Poetry Is Not What You Think

by Peter Valentyne

Poetry is not what you think, but rather what you feel. Though it’s true, thoughts do come into one’s head that may be poetic, I would argue the mind is no poet as it is secretly masturbatory by nature and while often appearing reverential is in fact lacking in both love and luminosity. The mind is an aristocracy which takes pride in being the ego’s closest confidante. The mind is neither present nor conscious as it’s nature is receptacle, content to go on chewing undigested things to distraction, and rarely to the point of spitting them out! The mind is a notorious slave owner, consumed by a tendency towards patriarchal empowerment. It would like nothing more than a leg up on Life itself…let alone it’s fellow players. The mind is always fencing in the courtyard flanked from head to foot in armor. But armor is not amour. To be a poet and to write great poetry, one must be naked, shun tyranny, exposed, open, and vulnerable. Therefore every poem I write is something of a nude scene. Every image a closing in; a close-up cloaked in buoyant resignation to bare my soul for whomever may crack the door or lift the lid. What kind of reader are you? 

The mind cannot love, therefore, it compensates by amusing itself. If your mind is authoring your poetry, or for that matter, living your life…overthrow it immediately. The mind is a follower that is determined to lead. It shamelessly lives to take the throne.  

Poetry is meant to fall on centers other than the mind. Poems are rarely composed in literal language. More often they are in the cryptic dialect of dreams. If they have nuance, they cast shadows and honor the opposites pulling us toward or away from battle, only to find ourselves a civil war! This is called fighting the good fight.

One could safely say that most Americans dislike poetry, or at least are indifferent to it. We live in an age of prose, of journalese, and advertising jingles. Poetry, the most directly indirect, mysterious, condensed, and passionate form of communication, is about as American as socialism or not shopping. Unlike television, texting, or scrolling the Internet, it demands concentration; that alone makes it suspect. Add silent, calm surroundings and a contemplative mind, and you can forget it. Silence, the holy spirit of true thought. has become an endangered species and is slowly disappearing from our midst. How, for example, could a noisy mind hovering in a technological jangling begin to grasp these lines from Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem New York?

The mountains exist. I know that

And the lenses ground for wisdom.

I know that. But I have not come to see the sky.

I have come to see the stormy blood,

the blood that sweeps the machines onto the waterfalls,

and the spirit onto the cobra’s tongue.

So as I find myself in middle age with a book of poems to foist upon what feels like an indifferent populace, the passionate artist in me wishes I could reinvigorate the form or even re-invent it, if it would only lead to breaking through to an inconscient world. Or would it be more effective just to place my poems on a pyre to opine their brightness in order to feel their heat on the face of another? 

Honestly, a lot of poetry feels like sheer indulgence. If I don’t promptly turn away by replacing the book back on the shelf, I stay a moment to see just how shameless or wanton “the poet” may become. At least some portion of human nature is being revealed. But it hardly nourishes my heart and soul, which is where poetry has the most power and influence. It’s the difference between elevator talk and elevating being. One is earthbound while the other is mysteriously unearthed! 

Imitating the Creator

The creator is a writer, yes, but the writer is also a creator.  The writer uses words to create worlds, just as God spoke the world into being during the six days....Creation through language is not a one-time event but the enterprise of all writers and poets throughout time.

The notion of the poet creating a world through language lies at the heart of Coleridge's 'Kublah Khan,' a poem about words and worlds and the struggle to write.  In his preface, Coleridge explains that he wrote the poem one night after he fell asleep reading about Xanadu....He woke with a poetic vision of the palace, which he set about writing down, but he was interrupted by a visitor and forgot the lines.  The poem seeks to depict the glory of Xanadu while also capturing the poet's despair at his inability to recreate that 'stately pleasure dome' in words. The vision fled and the words eluded him, so the poem remained merely, as Coleridge put it, 'a fragment.'

Coleridge was devastated that he could not put his vision of the palace into language.  He longed to recover the dream of the dome and the cave, but it remained as evanescent as a passing shadow, a vanishing cloud, a fleeting dream.  But he captured that failure in language, and his own shortcoming became an inspiration for generations of writers. 

I recently read that“According to the rabbis of the Talmud, the world was created on Rosh HaShanah.  As we proclaim in the liturgy of the day, 'Today is the birthday of the world.'  And so it seems appropriate that on Rosh HaShanah we think about what if means for us to be creators, and what prevents us from engaging in creative work.  God knows what is in our hearts, but sometimes what is in our own heart eludes us, and it becomes all too easy to run away from the difficult work of identifying what we were uniquely meant to contribute to the world.  May the One who creates and understands all hearts teach me to understand my own, so that I might begin again.”

Catharsis

One of Rumi’s poems unequivocally states: You must change your life. The line is both an epiphany and a mystery un-garbed in a single  sentence. The very vagueness of it’s implication allows the reader, whoever they may be, to interpret the edict in his or her own way as both a revelation and a starting point. In my own poems I feel I am always aiming for catharsis large or small. And I would add that a small catharsis can help further us gracefully towards greater well-being. 

Now let me get off my high horse and get real. Life is mysterious. Try pinning it down, start labeling, and it morphs and escapes our expectation. Try philosophy and you find yourself treading on lilies. Nothing like a flower needs your science. The greatest things often have no reason for being. Poetry will never be a utility. Beauty, however, is not unnecessary…though it may be lived without. That said, if the worst of our trials and tribulations could be deemed beautiful….pain and sadness would lose it’s sting. Only a poem could show you what I mean without being an outright sermon.