an introduction … of sorts
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines poetry as: “an instance of verbal art, a text set in verse, bound by speech.” Emily Dickinson added: “if I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
The poetry that interests me, in fact everything that interests me in “Myth of Arrival” is in the tradition of “negative ecstasy,” or “negative capacity.” It is a poetic stretching from Saint John of the Cross through John Keats, Willis Barnstone and others who believe that the poet is nothing more than a void. That is, in order to create the poet requires a willing release of the ego and self, which will in turn allow that void to be filled with the verse. This appealed to me, for I had been feeling like a void on a daily basis for rather long time. It is a method we can use so that works, ideas and even lives that once appeared as imperfect or failures, are, by their very nature, simply unfinished acts of construction.
Some critics argue that modern “Poetry” is in trouble (poetry with the capital P … one of the three P-words that get people all hot and bothered). Or, that there are too many MFA courses being offered and thus too many poets without Serious Things To Say. Or, that _____________ School of Poetry just plain sucks (fill in the blank with whatever form of poetry irritates you at the moment: Slam, Language, Confessional, etcetera). I say, what a great time to be alive! We do have so many different ways to express ourselves. Groovy! As long as we are drawn toward the union of the unknown, steeping aside to let the unknown in, to fill us, to create what we call poetry through us, anything is possible. Coleman Barks has translated the Sufi mystic poet Jalâluddîn Rumi. There are hundreds of Rumi poems advising us to go towards this unknown (some call it Nature, others God or Allah or the Goddess, some the Creative Principal) but this one example, I think, sums up what poetry should be all about better than any other:
“One night a man was crying, ‘Allah! Allah!’ His lips grew sweet with the praising, until a cynic said, ‘So! I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?’
The man had no answer to that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls, in a thick, green foliage.
‘Why did you stop praising?
‘Because I’ve never heard anything back.
‘This longing you express is the return message.’
The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master; that whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.”
Friends, is poetry,“that whining connection”? Is it then a myth that we can never arrive at that union? Or is the myth that once you lean forward, stepping toward the divine, you’ll be able to stop? Is it in the same manner that we constantly turn to all beauty, everywhere, to all things that make us feel as if the top of our head have been taken off?
Perhaps, as poets and readers of poetry and thinkers about the art, we should try to live like that. Let us embrace this union, this longing, this desire, this myth of arrival.