grasp to reason correctly than to make something beautiful. I can only imagine what it is like to do such a thing. Creation seems mysterious, and there is something almost seraphic in it—something invisible and intangible and temperamental that rises from within in an occasional brilliant flash. That brilliant flash must be, of course, supplemented with extremely hard work, but I don’t think that that negates the divinity or power of the muses.
The conscious parts of our minds are not too prophetic and do not know when such a light may come, or what it will wreak. All we can do is recognize its power when it comes if we are so lucky. I’ve experienced a shadow of such a thing a few times—with essays, narcissistic personal writings, etc.
I imagine that all great poetry came about in part by such brilliant flashes—and such divinity. There is something infinite in Homer, Tennyson, Yeats, Shelley, Dickinson, Milton, Whitman….the list continues. Their work is big, but also physically small, and also infinite. Their poems are like ever blooming seeds from which we may continually reap new fruit. Whatever their “true” fruits are may never be known, if they even have one fruit that is truer than another. I think that is part of its beauty.
Yes, some poetry leaps from common human understanding of an experience, requiring exceptional, sometimes stunning, creative imagination! However, I’m still reconsidering the relation of reason and poetry. Reason can have a beautiful structure to it, a rhythm, an alignment, a matching, a form for understanding the world/thoughts/situations. So does Socratic or Stoic syllogism. The flow of logical argument helps us see truth. So does poetry. Both are huge components of consciousness. Could one not say that the person who reasons is doing a poetic act? Reason is not always necessarily a willed action either, it can arise through intuition, through psychedelic experience or nature-based experiences, deep reflection, through life’s vicissitudes… remember Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” was not just about his ability to reason but to be conscious and to describe that consciousness. I can come to a new reasoned conclusion based on conscious awareness of the present which may be fundamentally intuitive in nature, best expressed with poetry.
ReplyDeleteI don’t want to say that the creative space is one which has to live in a world that overrides the reasoning process, when reasoning can also lead us to new awareness, nuance, freedom. Poetry, I would argue, is a very reasoned vehicle for expression of what is hard to express through our standard language options. It seems like poetry can make us think about something in many ways, but it also seems like reason can in some instances do the very same. I think poetry can link intuition and fact, recognizable enough to touch a part of our spirit, a tool to aid our reasoning about the world.
It seems to me that poetry can also be a tool for reason. I can’t limit reason to a reductionist, mechanical solving process or gathering of facts and laying out of analytics. Reason consists of analytics, facts, memory, intuition, thought, sensory experience, cultural alignment, language, argument, awareness, anticipation and prediction, imagination, logic, ethics, laws of nature, consciousness. Reason can lead to poems, poems can express reason in a way that the traditional language fails, reason can be poetic, poetry can arise from reason, etc. Consequently, poetry, in my mind, is a fine option for clarifying reasoning, expressing reasoning, and acknowledging reasoning.
And yes, sometimes divine too!
P.S. I loved your phrasing, “poems are like ever blooming seeds from which we may continually reap new fruit.”
Beautiful exchange. Could it be that "poetry" is not one thing, but an umbrella word for a bunch of things, not always compatible? Great poems always struck me as not antithetical to reason, to contain a kind of thinking, so that they "make sense" -- Dickinson especially.
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