Ars Poetica and Human Becoming

Dear Friends and Family,

April is Poetry Month. I thought we might explore this art form by shining a philosophical light on it. What if we look at poetry through the lens of human becoming? What if we wonder together about the human mode of being (i.e. the structure of consciousness¹) from whence poetry comes? We might even wonder what our inner poetics are up to in these present uncertain times, giving to poetry a broader meaning than creative human expression . . . or giving to creative human expression a broader meaning as a mode of life.

As an aside, and yet not so, I have been refreshing our look here at Beyond the Comfort Zone. In place of what was at the top of your email before, the butterfly in flight, a fine symbol no doubt (or maybe it was a moth seeking a flame—these two images one and the same: two sides of the fine cloth that parts life from death . . . and so, the mythic appraisal of the butterfly who, in yearning to be, rose from the caterpillar’s tomb, the cocoon, but of the moth, who by the same yearning, perished or so it would seem, we can’t say, we reproach and say they are heedless; anyway) what if we come to see that we are as much like the dandelion as these two?

Dandelions insist. We say they are unruly. We say they grow where they should not, in our green-grass lawns, our garden beds of ‘beauty’. And in so growing, they interrupt our fine image of things, and our plans, even finer still—who do you know who grows a carpet of dandelions beneath their beds of roses? That dandelions grow in sidewalk cracks and kiss the bottom of our shoes does not dignify them. For this, we say they are lowly.

Give a touch of breath to a dandelion blossom, and countless new blossoms will soon field and meadow farther than the eye can see. Take a bite from a bitter leaf, and your liver will give without hesitation every ounce of bile on reserve, lending fire in the belly, turning food into flesh. Chew the root, and every microbe in your mouth and gut will wriggle hallelujah for the fine meal you just shared, a meal they now digest on your behalf.

photo credit: pixabays on pexels.com

In the dandelion, we see life’s humble desire to be, not unlike the moth, not unlike the butterfly. Yet, of these three, in the dandelion alone we see life’s ceaseless, tireless, self-spilling without loss. Is this not an expression of the “infinite generosity of the Infinite”² by which we moment-by-moment come to be? To the human, so drunk on sweet, so spent on holding on, the bitter fruit may be the milk and honey for these times that every day show us we are in the crucible of uncertainty. In such a smoldering (alchemizing) state, living by the image of the lowly weed may be the last to come to mind. For this, we might come a little closer and wonder why, and in wondering come to something we forgot we know deep inside yet carry with us like a shaman carries within the god that guides them.³

All of which is not to abandon the winged mariposa, but to say, our wings are yet a promise. If you come real close to the image above, in a “Where’s Waldo?” sort of way, you will see that amongst those twirling, whirling dandelion flowerseeds is a butterfly or a moth, you choose, drifting the same stream we cannot see but are pulled along all the same.

With this, let us turn to the poet and poem that will lead our exploration in the weeks ahead.

Thank you, as always, for sharing a few moments of your week beyond the comfort zone.

With love,

Renée

On Ars Poetica and Human Becoming

An apéritif

We begin this April series with a poem by modernist American poet and writer, Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982). I could say I have an old love for MacLeish and leave it at that. He beguiled me in early days of graduate school. But saying I have an old love is not enough and not entirely true. MacLeish chewed through the lobes of every ought I ever knew, penetrating a known I never knew I knew, and all of this as I penned the final paper of a first course studying the human condition, this course exploring documentary—mostly photography—and poetry to peer into the underbelly of twentieth-century American history.

MacLeish wrote such passages as: Not that we love death | Not truly, not the fluttering breath | The obscene shudder of the finished act— | What the doe feels when the ultimate fact | Tears at her bowels with its jaws. | Our taste is for the opulent pause | Before the end comes. If the end is certain | All of us are players at the final curtain.⁴

. . .

As a young man before World War I, MacLeish studied at Yale, then Harvard Law School, graduating first in his class. While studying law, he wrote poetry. It is said that when he became a lawyer after school, he soon found the work pulled too much from the poetry. And so, on the day he was promoted to partner in the firm, he quit. It was not long after that he set sail to France with his young family to focus on his writing.⁵

For our wonderment on the human mode of being from whence poetry comes, we turn to the poem that will be our lead for the next few weeks. It is a celebrated poem, Ars Poetica, “The Art of Poetry,”⁶ in which MacLeish tells his reader (or himself) what a poem should be. Next Sunday, we will look at this poem in a broader context as if we could see through time. But for today, as you read, you might note reference to sound and its twofold complement, and also to time. And because he tells us a poem should not mean but be, note where and how this poem comes to be in your body—words registered as perceptual feeling. What enlivens, sweetens, agitates even?

MacLeish’s reading of this poem is quite beautiful.

Listen to MacLeish read.

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown –

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

                *

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind –

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

                *

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea –

A poem should not mean
But be.

---

photo credit: Kimberly Warner (thank you!)

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1. Twentieth-century philosopher, Jean Gebser, articulated five structures of consciousness that have unfolded or portend of unfolding in the human since likely before Homo Sapiens. We will explore these structures in this series. Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, trans. Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1949, 1985).

2. James Finley, Meister Eckhart’s Living Wisdom: Indestructible Joy and the Path of Letting Go, An Audio Series of Talks (Sounds True, 2015).

3. Peter Kingsley, A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World (Point Reyes, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 2018).

4. Archibald MacLeish, from “Hypocrite Auteur,” Collected Poems, 1917–1982 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985). Retrieved from Poetry Magazine online, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=26063.

5. Background on MacLeish from several cursory searches, sources including Wikipedia and Poets.org

6. Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica,” Collected Poems, 1917–1982 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985). Retrieved from Poetry Magazine online, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17168/ars-poetica

MacLeish took his lead from Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, “Horace,” who wrote the first Ars Poetica as an epistle in the year 15 CE.