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Natural Peregrinations

(The first essay on this page is by Suffolk County’s (NY) First Poet Laureate
George Wallace.. from his book of poetry
Burn My Heart in Wet Sand, UK: Troubador Publishing Ltd. 2004.
George edits and publishes www.Poetrybay.org .)

In the dream state we are what we are without having to actively
‘construct or define’ ourselves in conventional terms. Did you ever
have a dream when you were without a particular age, experience,
mentality, haircut - or when those circumstances shift or alter with-
out need of explanation?
     We really aren’t aware - in a fundamental sense - of our exter-
nal circumstances when we’re dreaming, so apparently basic and
tangible in the ordinary day-to-day sense but more like ephemera
and insubstantial or symbolic in the dream state. In that sense, it
seems to me that when we dream we seem more purely our-
selves - the whole set of circumstances we call life has evaporated
away. There are no social conventions to subscribe to, no external
expectations to which we have agreed or are compelled to adhere.
     In life, permissions are oftentime granted through the excercise of
various philosophies, religions and other practices. We catch
glimpses of the unconscious, unconstrained moment. But in con-
scious life, actualization of our fundamental selves is frequently pro-
hibited to us by the constraints of social convention, self-regulatory
mechanics, the imposition of government or law.
     The dream experience is evidence enough to me that there
always has been, and always will be, a greater freedom of self - “the
poet within” - to which we reach as creatures of spirit, prior to our
entry into the social and conscious world.
     There is no guilt or innocence in the fundamental unconscious
state, only the experience of the self, unconstrained. It is only in the
courtroom of the conscious world that judgments like that are
imposed. In a sense, this is why I write poetry - in the courtroom of
the conscious world, and the society which surrounds it, a good
poem is witness in defense of the accused.

POETIC TOOLBOX: WORDS, PHRASES, AND IMAGES
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)

(Note: The words and poets that helped to inspire this essay can be found on a video Fooling With Words with Bill Moyers – A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, a PBS documentary on the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.)

After hearing several poets speak of their love of words and images, and of having kept journals of such when they were children— I was reminded that the basic tools of the art are the very words and images one is drawn to, especially those that stir a wellspring of emotion or enthusiasm.

Along with inspiration, and the various techniques and structures that each writer implements in crafting a poem, the bread-and-butter, or the hammer-and-nails, so to speak—are words, phrases, and images.

As one might rummage through a toolbox, finding just the correct length of nail or screw, and just the correct tool… so too does the poet, on the basic level of craft, learn to handle words and images. Metaphor would perhaps be considered higher on the conceptual scale for it is from the words themselves, such as ‘tools, bread, butter, poem…’ that metaphor finds a kind of solidity with an image.

This honoring of the basic building blocks of poems helps to humanize, or normalize the process of writing poems, though not lessening the mysterious and inspiring process.

Oftentimes it is a simple word or unique phrasing that so stirs the poetic impulse to expand and evolve until….there is a poem!

The getting form here to there is another subject…requiring imagination, metaphor, purpose, contemplation and editing...but for starters, keeping tabs on and cultivating those words, phrases and images encourages the process.

The phrase “radiant illumination” so endeared me that it became the cornerstone-phrase for a lengthy poem. Words and phrases are not just two-dimensional, for ‘inside’ of a word, such as “pomegranate”, live seeds and trees and a wealth of other suggestive experiences.

Glancing at the dictionary (toolbox), there is “pome” defined as “a fleshy fruit”, such as an apple, having several seed chambers…”¹ If that’s not a “poem”, perhaps a haiku in and of itself, then poetry is reduced to some mere egotistical manipulation of words. Language, in and of itself, can be poetic.

Ah, the pomegranate! The root “granate” or “grenate” equals ”having many seeds”… and suddenly I am wondering where this word might take me. Yet being unfamiliar with the actual taste and texture of pomegranates, a trip to the supermarket might enhance my poetic repertoire on such a topic.

Yet another dictionary definition states: “a thick-skinned several-celled reddish berry…and has many seeds with pulpy crimson arils of tart flavor.”²  Now there's another poetic phrase, "pulpy crimson arils", though what an "aril" is I'll have to look up.

Whatever the words, phrases, and images that stir you are.. try them out on all of your senses-- real or imagined-- and having done so…a poem will most likely start taking shap

endnotes:
¹ The American-Heritage® College Dictionary Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston – New York, 2002.
² Merriam-Webster’s® Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, Springfield, Massachusetts, 2000.

                                                       * * * * * * * * *

THINGS, ACTIONS and EXPERIENCES

 “So the universe “eyes” in the same way a tree “apples” and space “stars.” (You can always turn a noun into a verb because every thing is also an event,  a happening. Houses are “housing.”)”                                                                 --Alan Watts,
               from Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal,
                         NY: Vintage Books, 1974 (1968,) p.65.

Intellectually, and grammatically, people tend to think of nouns as objects just sitting there doing nothing, while verbs, on the other hand, are the busy bees of language.

To grasp the basics of grammar we agree to this, and yet to further understand language and how it reflects actual living experiences, we are wise to look beyond the limits of these labels.

As a glass is lifted, although “lift” is the verb, the glass itself is in motion, and hence participating in the very action this verb exhibits; and without some “thing” to be lifted, the verb “lift” becomes an idle verb, a supposed action with nothing to act upon or with.

Akin to the chicken-egg, acorn-oak tree “which came first question,” verbs and nouns work in living harmony.

The poets who write something like:

                                                             glass blue-tinted graceful-lift

though seeming to defy the rules of grammar and individual words, perhaps come closer to the true experience of what it’s like to lift a glass without much attempt to define that, instead, simply enjoying the experience.

If the glass is blue-tinted or the lifting graceful, then what we call “adjectives” are added to this collective descriptive process.

Science tells us that even inanimate objects are busy moving around on a cellular level, actually energy-patterns that have somehow agreed to bond into what appears to us as a solid form. Thus, even an immobile object such as a “rock” (grammatically a “noun”,) is active (though invisibly to the naked-eye,) and perhaps active enough to have what animistic cultures would call “a rock spirit”.

Chinese picture-writing expresses the verb “to speak” as a combination of a “swinging door or gate” and a “mouth”. A person opens or closes the mouth when speaking so the definition is apt. As far as English grammar is concerned, this Chinese “verb” is made up of two nouns “door” and “mouth” that only imply the action. So who invented grammar anyway?

Though an essential part of speaking and writing logically and accurately, the rigidity of grammar softens when it comes to pictures, images and the actual experiences of which we use nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. in an attempt to describe.

A sharpening and heightening of the use of words occurs when the poet explores more deeply the link between the verbal tools and the actual experience attempting to be conveyed. The written form then becomes yet another experience—not just the words, not just the experience described, but all of these combined and born anew on the page, computer-screen, or from the invisible energy-patterns emanating from the opening and closing of our door-mouths as “spoken word, speech, or voice.”

(both these essays were first published online at www.performancepoets.org