A poem
Is a feast for strangers
From the future
A poet is a fortune teller
From the present
Seemingly prescient
Presently misunderstood.
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A poem
Category: Footnotes
I am starting down a series of paths to discover what this “thing” is that we refer to as “place”.
Experiment 1st draft – The Show Must Go On
I want to follow a series of poems on 1 PLACE down a structured path of revelation. 1. Place vacant objectified, absent of human interaction. 2. Place historical description of a place as used in history. 3. Place present place as it is used today. Modern representation. 4. Place potential a place can be or become something different. What comes about in a place during a music performance is dramatically different than if it were a theatrical performance. A place can be transformed and transformative.
I am interested in place as place, a single objectified reality that is changed only by subjective interactions with it. This as a separate pursuit of the human experience that is influenced by place which is history and human presence objectified.
The park
Neon and forest green
Rolling blend of Kentucky blue
Clover and dandy lions
Shaded by old line of elms
The park
Neon yellow and navy
Zipping children chasing and surging
Tearing out clumps of Kentucky blue
In pursuit of glory
You can have a place
And use it too.
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Prologue
…and that’s why poetry appeals to me so much–
because it’s so eternal. As long as there are people, they can
remember words and combinations of words. Nothing else
can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs. No one can
remember an entire novel. No one can describe a film, a piece
of sculpture, a painting, but so long as there are human beings,
songs and poetry can continue.
— Jim Morrison, Prologue Wilderness Volume I
© 1988 by Columbus and Pearl Courson
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Poetry is a privilege?
Poetry is a privilege…
Poetry is a prison ||| || /||||
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We call for a new Poetry
“We call for a new poetry!
We call for a new eulogy…
It must be a poem of record Telling the Life of the
One who will be remembered beyond the grave.
Their stories a collection of cities and states.”
—Speaker for the Dead, 2019
We seek a new poetry. Story psalms — Holy, archetypal parables in meter.
Even the epic poem in modern terms, needs to be broken down into individual, self-reliant poems. Each verse a poem in itself.
Twitter has killed the attention span, writers must adjust or the poetic arts are done.
There are two types of poetry I am interested in: Objectified — archetypal, seeking universality in a core idea, common human being or objective observations of time and place.
Subjectified — highly personal, experiential poetry written for or about a familiar.
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Plato bans the bard
As Plato would have it (though I can’t help but point out that science alone turns dirt under the foundations of his world view), the poet is to be exiled from the perfect society.
As a young man, I would sit in the canyon and read The Republic in the cool breeze of the summer by Oak Creek, escaping the desert heat burning down below in the red and green valley. At the time a student of philosophy more than literature, though the two not so inseparable now, I should have finished the book. Never read Book X. If in my youthful studies, I had come to this defense of poesy against banishment, I might have had a more focused effort in this endeavor.
Ironically, philosophy itself, could fall prey to this very argument, that it itself is contrived, created, an imitation of our actual thoughts and logic. Modern psychology bears this out. Even our memories are made over and over again. Each a mimic of reality.
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Poesy
Not a typo. Poesy is the archaic and implies meter.
noun
ARCHAIC•LITERARY
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poetry.“they were enamored of poesy and the fine arts”
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the art or composition of poetry.“the genius of poesy”
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The art of poetry is in jeopardy. Only by re-inventing its mode of consumption will we be able to maintain it’s place on the literary shelf and societal influence. A new mimetic at the heart of the language of origin. For every poesy must be rooted in its citizen poet. The city’s shadow capturing memes of life, memories of the language of a generation. Record of our greatest and smallest moments. The archetypal drum, beating out our stories, repeating verse after verse after verse after verse.
I present you the chorus of our psalm. Singing praises to the human being, doing what we do. How we exist. The emotive world we absorb that transforms and transmutates our language and our ability to relate to our surroundings and each other. For if there is a place for poesy left in this lingual-fragmented culture, it must be brief and with the heartbeat of the people. Anywhere, anytime.
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I did not set out to write this poem. (Agape 1) It fell into place around my contemplation of the love poem. There are a couple ideas at play. Caregiver. These are garden psalms being literally written in my garden, so the overseer is primary thematically. “The sum is greater than its separate parts.”
I like Gertrude Stein’s use and intent of “human being”(i) to say it as an active sentence in present tense. It has an essence of mindfulness, being, present in the moment; caught in the act of being human. The poet is placed as a juxtaposition, a dichotomy to the soldier, who stands out against the other archetypes being a destroyer while at the same time being the protector.
The poet as a meaningful archetype is also anchored here as the beginning of an argument for Plato “A Defense for Ars Poetica”.
Questions – why should I inject the poet here? Is there any real sacrifice that the poet makes to care for culture? Does the dead art of poetry deserve a place at the table with these other archetypes?
Wouldn’t the poem be better without the last line?