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Evasion as a Poetic Ideal
To say that poets evade the truth is to say nothing. To say that there is such an ideal as 'the truth' is also to say nothing. And yet, poetics deal with thoughts that are 'unclear and imprecise'. If the prosaic ideal is to be clear, then I must impress upon the gentle reader that the poetic ideal is far from that. The poet is constantly struggling with ideas that are half formed and seem elusive, to the most preceptive of non-poets. Evasion must be the clear tactic when dealing with this scenario. A prosaic example of this tactic is to be found in T.S. Eliot book of essays, 'The Sacred Woods', in which he finalizes the first part of his essay on being a poet with an example of how the concept of platinum works not as a reagent, but a catalyst, an idea which must be present for the actual chemical process to function. William Empson and Kenneth Burke made whole careers out of clarifying the unclear. Let us take for text the monologue of Macbeth:
Had she but died yesterday
there would have been a time for such a word
yet tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
creeps in this petty pace, from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time
What is he lamenting, the loss of his wife, I should think not! This is a lament of his very own existence, was it not Lady Macbeth who plotted and schemed his 'Tarquin's ravishing strides', was she not responsible for the very predicament that he finds himself swept up into. Shakespeare, of course was very concentrated and focussed and found these types of evasion very easy, I suspect. Another example could be culled from Luis De Gongora's poem which elegizes for some hundred pages or so, with waxen fruits, lucious greenry lining every bank of the blessed river, but then, without any warning, 'the wounded fawn in the forest, that was not real', and becomes another trope. As Rob't Browning directs in Sordello 'tis the poets trick of catching the dead when missing the quick'. Metaphor as I am lead to understand it, is a representation of one thing by another, in other words, an evasion by comparison. When John Dunne speaks of 'the flea twixt you and me' he is not speaking about the damnable flea that has bitten them both, what is understood is the exstacy of comingling bodily fluids, if he were a saint i would accuse him of writing a religious poem, but I prefer to think he was speaking of 'getting some'. When St. John of the Cross speaks of 'setting down the music that I carried in the bushes, and taking up the clothing of work', he is speaking of reforming the Catholic Church, not becoming a responsible adult and getting a job, this is a clear evasion of the reality contain within the poem itself. I recently posted a poem by Federico Lorca on this board and it was about a snail:
Today they have brought me a snail
within it sings
a green sea of maps
my heart is filled
with water
and fishes
of silver and shadow
today they have brought me a snail.
He is NOT talking about a snail. He doesn't care about the snail we could safely surmise. He is speaking about the poor crippled boy/girl/man/woman who has been injured/paralyzed and is now thinking of the largest of joys that he/she may have. The snail does not have a song, nor maps, the unfortunate is the one who posseses these. There are, and lucky for us, many interpretations that one may encounter in any of these lines, they are not made to be interpreted literally, of course, they are made to be pondered. back in the old days, and by that I mean Greece, they had the equivalent of rap-off's, the crazy sheperds would show up and speak their best lines, maybe do a couple of robot moves, and then give the mic to the next. African tribes fleeing portuguese rule in Brazil had a similar style of governance, the best words win. are these the words that are most direct, no, I would admit, are they the most divergent from the truth, probably not when it comes to governing. Let us take for a trope the lines that Pres. Bush said of Ariel Sharon, 'He is a man of peace', and yet, was it not Ariel Sharon leading the troops into Palestine in the 60's, is he not the war mongering leader of a nation, shutting off a people who have lived there for several thousand years. Now how many levels of trope do we find here. The common notion is that there is always seven levels of trope, four are usually found easily, the rest only by hard application to the problem at hand.
The mathematical notion of 'X is to Y as A is to B' is what the general poetic notion attempts, yet words tend to carry more emotional weight than do numbers or variables, however, the same principles apply, finding the most proportinate values for the idea that one wishes to express using the principle of 'for every X I will replace it with an A'. Or, 'for every fuzzy notion I have about such, I will find some word or phrase that carries the similar emotional and metaphysical weight that the original fuzzy idea has for me'. In this way, we are able to find our way through the trap of attempting to actually attempt to say what it is we feel and address the problem through prose. I would venture so far as to say that for every prosaic notion, the poetic has preceeded it. For every attempt at telling the direct notion, the evasion has come first. As Marx might have put it (had he a funny bone) first comes the history, then comes the irony, but what I meean by that is that the poetic notion, ironic in its intent must come first, then the historic principle of irony comes into play producing a tangible veracity, or smidgen of truth to be expanded. An example of this would be the notion of E=mC2. Einstein produced this notion which hinted at the truth contained within the atom, and then we bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The history of the notion (contained in the ironic, or better , the mathematical evasion) came first, then the tangible results, a non-evasion (a prosaic ideal).
Eat, sleep, drink, piss, shit, laugh, cry,
the fools may laugh, but the wise will understand.
To be strictly buddhist about these notions, we must use our minds, not as the crucible of ideas, but as the catalyst, neither taking nor giving to the process of the ideas, letting the ideas find their own method of expressing themselves through the poetic or prosaic processes, we must be aware that that our job is not to force our own ideas upon these fuzzy-logic processes as poets, our job is to record them as best we may. Diction, punctuation, style manuals, these are all tactics and as such, not to be trusted, our intuitions must prevail, those notions that are slightly beyond ourselves yet can be felt, though not seen. Speech at any given time is a creole, a hybrid of what-went-before, and what-is-to-come, the poet must recognize this and be thoroughly caught in its flux, the idea of what-comes-next. I feel this keenly in translating poems that have already been competently translated. I must ask myself why, philosophy seems to lack answers in this regard, and I must rely upon instinct. The question of why is seemingly never answered, and yet, the instinct continues to drive idea forward. So in the spirit of evasion, here is what I really wanted to say:
So much
depends
upon
a little
red wagon
- WCW
The women come and go
speaking of Michaelangelo
- T.E.
Once again,
I had overprepared the event
- E.P.
Here and now boys
here and now
-from The Island
I have a picture of Jackie O
pressed in my wallet to my ass
-J.B.
The traveller must decide
to stand within the sphere
or without.
- D.D.H.
there we will find
haven/heaven
-H.D.
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Yikes,
How much one misses when one doesn't read the threads, I will read this another six times or so and post some sort of evasively tenuous response full of big words and meaning nothing more than a steamy pile of very fresh...oatmeal, with butter, cream, brown sugar, and some fresh bog blueberries lightly sprinkled on top. Yum. I agree with Sue, language is a shifty thing, and in concealing meaning, we often expose our little gentials more better than had we merely opened our cloaks, plus the naughty little view of someone's naughty bits is usually heightened in proportion to the, let us say, unintended nature of the little peep we get. To find an emotionally 'immature' poet out through unintended emotional 'leakage' is easy, however, to suss out a good or great poet by lack of leak, or directed flow of leakage is something else altogether, to get back to Empson, and to quote a poorly remembered quote by somebody else whose name I quite forget, nevertheless mentioned in brief passing yet left some kind of emotional scar as I read it and wept as I rode the bus into work one morning and tried to memorize on the fly from a book read years ago...
the forest birds sang sweet in the ruined sacristy
Marlowe maybe, or Shakeyspear |
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| | | From: _susan_ | Sent: 6/15/2003 6:31 AM |
you know.. Eliot is a real favorite of mine. but i have yet to read all of his work. he is very repetitive in phrases and such. he carries a definite "lexicon" of his own. so i go back to maybe 3 or 4 works at most, and keep reading them over and over at different times. because each time, my own experience brings something new to them - my interpretation of them. i do not like reading his copious notes. i'd rather make my own discoveries. with the possible exception of Latin translations, i forego those obscurely written footnotes whenever possible. i like to read straight through. but it is enlightening to discover, e.g., that the Holy Grail was supposedly in the place of The Waste Land. it makes all his references to Tristan, Isolde, Percival much more than operatic. there is such ultimate sadness in his work. but great beauty as well. people want to say he is out of fashion perhaps, but his work will remain. and i hate to use this phrase too often, but his work does "resonate" with me. whatever our experience, be it from a rural farmstead, small town, large city, from new york or to el salvador's precipitous roads - the birds still sing. in time, we hear them. susan |
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and being a bird-man myself
I know that their silent siftings still drift down.
The silent islands are a far different place.
that is where I am...
-ol' ape-neck sweeney
p.s. - swing, swing, up into the tree...
(from an old album i collected) |
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"in concealing meaning, we often expose our little gentials more better than had we merely opened our cloaks, plus the naughty little view of someone's naughty bits is usually heightened in proportion to the, let us say, unintended nature of the little peep we get." if that's true, then it seems like it's the unintentional evasions which are important, not the intentional ones. Which could make intentional evasion evade the point of reading evasions in the first place. |
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| | | From: _susan_ | Sent: 6/16/2003 5:23 AM |
i've come to the conclusion prof, that you are a pelican.
Kf -
i see you speak the German Language. |
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| | | From: _susan_ | Sent: 7/2/2003 11:52 PM |
George Orwell, 1946: In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. |
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| | | From: _susan_ | Sent: 7/9/2003 1:43 AM |
sorry Kingfisher left. hope the joyous one returns. shit. :-( |
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K.F.,
Well duh.
sincerely,
dh |
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Another quick reference,
and I am sorry for the mis-spellings
in the original essy,
typing from paper notes and looking
off to the side while
typing is no excused.
Hair hit his.
Some Questions Concerning Modern
Revisionist Literature In The
Soviet Union
By Hsiang Hung and Wei Ning
...While prating about support for the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle of the peoples of Africa and Asia, they have busied themselves with a meeting to commemorate Kipling, a colonialist writer in an imperialist country.
...they have come to realize that they have no choice but to rise in resistance if they want to win liberation...
...even a tiny spark can cause a world conflagration...
We firmly oppose all kinds of unjust wars of aggression launched by imperialism headed by the United States...
Soviet modern revisionist writers are serving as a special detachment of U.S. imperialism in literature;...
...But the modern revisionist writers distort and slander both these wars.
dh |
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| | | From: _susan_ | Sent: 7/23/2003 12:11 AM |
there was a raid today. saddam's sons ratted out. they did not evade being executed. |
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That's becuase they were not poets
say like Chairman Mao... or Stalin.
See how the Amurkian Harmy proved
my point, rather sophoclean, 'taint hit. |
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Sue,
I took a short walk through the Hindu Kush. I am thrilled to be back, but not really. I love the Shalwar Chemise and the Lunghee. I like funny hats. But I found out I have some serious plumbing problems. I do not wish to evade, But if you could collect my thoughts, I would be very appreciative. I'm sorry I never stopped by your place when I went through NYC the past few times.
I'll write again soon,
DDH |
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i hope you people are more interesting in person. |
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| | | From: _susan_ | Sent: 7/4/2006 5:34 AM |
you took a short walk thru the hindu kush . . . . well, i'm glad you didn't run into any land mines. and it does not surprise me that you like funny hats. you want me to help you out with your plumbing problems or collecting your thoughts? sounds one and the same to me. i know you would be appreciative, but i am not going back on this board to collect your poems, if that is what you are hinting at. just click on your id and follow the trail back in time. if you could make it thru the hindu kush wearing a shalwar chemise, i'm sure you can make it thru The Poets' Place. lol i'm sorry you never stopped by to say, hello, when passing thru ny (not). but please write again soon. hahaha s.
bloog ... nevermind. |
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