The new performance work that I do with cellist Kathy McTavish falls between genres (see samples http://www.cellodreams.com/music02.html). It isn't song lyric and it isn't linear. It isn't narrative but it does rely on narrative structures, some related to myth. The cello, freestyle, improvisional, experimental sound, pulls you into the subconscious. I begin with submersion.
Roberto Bolano's novel, The Savage Detectives, begins with the narrator's statement that he joined the school of 'visceral realists.' Next paragraph, he says he isn't sure what that means. Nevertheless, he's in it and the novel unfolds from there. I too search for the word that can define this writing.
The sources of my work are diverse--first, Finnish folk literature. The Kalevala was an oral tradition: a creation story told (in rhapsodic meter) while playing the folk instrument, the kantela. The epic is pre-Christian and contains many things, the creation story of the universe, charms, magic spells, stories of the magic singer, North Farm, weddings, feasts. In the beginning, the Kalevala portrays the world as all water, without shore.
Second, dream is a source. The work I've been doing isn't exactly surreal. It's isn't exactly magical realism. I've found a new term: irreal. Irreal describes the work of Franz Kafka. It puts you in another world and speaks to you of life. It isn't a term that is used very much, but it does help describe the other world of 'undertow,' our new work in progress.
I do like the words of Rene Magritte, "...If 'dreams' are concerned in this context, they are very different from those we have while sleeping. It is question of self-willed 'dreams'...which are not intended to make you sleep but wake you up." Some of the writers I have long admired: Clarice Lispector (Hour of the Star, Family Ties, Foreign Legion, The Passion According to GH), Jorge Luis Borges (Dream Tigers, Ficciones, Labyrinths), Eduardo Galeano (Memory of Fire), Arguedas (Deep Rivers). Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. Ava and Aureole by Carol Maso. These are stories of longing, mystical and somehow the author dislocates the reader in a most satisfying way. They are definitely not plot driven, and not even especially character driven, but perhaps soul driven.
Third, my source is music and art, especially abstract expressionism and conceptual art. I find that the other art genres can trigger my own work. The language is musical, with internal rhyme, assonance and consonance. Other things feed my work: fear (what Kathy calls "trembling before God") or existentialist anguish and / or spiritual crisis that comes from life: the loss of loved ones, disaster, precipitous change. The writing grapples with that. In revision, I have reached into myths (Leda & the Swan, Orpheus and Euridyce), Biblical story, Tarot, and other art (the visual art of Hyman Bloom) and literature (the writing of mystics). It is ethereal but completely rooted in the body, and visceral, but in the other world. A touch sidereal, surreal, magically real, irreal. For Bolanos, definition is only the beginning. The writing of Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking) says, "never mind mind...."
Sheila Packa Poetry Blog: A blog about poetry: figurative language, spirit, intertextual explorations, patterns, punctuation, forms, great writers, quotes, and journey notes. For updates, follow me on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/sheilapacka.com
January 11, 2010
January 4, 2010
Poetry and Spiritual Practice: Work in Progress
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body… . from Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855)
Is writing a spiritual practice? Maybe you believe in God or maybe you don't. To me, spirituality means "spirit mutuality." This mutuality of spirit can be found in relationship with others, with animals, with things. I seek this mutuality. Regardless of one’s beliefs or lack of them, each usually finds oneself in need of healing one’s own spirit; not only that, each of us is needed to help heal the world, to somehow address violence, abuse, exploitation, environmental damage, war, and suffering.
Writing, among other things, can heal the spirit and contribute positively to the world. This is also true of making art, music and other creative pursuits. I’ve found parallels between poetry and spirituality in my years of writing practice. I speak from the perspective of a poet and the tradition of Unitarian Universalism. Obviously, writing and art-making provide a ritual, meditative process. Creative work (or play) allows one to stay or become receptive, open, and interactive. It’s more than that, however. Poems often employ paradox, metaphor and other devices. Anne Carson writes this:
My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.
To me, this expresses how the unanswerable questions, often addressed by religion, offer the poet a quest. The answers are likely personal, idiosyncratic, or even of temporary use, but the continual seeking is highly worthwhile.
In our world, the forces of creation and destruction exist in a dynamic, ebbing and flowing. I draw this as an image of a sphere deliberately to avoid either/or thinking. Creative work can confront the destructive, draw from the destructive, or assemble what has been destroyed into something new. In this sphere, the activity of creating, or the struggle to create, is useful to others. Creative work may, like many of our things, last longer than we do. Art is the one of the few things that we have left from cultures long gone. Poetry is, as Wislawa Szymborska says, “The revenge of the mortal hand.”
Spirit / Object
Original art, said Walter Benjamin, has an “aura” or a sense of being. It calls to us, we respond. I consider this response to be a spiritual response. I’ve been moved by many kinds of art and much poetry. Even the arrangements of stones called Inuksuit seem to embody a being. Poems have been called “tensile beings” or “perceptual objects.” Often they capture the contradictions or opposing forces (like paradox or opposites). They have a unique tension that makes them remarkable. Consider this excerpt of the poem “If the Owl Calls Again” by John Haines:
at dusk
from the island in the river
and it’s not too cold,
I’ll wait for the moon
to rise,
then take wing and glide
to meet him.
We will not speak,
but hooded against the frost
soar above
the alder flats, searching
with tawny eyes.
And then we’ll sit
in the shadowy spruce
and pick the bones
of careless mice….
Spirit can be many things, including one’s soul, one’s mood, the thing that animates the living being. It also suggests spirits, the supernatural perhaps. Ghosts, God, gods. The word spiritual has its roots in Middle English, Middle French, and Late Latin. From Latin, the word relates to “breathing, of wind, from spiritus.” (Merriam Webster) This last definition is much more attractive to me, and seems to suggest a much needed spaciousness.
The French poet Paul Valery said the difference between prose and poetry is physiological. Poems shape our breath and sound. “In…prose, the form in not preserved, does not outlive understanding, but dissolves in the light, for it has acted, it has made itself understood, it has lived.” He says, “But the poem, on the contrary, does not die for having been of use; it is purposely made to be reborn from its ashes and perpetually to become what it has been.” The body--the five senses and the breath—give poetry its life.
Poems are spirit / objects. They are made of sound and breath and truly good poems seem to have life—they bring us an experience, a body experience, and spirit or light. I listened to a talk by Gladys Naybenayash, a Native American teacher and a poet. “Somehow in all my poems, some spirits come in there....” she said. “I write about a bear and the spirit of the bear comes.”
Flow/ Resistance
Flow and resistance is another concept that is useful in the consideration of writing or spirituality. Simone Weil said, “Prayer is absolute unmixed attention.” Regular writing practice provides flow experience. What is it like? It gives you a sense of alertness without tension in your body, of being outside of time and open to a trusted source.
Poetry can slow or stop time. Poems may or may not be linear. Associations, often characteristic of poems, can bound over time and location with Seven League boots.
Writing is not necessarily easy. When we sit down to write, we battle endless distractions. Our families interrupt us. The phone rings. Our pets whimper for attention. Even without those, noises intrude, or our own impulses to surf the internet, clean the dust out of the corners, or fidget about doing meaningless tasks. Even when a writer gets past the “entry” phase, writing has its challenges. The edit phase is essential. We get too flowery, or abstract, or trivial and risk losing interest of the reader. Writers and nonwriters alike struggle to find the right words to say when we need to say them. Abstract ideas get in our way sometimes. A poet needs to break down the abstract into things more concrete.
Language can be an obstacle, but so is silence. How much have we lost by silences? Too often the price is far higher than we ever would think. Intolerable oppression operates well when people keep silence.
Language and silence also exist in equal and opposing forces. Image offers a way out. Image is much more easily transmitted, translated, and understood. It is the image that makes writing vivid.
Resistance: obstacles and challenges can reveal so much about our own needs and that of the work. Notice and honor the resistance! Consider the possible reasons for it. One might be taking the poem in the wrong direction. One might have another obstacle that has not yet been addressed. One might need to shift position, or approach, or change altogether.
Ambiguity/ Certainty
I use a phrase when I teach, and I tell students to “listen to the work.” This means that the poet attends to the words on the page to see the developing patterns, simply noticing what has been written and enhance the interesting aspects. Details are key elements in any creative work. Notice what has emerged, what is unexpected or surprising. In other words, pay deep attention. Allow the image or the pattern to lead you.
Questions that can be asked of poems: who is speaking? to whom is the poem addressed? This answer yields interesting things about the connections poets make. The poet may assume a mask, or may address reader as if the reader had a mask. Helen Vendler has examined the poetry of George Herbert, Walt Whitman and John Ashberry in regards to whom their poems are addressed. Herbert spoke to God, Whitman to the future reader, and Ashberry, a painter from the past. Each of these poets established a relationship of intimacy that transcended ordinary time and place.
Listen to this poem by Lisel Mueller, “‘Night Song”:
Among rocks, I am the loose one,
among arrows, I am the heart,
among daughters, I am the recluse,
among sons, the one who dies young.
Among answers, I am the question,
between lovers, I am the sword,
among scars, I am the fresh wound,
among confetti, the black flag.
Among shoes, I am the one with the pebble,
among days, the one that never comes,
among the bones you find on the beach
the one that sings was mine.
Poetry focuses on image and sound. It allows or wants a pattern of some kind. If you are writing poetry, you must search for this, and allow the form and the pattern to emerge organically, to grow as the work grows, not to be imposed on, but to be watered, fed, and given all the right conditions so that it grows strong. And so I suggest this approach to your own spiritual work (play). Do not use force or impose your will. Practice receptivity, openness, question your assumptions.
Ambiguity is one of the most pleasing aspects of poems. It occurs in a number of places in a poem—it could be in the use of space, a line break, a type of punctuation, a sound, or the use of a homonym. This quality allows you to return again and again to a poem and come away with new meaning each time.
Mary Oliver says that poetry is writing that casts more than one shadow.
Some people do not tolerate ambiguity well. It makes us uncomfortable and sometimes, we like to have certainty. I must also say that absolutes also can occur in poetry, for instance, in the use of particular form like a sonnet or a villanelle. Sometimes, bringing the poem into the constraints and limits of a form enlarges the poem. Sometimes it does not. One needs to experiment and evaluate, and then listen to the work.
Writing poems becomes intuitive, but I value critical thinking. This also exists as a dynamic, a sphere of thinking, critical evaluation, intuition, and perhaps another element that I would say joins the working artist, you or me. Magic, some might say, or the Muse: it is a spirit of creation. I can’t name what that element is. A sense of being joined is a powerful, spiritual experience.
Vision/ Revision
And last, I believe in another creative dynamic, vision/revision. To each person, something is revealed. None of us can see the whole at any time. We see some things, and infer that there is more that we cannot see. It is important to speak about one’s own vision. Listen to others’ visions. Form a writers group where you can read your own and listen to others’ work. Read other texts. I believe in the path of dialogue and in the beauty of an open mind. Don’t be afraid to change. Revision reflects a deepening understanding, more breadth, an acknowledgement that what we think of as truth is not fixed, but changing.
Thomas Moore, in the book Original Self, writes:
“The soul has its own set of rules, which are not the same as those
of life…the events of the soul are cyclic and repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The
living and the dead have equal roles. Emotions and the sense of
meaning are paramount. Pleasures are deep, and pain can reach
the very foundations of our existence.”
To give an image to this idea, consider the lines from Ranier Maria Rilke:
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
Use writing practice to engage with your own life’s questions. Stephen Mitchell suggests improvising new versions of the prayers you spoke as a child. Spiritual practice calls us to the same deep listening to our experience and the world around us. I invite you to explore these in writing and to find the images that speak to you. Write about devotions or symbols that are meaningful. Consider the language of spirituality: transfiguration, crucifixion, miracles. Enter into these with your own images. The word artist has always been associated with freedom and unconventional thinking. So be an artist.
Writing discipline, like other disciplines, offers the opportunity for “absolute, unmixed attention” (called prayer), processes of creation (rituals) and connection with the self and the world (the work in progress). The four spiritual dynamics, spirit/object, resistance/flow, ambiguity/certainty, and vision/revision, can bring healing. Using these dynamics with your material--that which is given to you--helps you engage in an interaction or exchange. The last dynamic, vision / revision, provides an opportunity to reframe experience, to identify a cultural, historical and even mythic pattern. In the Art of Possibility, Rosamunde and Benjamin Zander write: “Art, after all, is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal.”
Bibliography:
Allen, Pat B. Art Is a Spiritual Path. Shambala, Boston, MA, c2005.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
c1936. Retrieved 04/07/2006. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosphy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Carson, Anne. Glass, Irony, and God. New Directions. New York. c1995.
Moore, Thomas. Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. c2000.
Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems, Harcourt Publishers, New York, c2001.
Mitchell, Stephen. The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose,
HarperCollins, New York, c1991.
Mueller, Lisel. The Need to Hold Still. Louisiana State University Press. c1980.
Oliver, Mary. The Poetry Handbook. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. c
Rilke, Ranier Maria. The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. c1981.
Taylor, Dennis. "The Need for a Religious Literary Criticism." Religion and The Arts Journal. Boston College. c2006. Retrieved April 5, 2006.
http://www.bc.edu/publications/relarts/supplements/excerpts/v1-1taylor2/
Valery, Paul. The Art of Poetry. Denise Folliot, translator. Vintage Books, Random House, New York, First Vintage Edition 1961, c1958 Bollingen Foundation.
Vendler, Helen. Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman and Ashberry. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. c2005.
Zander, Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander. The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life. Penguin Books, New York, c2000.
Is writing a spiritual practice? Maybe you believe in God or maybe you don't. To me, spirituality means "spirit mutuality." This mutuality of spirit can be found in relationship with others, with animals, with things. I seek this mutuality. Regardless of one’s beliefs or lack of them, each usually finds oneself in need of healing one’s own spirit; not only that, each of us is needed to help heal the world, to somehow address violence, abuse, exploitation, environmental damage, war, and suffering.
Writing, among other things, can heal the spirit and contribute positively to the world. This is also true of making art, music and other creative pursuits. I’ve found parallels between poetry and spirituality in my years of writing practice. I speak from the perspective of a poet and the tradition of Unitarian Universalism. Obviously, writing and art-making provide a ritual, meditative process. Creative work (or play) allows one to stay or become receptive, open, and interactive. It’s more than that, however. Poems often employ paradox, metaphor and other devices. Anne Carson writes this:
My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.
To me, this expresses how the unanswerable questions, often addressed by religion, offer the poet a quest. The answers are likely personal, idiosyncratic, or even of temporary use, but the continual seeking is highly worthwhile.
In our world, the forces of creation and destruction exist in a dynamic, ebbing and flowing. I draw this as an image of a sphere deliberately to avoid either/or thinking. Creative work can confront the destructive, draw from the destructive, or assemble what has been destroyed into something new. In this sphere, the activity of creating, or the struggle to create, is useful to others. Creative work may, like many of our things, last longer than we do. Art is the one of the few things that we have left from cultures long gone. Poetry is, as Wislawa Szymborska says, “The revenge of the mortal hand.”
Spirit / Object
Original art, said Walter Benjamin, has an “aura” or a sense of being. It calls to us, we respond. I consider this response to be a spiritual response. I’ve been moved by many kinds of art and much poetry. Even the arrangements of stones called Inuksuit seem to embody a being. Poems have been called “tensile beings” or “perceptual objects.” Often they capture the contradictions or opposing forces (like paradox or opposites). They have a unique tension that makes them remarkable. Consider this excerpt of the poem “If the Owl Calls Again” by John Haines:
at dusk
from the island in the river
and it’s not too cold,
I’ll wait for the moon
to rise,
then take wing and glide
to meet him.
We will not speak,
but hooded against the frost
soar above
the alder flats, searching
with tawny eyes.
And then we’ll sit
in the shadowy spruce
and pick the bones
of careless mice….
Spirit can be many things, including one’s soul, one’s mood, the thing that animates the living being. It also suggests spirits, the supernatural perhaps. Ghosts, God, gods. The word spiritual has its roots in Middle English, Middle French, and Late Latin. From Latin, the word relates to “breathing, of wind, from spiritus.” (Merriam Webster) This last definition is much more attractive to me, and seems to suggest a much needed spaciousness.
The French poet Paul Valery said the difference between prose and poetry is physiological. Poems shape our breath and sound. “In…prose, the form in not preserved, does not outlive understanding, but dissolves in the light, for it has acted, it has made itself understood, it has lived.” He says, “But the poem, on the contrary, does not die for having been of use; it is purposely made to be reborn from its ashes and perpetually to become what it has been.” The body--the five senses and the breath—give poetry its life.
Poems are spirit / objects. They are made of sound and breath and truly good poems seem to have life—they bring us an experience, a body experience, and spirit or light. I listened to a talk by Gladys Naybenayash, a Native American teacher and a poet. “Somehow in all my poems, some spirits come in there....” she said. “I write about a bear and the spirit of the bear comes.”
Flow/ Resistance
Flow and resistance is another concept that is useful in the consideration of writing or spirituality. Simone Weil said, “Prayer is absolute unmixed attention.” Regular writing practice provides flow experience. What is it like? It gives you a sense of alertness without tension in your body, of being outside of time and open to a trusted source.
Poetry can slow or stop time. Poems may or may not be linear. Associations, often characteristic of poems, can bound over time and location with Seven League boots.
Writing is not necessarily easy. When we sit down to write, we battle endless distractions. Our families interrupt us. The phone rings. Our pets whimper for attention. Even without those, noises intrude, or our own impulses to surf the internet, clean the dust out of the corners, or fidget about doing meaningless tasks. Even when a writer gets past the “entry” phase, writing has its challenges. The edit phase is essential. We get too flowery, or abstract, or trivial and risk losing interest of the reader. Writers and nonwriters alike struggle to find the right words to say when we need to say them. Abstract ideas get in our way sometimes. A poet needs to break down the abstract into things more concrete.
Language can be an obstacle, but so is silence. How much have we lost by silences? Too often the price is far higher than we ever would think. Intolerable oppression operates well when people keep silence.
Language and silence also exist in equal and opposing forces. Image offers a way out. Image is much more easily transmitted, translated, and understood. It is the image that makes writing vivid.
Resistance: obstacles and challenges can reveal so much about our own needs and that of the work. Notice and honor the resistance! Consider the possible reasons for it. One might be taking the poem in the wrong direction. One might have another obstacle that has not yet been addressed. One might need to shift position, or approach, or change altogether.
Ambiguity/ Certainty
I use a phrase when I teach, and I tell students to “listen to the work.” This means that the poet attends to the words on the page to see the developing patterns, simply noticing what has been written and enhance the interesting aspects. Details are key elements in any creative work. Notice what has emerged, what is unexpected or surprising. In other words, pay deep attention. Allow the image or the pattern to lead you.
Questions that can be asked of poems: who is speaking? to whom is the poem addressed? This answer yields interesting things about the connections poets make. The poet may assume a mask, or may address reader as if the reader had a mask. Helen Vendler has examined the poetry of George Herbert, Walt Whitman and John Ashberry in regards to whom their poems are addressed. Herbert spoke to God, Whitman to the future reader, and Ashberry, a painter from the past. Each of these poets established a relationship of intimacy that transcended ordinary time and place.
Listen to this poem by Lisel Mueller, “‘Night Song”:
Among rocks, I am the loose one,
among arrows, I am the heart,
among daughters, I am the recluse,
among sons, the one who dies young.
Among answers, I am the question,
between lovers, I am the sword,
among scars, I am the fresh wound,
among confetti, the black flag.
Among shoes, I am the one with the pebble,
among days, the one that never comes,
among the bones you find on the beach
the one that sings was mine.
Poetry focuses on image and sound. It allows or wants a pattern of some kind. If you are writing poetry, you must search for this, and allow the form and the pattern to emerge organically, to grow as the work grows, not to be imposed on, but to be watered, fed, and given all the right conditions so that it grows strong. And so I suggest this approach to your own spiritual work (play). Do not use force or impose your will. Practice receptivity, openness, question your assumptions.
Ambiguity is one of the most pleasing aspects of poems. It occurs in a number of places in a poem—it could be in the use of space, a line break, a type of punctuation, a sound, or the use of a homonym. This quality allows you to return again and again to a poem and come away with new meaning each time.
Mary Oliver says that poetry is writing that casts more than one shadow.
Some people do not tolerate ambiguity well. It makes us uncomfortable and sometimes, we like to have certainty. I must also say that absolutes also can occur in poetry, for instance, in the use of particular form like a sonnet or a villanelle. Sometimes, bringing the poem into the constraints and limits of a form enlarges the poem. Sometimes it does not. One needs to experiment and evaluate, and then listen to the work.
Writing poems becomes intuitive, but I value critical thinking. This also exists as a dynamic, a sphere of thinking, critical evaluation, intuition, and perhaps another element that I would say joins the working artist, you or me. Magic, some might say, or the Muse: it is a spirit of creation. I can’t name what that element is. A sense of being joined is a powerful, spiritual experience.
Vision/ Revision
And last, I believe in another creative dynamic, vision/revision. To each person, something is revealed. None of us can see the whole at any time. We see some things, and infer that there is more that we cannot see. It is important to speak about one’s own vision. Listen to others’ visions. Form a writers group where you can read your own and listen to others’ work. Read other texts. I believe in the path of dialogue and in the beauty of an open mind. Don’t be afraid to change. Revision reflects a deepening understanding, more breadth, an acknowledgement that what we think of as truth is not fixed, but changing.
Thomas Moore, in the book Original Self, writes:
“The soul has its own set of rules, which are not the same as those
of life…the events of the soul are cyclic and repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The
living and the dead have equal roles. Emotions and the sense of
meaning are paramount. Pleasures are deep, and pain can reach
the very foundations of our existence.”
To give an image to this idea, consider the lines from Ranier Maria Rilke:
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
Use writing practice to engage with your own life’s questions. Stephen Mitchell suggests improvising new versions of the prayers you spoke as a child. Spiritual practice calls us to the same deep listening to our experience and the world around us. I invite you to explore these in writing and to find the images that speak to you. Write about devotions or symbols that are meaningful. Consider the language of spirituality: transfiguration, crucifixion, miracles. Enter into these with your own images. The word artist has always been associated with freedom and unconventional thinking. So be an artist.
Writing discipline, like other disciplines, offers the opportunity for “absolute, unmixed attention” (called prayer), processes of creation (rituals) and connection with the self and the world (the work in progress). The four spiritual dynamics, spirit/object, resistance/flow, ambiguity/certainty, and vision/revision, can bring healing. Using these dynamics with your material--that which is given to you--helps you engage in an interaction or exchange. The last dynamic, vision / revision, provides an opportunity to reframe experience, to identify a cultural, historical and even mythic pattern. In the Art of Possibility, Rosamunde and Benjamin Zander write: “Art, after all, is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal.”
Bibliography:
Allen, Pat B. Art Is a Spiritual Path. Shambala, Boston, MA, c2005.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
c1936. Retrieved 04/07/2006. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosphy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Carson, Anne. Glass, Irony, and God. New Directions. New York. c1995.
Moore, Thomas. Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. c2000.
Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems, Harcourt Publishers, New York, c2001.
Mitchell, Stephen. The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose,
HarperCollins, New York, c1991.
Mueller, Lisel. The Need to Hold Still. Louisiana State University Press. c1980.
Oliver, Mary. The Poetry Handbook. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. c
Rilke, Ranier Maria. The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. c1981.
Taylor, Dennis. "The Need for a Religious Literary Criticism." Religion and The Arts Journal. Boston College. c2006. Retrieved April 5, 2006.
http://www.bc.edu/publications/relarts/supplements/excerpts/v1-1taylor2/
Valery, Paul. The Art of Poetry. Denise Folliot, translator. Vintage Books, Random House, New York, First Vintage Edition 1961, c1958 Bollingen Foundation.
Vendler, Helen. Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman and Ashberry. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. c2005.
Zander, Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander. The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life. Penguin Books, New York, c2000.
December 18, 2009
Recommended Reading: Essays on Poetry
Dobyns, Stephen. BEST WORDS BEST ORDER: Essays on Poetry. c1996, 2003. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
This is a great collection of essays about both the craft of poetry and some of the greatest poets. The writing is lucid and engaging.
Hirschfield, Jane. NINE GATES: Entering the Mind of Poetry. c1997. HarperCollins Publishers, New York.
Jane Hirschfield was a wonderful poet and these essays prove that she was an excellent essayist. If you can only get one book about writing poems, get this one! Hirschfield brings her fine concentration to the subject of writing poems and it is, to quote her, "...penetrating, unified, focused, yet also permeable and open."
Hirsch, Edward. HOW TO READ A POEM: and Fall in Love with Poetry. c1999. Harcourt, San Diego, CA.
This is a passionate book that is good for both readers and writers of poems. Highly recommended.
November 23, 2009
Echo & Lightning
ECHO AND LIGHTNING (the expanded version will be published by Wildwood River, 2010) began as a chapbook and audio CD with cello music. The poems are a love story and a story about winged migration. On the audio CD, the poems are set in an experimental, free improv cello sound, a song of ascension, composed by Kathy McTavish. It became a full length poetry manuscript. Now the book has two more sections that give the overall manuscript a shape of a wave. The mid-section is from another collection I wrote, Undertow, and the third section gathers several poems from an earlier chapbook and audio CD, Fearful Journey.
The story is rooted in the body and in the landscape of the north. Sources that inspired this work are the Kalevala (the epic poem of Finland) and Finnish poets, Greek mythology (Leda and the Swan) and the Gnostic book, Thunder, Perfect Mind. The poems examine stories about intersections with the divine--maybe 'an act of God' is comprised of creation and annihilation in equal parts—and with change. Often, falling in love is like this, both mystical and unsettling. Rapture occurs when we immerse into something new that takes us outside the self. An intense experience is bound to break the ties that bind you to your old life. The deep stories in our history and culture speak of this experience. We don't expect those intersections; we don't expect loss or know how to frame death and rebirth and change.
In my view, the rituals of poetry help us mediate the world, or bring us back into alignment with the natural world.
"Wind turns the body
and ground falls away
geese unafraid of silence
or empty sky
must go must go must go…"
Ellie Schoenfeld, author of THE DARK HONEY, writes:
"And so begins one of the poems in Packa’s newest collection. These poems are the story of following one’s own instincts to, in one way or another, migrate. They bring us to the exact moment when we surrender to our truest selves, when we allow ourselves to be transported, transformed, and resurrected. In these poems this occurs with the ease and necessity of taking one breath, letting it go and then receiving another. These are ecstatic poems. They are at once ethereal and profoundly grounded in the body. This has always been one of Packa’s greatest strengths and every piece in this collection is an awe-inspiring testament to that gift. These poems can help us find our way to the places we most need to go, to where “…music you haven’t heard/didn’t know you needed/opens deep.”After publishing this book, I found the writing of Leppä (Harold Alden) that explores contemporary Finnish shamanism and sacred arts. He presented this diagram by V.V. Napolskikh (1992). (Vladimir Vladimirovich Napolskikh is a Russian ethnographer, ethnologist, ethnohistorian, Finno-Ugrist and linguist. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor at Udmurt State University that presents a world view of the Proto-Uralic cultures:
The assemblage of Echo & Lightning book seemed to be similar. Section I of the book with began with the wild swans, and it created a story of bird migration that was a metaphor for human experience. I'd been fascinated with the story of Leda and the Swan, and I created three versions of what happened, told from her perspective. Other poems seemed to arrive through my hand on the page, all exploring the image of flight and the divine. After assembling these poems as an arc, I felt it to be a wave. And in the design of a cresting, was the trough, or descent. This became Section II. It was "immersion." Perhaps it echoed my experience of near drowning as a child, but I also was at work exploring the undertow or underworld and its mythic stories. I had not done this research, but I think the artist work accessed a symbolic language that was in my Finnish lineage and in the sacred stories of many cultures. Alden summarizes:
Some significant features of the Proto-Uralic “world picture” above include the following:Section III of the book brought myself and the reader back to earth. Still, my exploration of intersections with the divine continued in the poems about Lot's Wife and Mary Magdalene. It seemed to be that after encounters with the spiritual, a profound disorganization occurred. I wrote an incantation to the muse. I wrote poems that invoked the spirit of birds for protection. I wrote about the constant flow of rivers.
- A Three-level universe: The Proto-Uralic peoples conceived of an upper or sky world, middle or earth world, and an underworld associated with water, ocean, and the north.
- The World Tree: Linking the three levels is a world tree.
- Water Bird Messengers: Also linking the worlds are the water bird messengers that travel to and from the upper world, including swans, geese and ducks.
- The Island and River of the Dead: The lower world contained the “Island of the Dead” where souls go after death, and the “Subterranean River of the Lower World”, which is the prototype of the River of Tuonela in the later Finnish tradition. This is the place of death and renewal.
- The “Old Woman of the South” is standing at the top right of the graphic. Siikala says, “A significant feature in the mythologies of the Uralic peoples has been the role of the female as ruler over life, death, and the directions which symbolise them, south and north.”
Writing this book was important for me. At the time, I was going through the breakup of a long term relationship, and that also triggered grief over the loss of my mother. It was if something in myself had died. I had deeply immersed myself in art and writing was the only way that I was able to get through my days.
During this time, I made a trip to Finland to reconnect with many relatives. I took a train from Helsinki to Kokkola, and as I gazed out the window, I saw two swans flying north. My mother's cousin Mikko Himanka in Kokkola presented me with a genealogical record of our family ancestry, with my name and my son's name inside. He opened old family photos albums, and turning the pages with a distant curiosity, I came face to face with my mother's image as a young woman, smiling, and wearing a taffeta dress that I remember as a child. I gasped. I had found something, not her exactly, and it led me deeper.
Leppä (Harold Alden). "Shamanism and Sacred Arts in Finland Part 2." Spirit Boat Web log. http://spiritboat.blogspot.ca/2014/06/shamanism-and-sacred-arts-in-finland.html
Echo & Lightning
ECHO AND LIGHTNING (the expanded version will be published by Wildwood River, 2010) began as a chapbook and audio CD with cello music. The poems are a love story and a story about winged migration. On the audio CD, the poems are set in an experimental, free improv cello sound, a song of ascension, composed by Kathy McTavish. It became a full length poetry manuscript. Now the book has two more sections that give the overall manuscript a shape of a wave. The mid-section is from another collection I wrote, Undertow, and the third section gathers several poems from an earlier chapbook and audio CD, Fearful Journey.
The story is rooted in the body and in the landscape of the north. Sources that inspired this work are the Kalevala (the epic poem of Finland) and Finnish poets, Greek mythology (Leda and the Swan) and the Gnostic book, Thunder, Perfect Mind. The poems examine stories about intersections with the divine--maybe 'an act of God' is comprised of creation and annihilation in equal parts—and with change. Often, falling in love is like this, both mystical and unsettling. Rapture occurs when we immerse into something new that takes us outside the self. An intense experience is bound to break the ties that bind you to your old life. The deep stories in our history and culture speak of this experience. We don't expect those intersections; we don't expect loss or know how to frame death and rebirth and change.
In my view, the rituals of poetry help us mediate the world, or bring us back into alignment with the natural world.
"Wind turns the body
and ground falls away
geese unafraid of silence
or empty sky
must go must go must go…"
Ellie Schoenfeld, author of THE DARK HONEY, writes:
"And so begins one of the poems in Packa’s newest collection. These poems are the story of following one’s own instincts to, in one way or another, migrate. They bring us to the exact moment when we surrender to our truest selves, when we allow ourselves to be transported, transformed, and resurrected. In these poems this occurs with the ease and necessity of taking one breath, letting it go and then receiving another. These are ecstatic poems. They are at once ethereal and profoundly grounded in the body. This has always been one of Packa’s greatest strengths and every piece in this collection is an awe-inspiring testament to that gift. These poems can help us find our way to the places we most need to go, to where “…music you haven’t heard/didn’t know you needed/opens deep.”After publishing this book, I found the writing of Leppä (Harold Alden) that explores contemporary Finnish shamanism and sacred arts. He presented this diagram by V.V. Napolskikh (1992). (Vladimir Vladimirovich Napolskikh is a Russian ethnographer, ethnologist, ethnohistorian, Finno-Ugrist and linguist. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor at Udmurt State University that presents a world view of the Proto-Uralic cultures:
The sections of Echo and Lightning are oddly similar. Section I of the book with began with the wild swans, and it created a story of bird migration that was a metaphor for human experience. I'd been fascinated with the story of Leda and the Swan, and I created three versions of what happened, told from her perspective. Other poems seemed to arrive through my hand on the page, all exploring the image of flight and the divine. After assembling these poems as an arc, I felt it to be a wave. And in the design of a cresting, was the trough, or descent. This became Section II. It was "immersion." Perhaps it echoed my experience of near drowning as a child, but I also was at work exploring the undertow or underworld and its mythic stories. I had not done this research, but I think the artist work accessed a symbolic language that was in my Finnish lineage and in the sacred stories of many cultures. Alden summarizes:
Some significant features of the Proto-Uralic “world picture” above include the following:Section III of the book brought myself and the reader back to earth. Still, my exploration of intersections with the divine continued in the poems about Lot's Wife and Mary Magdalene. It seemed to be that after encounters with the spiritual, a profound disorganization occurred. I wrote an incantation to the muse. I wrote poems that invoked the spirit of birds for protection. I wrote about the constant flow of rivers.
- A Three-level universe: The Proto-Uralic peoples conceived of an upper or sky world, middle or earth world, and an underworld associated with water, ocean, and the north.
- The World Tree: Linking the three levels is a world tree.
- Water Bird Messengers: Also linking the worlds are the water bird messengers that travel to and from the upper world, including swans, geese and ducks.
- The Island and River of the Dead: The lower world contained the “Island of the Dead” where souls go after death, and the “Subterranean River of the Lower World”, which is the prototype of the River of Tuonela in the later Finnish tradition. This is the place of death and renewal.
- The “Old Woman of the South” is standing at the top right of the graphic. Siikala says, “A significant feature in the mythologies of the Uralic peoples has been the role of the female as ruler over life, death, and the directions which symbolise them, south and north.”
Writing this book was important for me. At the time, I was going through the breakup of a long term relationship, and that also triggered grief over the loss of my mother. It was if something in myself had died. I had deeply immersed myself in art and writing was the only way that I was able to get through my days.
During this time, I made a trip to Finland to reconnect with many relatives. I took a train from Helsinki to Kokkola, and as I gazed out the window, I saw two swans flying north. My mother's cousin Mikko Himanka in Kokkola presented me with a genealogical record of our family ancestry, with my name and my son's name inside. He opened old family photos albums, and turning the pages with a distant curiosity, I came face to face with my mother's image as a young woman, smiling, and wearing a taffeta dress that I remember as a child. I gasped. I had found something, not her exactly, and it led me deeper.
Leppä (Harold Alden). "Shamanism and Sacred Arts in Finland Part 2." Spirit Boat Web log. http://spiritboat.blogspot.ca/2014/06/shamanism-and-sacred-arts-in-finland.html
November 20, 2009
Fearful Journey
Fearful Journey is a collaboration with Kathy McTavish, cellist. We recorded this chapbook collection of poems with her experimental, ambient cello sound available on CD and as mp3 files on our websites. We have done several performances of this and other new work. A listener described our concert/reading of these love poems as “hauntingly beautiful.” An excerpt, from “Love Goes On:”
Love is this circle that we’re in,
outside, inside, unsayable, unspeakable,
creator and destroyer. Love, love, love
how grief rises
into dark stars.
It is hard to explain what comes first, the music or the poems. Our work emerges in a mutual solitude and yet music may trigger an invisible procession of images (as Cavafy said) that I make into poems and the poems sometimes trigger new compositions. We are not striving to illustrate either the poems or the music, but to create work that stands alone and in resonant proximity with the other.
Ranier Rilke said, “A togetherness of two human beings is an impossibility and, where it does seem to exist, a limitation, a mutual compromise which robs one side or both sides of their fullest freedom and development. But granted the consciousness that even between the closest people there persist infinite distances, a wonderful living side by side can arise for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them."
Sometimes we have a “word fast” which is a mutually agreed time without talking. As artists, we want to nurture each other’s work and allow enough time and space for creating or simply gazing, musing or meandering in the internal or external landscape.
Even when I work with other writers, I do like to be careful with how I give feedback. There is value in critique, of course. I prefer to make observations and talk about my response to the work instead of telling people how to fix things. It’s a subtle distinction. Advice of this kind may impose an aesthetic or style that is not helpful to developing an individual and unique voice. Solutions best come from inside, from careful deliberation, from the source of the work, from it’s own internal logic or pattern. Solutions come from deep engagement with the work, from disciplined effort, and the attempt to do the best work one has ever done.
Sources: for me, it’s migration. Fearful journey.
Love is this circle that we’re in,
outside, inside, unsayable, unspeakable,
creator and destroyer. Love, love, love
how grief rises
into dark stars.
It is hard to explain what comes first, the music or the poems. Our work emerges in a mutual solitude and yet music may trigger an invisible procession of images (as Cavafy said) that I make into poems and the poems sometimes trigger new compositions. We are not striving to illustrate either the poems or the music, but to create work that stands alone and in resonant proximity with the other.
Ranier Rilke said, “A togetherness of two human beings is an impossibility and, where it does seem to exist, a limitation, a mutual compromise which robs one side or both sides of their fullest freedom and development. But granted the consciousness that even between the closest people there persist infinite distances, a wonderful living side by side can arise for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them."
Sometimes we have a “word fast” which is a mutually agreed time without talking. As artists, we want to nurture each other’s work and allow enough time and space for creating or simply gazing, musing or meandering in the internal or external landscape.
Even when I work with other writers, I do like to be careful with how I give feedback. There is value in critique, of course. I prefer to make observations and talk about my response to the work instead of telling people how to fix things. It’s a subtle distinction. Advice of this kind may impose an aesthetic or style that is not helpful to developing an individual and unique voice. Solutions best come from inside, from careful deliberation, from the source of the work, from it’s own internal logic or pattern. Solutions come from deep engagement with the work, from disciplined effort, and the attempt to do the best work one has ever done.
Sources: for me, it’s migration. Fearful journey.
November 18, 2009
Blindfold: Poems and Sexuality
Audre Lorde, in her book Sister Outsider, wrote an essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” that has been significant to my work. She was a black lesbian feminist whose work transcended all the categories. When she looks back on her life, she writes that what she regrets the most are her silences. “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” She suggests that we can learn to work through our fears just as we learn to work through our tiredness, and that speaking and taking action will form a bridge to others and transform fear into connection.
My book of poems, The Mother Tongue explores coming of age, women's sexuality, and how one's relationship with one's mother influences both. These topics often are surrounded by silence. The book's midsection was the "Torrent," a collection of erotic poems. The poems had emerged at the age of 50, between an intersection of falling in love and exploring a visual art exhibit of lesbian pornography that had become a collection of postcards, Drawing the Line from the Canadian artists collective Kiss &Tell: Susan Stewart, Persimmon Blackbridge, and Lizard Jones. The exhibition of photographs, toured Canada, the United States, and Australia in 1988. Kiss and Tell asked viewers to write comments on the walls alongside the images (men wrote theirs in a book in the center of the gallery), and these comments were then published with a selection of the photographs in a pull-out postcard book. At the same time, Cecelia Lieder, a visual artist/ printmaker and gallery owner invited me and other writers to create work for an exhibit she had scheduled called “Erotic Justice.” Erotic Justice is a phrase used by Hildegaard of Bingen, a medieval Christian mystic and nun, and recently, Matthew Fox.
How is justice erotic? I wondered. Or how is the erotic connected to justice? Well…perhaps both are a journey, a process of give and take. Eventually, the poem emerged, “Blindfold.” I wrote several other poems that were published in a small chapbook titled Erotic Justice published by Calyx Press in 2007 and eventually in The Mother Tongue.
Poetry that is written in response to visual art is called ekphrastic. Many poets have used visual art as a source. I began writing this particular erotica as an exercise in writing ekphrastic poems but the poems themselves shifted in both image and intent away from the postcard photographs and toward that concept of erotic justice. It was erotic, but also about love and art, and it was set in the context of a life, within a family, and a community. This is very different than most erotica which is often separate from anything except the love relationship, and it is far different than pornography which seems to separate itself from relationship in its focus on bodily sensation or gratification. The image of the blindfold, connected both to justice and erotica, teaches us things. In justice, it allows us to be objective and to apply the same rules to all. It heightens all other perceptions. In erotica, it acknowledges the blindness that we have as we enter love relationships. Secrecy is like a blindfold. It might heighten experience, but it limits us.
I wrote an article "Crossing Borders" for NEW WORLD FINN about a conversation I had with the Finnish writer Tiina Pystynen. She writes memoir and fiction. Her latest book is a graphic memoir that explores erotic art and also pornography from a feminist perspective. The book examines the sexual in many ways and is silly, awkward, curious and profound.
I trace the development of women’s sexuality to the mother. The topic was surrounded by secrecy as far as my mother was concerned, but I was able to make observations and catch snippets of conversation about love in her life. At the age of twenty, before I married for the first time, I asked her for her secret of a happy marriage. She and my father had been married for nearly 30 years at that point. “The honeymoon is not over,” she said enigmatically. Nothing more. I understood that she was happy in her relationship and that she found it exciting. It influenced my attitudes as much as anything in the culture (at that time, it was the era of women’s liberation and the birth control pill). So I proceeded into adulthood, experiencing sexual relationships and eventually finding myself in relationship to another woman. Closeted, within a secrecy with walls of fear. Eventually love took the walls down.
It was these musings that led to the book of poems. And yes, my mother’s mother tongue was Finnish. But mine, I think was love.
My book of poems, The Mother Tongue explores coming of age, women's sexuality, and how one's relationship with one's mother influences both. These topics often are surrounded by silence. The book's midsection was the "Torrent," a collection of erotic poems. The poems had emerged at the age of 50, between an intersection of falling in love and exploring a visual art exhibit of lesbian pornography that had become a collection of postcards, Drawing the Line from the Canadian artists collective Kiss &Tell: Susan Stewart, Persimmon Blackbridge, and Lizard Jones. The exhibition of photographs, toured Canada, the United States, and Australia in 1988. Kiss and Tell asked viewers to write comments on the walls alongside the images (men wrote theirs in a book in the center of the gallery), and these comments were then published with a selection of the photographs in a pull-out postcard book. At the same time, Cecelia Lieder, a visual artist/ printmaker and gallery owner invited me and other writers to create work for an exhibit she had scheduled called “Erotic Justice.” Erotic Justice is a phrase used by Hildegaard of Bingen, a medieval Christian mystic and nun, and recently, Matthew Fox.
How is justice erotic? I wondered. Or how is the erotic connected to justice? Well…perhaps both are a journey, a process of give and take. Eventually, the poem emerged, “Blindfold.” I wrote several other poems that were published in a small chapbook titled Erotic Justice published by Calyx Press in 2007 and eventually in The Mother Tongue.
Poetry that is written in response to visual art is called ekphrastic. Many poets have used visual art as a source. I began writing this particular erotica as an exercise in writing ekphrastic poems but the poems themselves shifted in both image and intent away from the postcard photographs and toward that concept of erotic justice. It was erotic, but also about love and art, and it was set in the context of a life, within a family, and a community. This is very different than most erotica which is often separate from anything except the love relationship, and it is far different than pornography which seems to separate itself from relationship in its focus on bodily sensation or gratification. The image of the blindfold, connected both to justice and erotica, teaches us things. In justice, it allows us to be objective and to apply the same rules to all. It heightens all other perceptions. In erotica, it acknowledges the blindness that we have as we enter love relationships. Secrecy is like a blindfold. It might heighten experience, but it limits us.
I wrote an article "Crossing Borders" for NEW WORLD FINN about a conversation I had with the Finnish writer Tiina Pystynen. She writes memoir and fiction. Her latest book is a graphic memoir that explores erotic art and also pornography from a feminist perspective. The book examines the sexual in many ways and is silly, awkward, curious and profound.
I trace the development of women’s sexuality to the mother. The topic was surrounded by secrecy as far as my mother was concerned, but I was able to make observations and catch snippets of conversation about love in her life. At the age of twenty, before I married for the first time, I asked her for her secret of a happy marriage. She and my father had been married for nearly 30 years at that point. “The honeymoon is not over,” she said enigmatically. Nothing more. I understood that she was happy in her relationship and that she found it exciting. It influenced my attitudes as much as anything in the culture (at that time, it was the era of women’s liberation and the birth control pill). So I proceeded into adulthood, experiencing sexual relationships and eventually finding myself in relationship to another woman. Closeted, within a secrecy with walls of fear. Eventually love took the walls down.
It was these musings that led to the book of poems. And yes, my mother’s mother tongue was Finnish. But mine, I think was love.
October 4, 2009
Roots & Landscape
What do your roots have to do with what you write? Find contemporary poets from the country or place of your ancestors and consider the connections: image, metaphor, word choice, world view. Language transmits culture in so many ways and even as language changes, culture comes through.
My grandparents on both sides immigrated from Finland
When I went looking for contemporary poets, I found a collection of women poets called Enchanting Beasts, edited and translated by Kirsti Simonsuuri. It was published by Forest Books in 1990. In the introduction, Simonsuuri eloquently examines the diversity and links Finnish poets in that volume, referring to “mythical darkness…invisible dimensions…poets of language…lyrical, imagistic space filled with forests, water, winds, and the eternal movement within.” Poets of any culture may find themselves exploring all of these, but her words draw me into that circle and I’m very pleased to be there. You can find portions of the text online at http://www.nuorenvoimanliitto.fi/beasts
Poets have so many influences. Heritage is important as are many other things. It happens that the landscape I grew up in, in northern Minnesota Finland
August 21, 2009
Waking: The Process of Writing the Poem
"The poet doesn't invent. He listens. " -- Jean Cocteau
Recently, I've been doing poetry in performance with Kathy McTavish. It is a blend of composition and improv, based on the concept of deep listening. Pauline Oliveros, a composer, used this phrase to describe a deep attentiveness to the moment. Kathy's ouevre is based on her deep attentiveness in performance--her cello is both a resonant and responsive instrument that draws the listener into its sound. Her cello triggers images....like the invisible procession in this poem:
God Forsakes Antony
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. -
Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
This poem is a very good example of deep listening, of being attentive to the moment. Cavafy or God directs Antony away from negativity, the endless chatter of the anxious mind. Useless, he says. Pay attention. An important thing is going on--this loss, this beauty, this gift.
When it comes to writing or revising poems, one of my mantras is "listen to the work." In other words, in its first lines the poem sets up a rhythm, sound, pace, image, pattern, that should be developed within the work. It requires the poet to be attentive, to pay attention, to focus on what has begun and then to bring one's skills with language into play. If one makes a mistake, it can be lucky. If you don't quail or cross it out or backtrack, the mistake could bring you to a new and interesting place. As Cavafy says, "...listen--your final delectation--to the voices,/ to the exquisite music of that strange procession."
When it comes time to read or perform the work, my listening continues. Often, revisions occur on stage because I now hear the poem the way the audience does. Try reading a rough draft poem to your writing group or to a friend. It is likely you will immediately become aware of its flaws. Virginia Woolf believed that deletion is one of the writer's greatest skills.
I prepare for a poetry/cello performance by assembling poems into a narrative arc. Sometimes the arc will be based on something that has been on my mind, "Waking" was a recent theme related to the Rumi poems, my own wakefulness at night, and the idea of attentiveness. I collect more than I'll read and during the performance, I will select the work based on what is in the music or what the music wants.
Each performance is different. The opportunity for performance has spurred many more poems -- because I don't like to bore myself with repeating the same things. I strive for confluence, a flowing like a river flowing, always beginning.
Recently, I've been doing poetry in performance with Kathy McTavish. It is a blend of composition and improv, based on the concept of deep listening. Pauline Oliveros, a composer, used this phrase to describe a deep attentiveness to the moment. Kathy's ouevre is based on her deep attentiveness in performance--her cello is both a resonant and responsive instrument that draws the listener into its sound. Her cello triggers images....like the invisible procession in this poem:
God Forsakes Antony
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. -
Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
This poem is a very good example of deep listening, of being attentive to the moment. Cavafy or God directs Antony away from negativity, the endless chatter of the anxious mind. Useless, he says. Pay attention. An important thing is going on--this loss, this beauty, this gift.
When it comes to writing or revising poems, one of my mantras is "listen to the work." In other words, in its first lines the poem sets up a rhythm, sound, pace, image, pattern, that should be developed within the work. It requires the poet to be attentive, to pay attention, to focus on what has begun and then to bring one's skills with language into play. If one makes a mistake, it can be lucky. If you don't quail or cross it out or backtrack, the mistake could bring you to a new and interesting place. As Cavafy says, "...listen--your final delectation--to the voices,/ to the exquisite music of that strange procession."
When it comes time to read or perform the work, my listening continues. Often, revisions occur on stage because I now hear the poem the way the audience does. Try reading a rough draft poem to your writing group or to a friend. It is likely you will immediately become aware of its flaws. Virginia Woolf believed that deletion is one of the writer's greatest skills.
I prepare for a poetry/cello performance by assembling poems into a narrative arc. Sometimes the arc will be based on something that has been on my mind, "Waking" was a recent theme related to the Rumi poems, my own wakefulness at night, and the idea of attentiveness. I collect more than I'll read and during the performance, I will select the work based on what is in the music or what the music wants.
Each performance is different. The opportunity for performance has spurred many more poems -- because I don't like to bore myself with repeating the same things. I strive for confluence, a flowing like a river flowing, always beginning.
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