Yes, this is a perfect poem describing a perfect thought. Everything is exactly that, perfect, no matter how it may see. I've thought this often. you only have to step back to see it. The way I like to look at it is in terms of harmony. No matter how clashing, frenzied, chaotic things seem, they are actually moving in perfect harmony with each other in each instant, reacting perfectly to each other, and the next instant is the next instant of harmony. From a few steps back, that describes everything.
I've been away from the blogworld for a long time, but am slowly creeping back, and happened to be rereading an old blurb of mine and some of the comments, of which you had some of the best. So here i am, discovering a wonderful poem.
I came back here and read one of your other poems, called "draft". Well, I just wrote my midterm the day before and had come down from the stress of it, got a good night's sleep, had lots of energy and a clear mind and actually got inspired to write a poem of my own, for the first time in at least 15 years! Then I read it to my sister on the phone. We talked about it for quite a while (she's the best person for analyzing poetry I've ever known), and then I read her several of your poems, which we reread many times and analyzed for several hours. We had a great time, and were both very impressed with your poetry. Because you inspired my poem, here it is, at least in its present form. I'll put it on my blog eventually, but I've found in the past not to do that for a month or two at least because they inevitably get reworked when I have time enough to forget them and so see them with fresh eyes. Nevertheless, at the moment I can't see how I could improve this one. But then I don't have fresh eyes yet. So here it is:
Standing with upturned eyes, sun rising
Seering skies slicing vision in this future air, and down where sinuation drags us all through entrail delight, truth dying inside enormous devices and our lives and lives of death a road: The new sun breaks and spreads over this.
I like the "slicing vision in this future air." It makes me think that we are too future oriented, and need to live in the moment. You are slicing through that tendency to worry about the future instead of the present. The poem also makes me think of the viscerality (is that a word?) of the present, the here and now. This is my immediate reaction, though I will have to think on it further. Is that what you are trying to get at, or is my interpretation way, way off?
Only dwell on this poem if you don't mind looking into hell, because this is pretty much the bleakest vision possible, at least that I can imagine. It's like a dream image of reality. If you were to take some of your feeling of external and internal reality and translate it into a symbolic dream image, it would come out something like this version of mine. This poem really consists of two parts, the title and the body. The title is an image of my conscious self, and the rest is an image of my intuitive feeling of what's REALLY going on. The last line is kind of saying that the rising sun can't even tolerate it.
I have a question for you. (Actually my sister was wondering about this after we read some of your poems.) Do some of the lines in your poems occur to you spontaneously, just pop into your mind in the process of writing the poems? We think some do. I can practically point them out. I think they're some of the best lines.
It is a powerful poem, the kind that only real experience can create. Keep writing, Stan. You have something going.
Yes, some of (many of) my lines are spontaneous. I'll often think of something just as I am falling asleep. And, if I am lucky, I'll think to write it down. I lose a lot though, in those nighttime moments. Other bits, I pore over again and again until it feels just right.
I knew it! I suggest you try to take it one step further. Write the whole thing spontaneously. All you do is just write what pops into your mind, phrase by phrase, and keep going. The idea is you simply put no willpower on which words form, not that they aren't in your conscious mind, which they are because you're conscious. It's a weird process because some of what pops into your mind seems like it's consciously formed, not spontaneous. But that's because you are conscious as you write it, and can't stop thinking. But after it's done (meaning nothing more comes), when you look at it and analyze it, you will see that it's all written by your subconscious, that you couldn't, or wouldn't, have thought of it consciously. This is my favourite way of writing poems. You're not just creating something but actually discovering something. You're looking into your subconscious mind. In the long run, you're consciously conversing with it. At one time long ago, when this was all I did for several months, my subconscious actually began to produce whole, perfectly composed poems, because it knew that's what I wanted, and the subconscious mind is great at producing for you what it thinks you want most in life - truth, lies, understanding, hallucinations, anything. But this is my first attempt in maybe twenty years, so the best it will do is automatic prose, which you could do right now too. Once I have the prose, I work it into a poem consciously. To give an example, here's the automatic prose that my poem above was based on:
"I see intensity in future skies and down to earth we will die of sinuation and entrail delight, finding the truth buried inside enormous devices and no end to death. Seasons change and the sun brings life even so."
I think I consciously improved on the unconscious writing quite a bit. It took me a long time to get to the point of allowing myself to do that. At first I took the unconscous writing as sacred, and couldn't touch it. But now I see it as just an aspect of myself, a partner to my conscious abilities. Actually I see them as needing each other, and that they should work together and with each other. That they are meant to. All my best poems are written like this.
I recommend it to you because you seem nearly there already, and also because it's a very very interesting exercise in finding out who you really are, in seeing all the rest of you, which amounts to quite a lot. For instance, consciously I'm quite an optimistic person, as is portrayed in my title, but unconsciously I can look at the world from the opposite point of view. Consciously I'm a very doubtful agnostic, but now I know that unconsciously I'm a true believer, which is a bit weird to see in myself. And so on.
The idea of doing this can be a bit frightening at first, but believe me all you will find is yourself, and if you're a good person, that's what you'll find inside. Nothing to be afraid of.
9 comments:
Yes, everything's perfect just the way it is.
It's difficult to accept, but there it is.
".......Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should........".
We have our little hour in the sun, then we move on.
Ha! I don't even remember publishing this one. Yes, the universe, as hard as it may seem at times, is"unfolding as it should."
We just have to give it it's chance.
Hi Elizabeth,
Yes, this is a perfect poem describing a perfect thought. Everything is exactly that, perfect, no matter how it may see. I've thought this often. you only have to step back to see it. The way I like to look at it is in terms of harmony. No matter how clashing, frenzied, chaotic things seem, they are actually moving in perfect harmony with each other in each instant, reacting perfectly to each other, and the next instant is the next instant of harmony. From a few steps back, that describes everything.
I've been away from the blogworld for a long time, but am slowly creeping back, and happened to be rereading an old blurb of mine and some of the comments, of which you had some of the best. So here i am, discovering a wonderful poem.
Hi Elizabeth,
I came back here and read one of your other poems, called "draft". Well, I just wrote my midterm the day before and had come down from the stress of it, got a good night's sleep, had lots of energy and a clear mind and actually got inspired to write a poem of my own, for the first time in at least 15 years! Then I read it to my sister on the phone. We talked about it for quite a while (she's the best person for analyzing poetry I've ever known), and then I read her several of your poems, which we reread many times and analyzed for several hours. We had a great time, and were both very impressed with your poetry. Because you inspired my poem, here it is, at least in its present form. I'll put it on my blog eventually, but I've found in the past not to do that for a month or two at least because they inevitably get reworked when I have time enough to forget them and so see them with fresh eyes. Nevertheless, at the moment I can't see how I could improve this one. But then I don't have fresh eyes yet. So here it is:
Standing with upturned eyes, sun rising
Seering skies
slicing vision
in this future air,
and down where sinuation
drags us all
through entrail delight,
truth dying inside enormous devices
and our lives and lives of death a road:
The new sun breaks and spreads over this.
Actually I see something wrong with it already - a spelling mistake. 'Seering' is supposed to be 'searing', although a bit of the 'seer' is implied.
I like the "slicing vision in this future air." It makes me think that we are too future oriented, and need to live in the moment. You are slicing through that tendency to worry about the future instead of the present. The poem also makes me think of the viscerality (is that a word?) of the present, the here and now. This is my immediate reaction, though I will have to think on it further. Is that what you are trying to get at, or is my interpretation way, way off?
Hi Elizabeth,
Only dwell on this poem if you don't mind looking into hell, because this is pretty much the bleakest vision possible, at least that I can imagine. It's like a dream image of reality. If you were to take some of your feeling of external and internal reality and translate it into a symbolic dream image, it would come out something like this version of mine. This poem really consists of two parts, the title and the body. The title is an image of my conscious self, and the rest is an image of my intuitive feeling of what's REALLY going on. The last line is kind of saying that the rising sun can't even tolerate it.
I have a question for you. (Actually my sister was wondering about this after we read some of your poems.) Do some of the lines in your poems occur to you spontaneously, just pop into your mind in the process of writing the poems? We think some do. I can practically point them out. I think they're some of the best lines.
It is a powerful poem, the kind that only real experience can create. Keep writing, Stan. You have something going.
Yes, some of (many of) my lines are spontaneous. I'll often think of something just as I am falling asleep. And, if I am lucky, I'll think to write it down. I lose a lot though, in those nighttime moments. Other bits, I pore over again and again until it feels just right.
I knew it! I suggest you try to take it one step further. Write the whole thing spontaneously. All you do is just write what pops into your mind, phrase by phrase, and keep going. The idea is you simply put no willpower on which words form, not that they aren't in your conscious mind, which they are because you're conscious. It's a weird process because some of what pops into your mind seems like it's consciously formed, not spontaneous. But that's because you are conscious as you write it, and can't stop thinking. But after it's done (meaning nothing more comes), when you look at it and analyze it, you will see that it's all written by your subconscious, that you couldn't, or wouldn't, have thought of it consciously. This is my favourite way of writing poems. You're not just creating something but actually discovering something. You're looking into your subconscious mind. In the long run, you're consciously conversing with it. At one time long ago, when this was all I did for several months, my subconscious actually began to produce whole, perfectly composed poems, because it knew that's what I wanted, and the subconscious mind is great at producing for you what it thinks you want most in life - truth, lies, understanding, hallucinations, anything. But this is my first attempt in maybe twenty years, so the best it will do is automatic prose, which you could do right now too. Once I have the prose, I work it into a poem consciously. To give an example, here's the automatic prose that my poem above was based on:
"I see intensity in future skies
and down to earth we will die of sinuation and entrail delight, finding the truth buried inside enormous devices and no end to death. Seasons change and the sun brings life even so."
I think I consciously improved on the unconscious writing quite a bit. It took me a long time to get to the point of allowing myself to do that. At first I took the unconscous writing as sacred, and couldn't touch it. But now I see it as just an aspect of myself, a partner to my conscious abilities. Actually I see them as needing each other, and that they should work together and with each other. That they are meant to. All my best poems are written like this.
I recommend it to you because you seem nearly there already, and also because it's a very very interesting exercise in finding out who you really are, in seeing all the rest of you, which amounts to quite a lot. For instance, consciously I'm quite an optimistic person, as is portrayed in my title, but unconsciously I can look at the world from the opposite point of view. Consciously I'm a very doubtful agnostic, but now I know that unconsciously I'm a true believer, which is a bit weird to see in myself. And so on.
The idea of doing this can be a bit frightening at first, but believe me all you will find is yourself, and if you're a good person, that's what you'll find inside. Nothing to be afraid of.
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