Poetry

Returning to our discussion the other day about poetry, I'll quote a bit of an article I read recently, "A inutilidade da poesia," by the Brazilian poet Alcides Buss:

"Jorge Luis Borges, em palestras que deu na Universidade de Harvard (EUA) nos anos 67 e 68 do século passado, socorreu-se de Santo Agostinho para dobrar-se ao mistério da poesia: “Sei o que é, mas se me perguntam, já não sei”. Do poema, sim, artefato urdido em palavras, sabia explicar seus recursos preciosos, as artimanhas dos poetas prediletos, as técnicas exercidas com virtuosismo. Mas a poesia, este era um domínio do mistério! 

[Jorge Luis Borges, in lectures he gave at Harvard in 67 and 68, enlisted St. Augustine in considering the mystery of poetry: "I know what it is, but if you ask me, I no longer know." He could delineate the the precious resources of the poem itself, that creation of woven words. He could discuss his favorite poets' tricks and the virtuosic techniques involved.]

Filha do acaso ou fruto do cálculo? Octavio Paz (O arco e a lira) enumera dezenas de conceitos, ou quase-conceitos, que permeiam os livros que tratam deste assunto: oração, litania, exorcismo, magia, sublimação, súplica ao vazio, diálogo com a ausência, pensamento não dirigido. Impossibilitado de chegar a um termo conclusivo, vale-se da metáfora para buscar uma aproximação: “O poema é um caracol onde ressoa a música do mundo”. A analogia é mais do que válida, pois é de supor-se que todo poema possa conter ou emitir poesia, essa vibração que nos “soa” sempre inaugural e íntima.

[Daughter of chance or fruit of calculated labor? Octavio Paz (The bow and the lyre] lists dozens of concepts, or quasi-concepts, that permeate books on this subject: oration, litany, exorcism, magic, sublimation, supplication to the void, dialogue with absence, undirected thought. Finding it impossible to arrive at a conclusive term, he resorts to metaphor for an approximation: "The poem is a shell where the music of the world resounds." The analogy is more than valid, because it implies that every poem can contain or emit poetry, that vibration that always sounds inaugural and intimate.]

Ela, porém, senhora de mil e um sortilégios, não é moradora exclusiva do poema. Sabemos nós, aqueles de sentidos boquiabertos para as manhãs de cada dia, que as orquídeas, petúnias e margaridas são generosas em conteúdo poético. E o que dizer das pontes ao crepúsculo, do farfalhar das ondas do mar ao pôr-do-sol, dos cantares do uirapuru e do sabiá-laranjeira?

[She, however, senhora of a thousand and one fates, does not exclusively inhabitant the poem. Those of us who see the wonder of every morning know that orchids, petunias, and daisies are generous in their poetic content. And what is there to say about bridges at twilight, the murmur of the waves of the sea at sunset, the songs of the wren and the thrush?]"

I agree with Buss, Borges, and Paz. I think I've always felt this way, but it wasn't until I read this article that my thoughts on the topic clarified a bit. I think poetry is a quality that is "bigger" than the poem itself. It can manifest itself in music, art (particularly photography), nature, etc. Also, I think that the fact that Borges and Paz could not arrive at a satisfactory definition is telling, and, rather than discrediting the thoughts they have on the topic, points to the mystery and the import of the poetic. As Borges reminds us in his reference to St. Augustine, the difficulty we have in defining something like time, something which we all have a very immediate and phenomenologically verifiable experience of, points to its power and its import and its immediacy, not to a conclusion along the lines of, "Well, if we can't define it, it must not exist."

The next step I need to think about more. What, then, are some qualities of the poetic? When we call an orchid or a photograph poetic, what is linking the two?

I think one aspect is a certain concision or brevity. And, similarly, a certain concentration or density. Perhaps it is related to the sense of image. There is a sense I have of the poetic residing in the image that arrests me and strikes me as "true" in a quite mysterious sense. 

J

Information

What of our experiences cannot be measured?  What attribute of our life could not possibly be put under surveillance/monitor?

To think about it in a different manner, everything we do, emote, think can be measured in some way: be it language or numbers.  Every bodily function can be measured, and if we choose, it could be monitored every second of our existence and recorded, graphed, and analyzed.

The point to which I'm driving at is that all that we experience, through the senses and mind, is (or can be thought of as) information.  Our preferences to particular drinks, our inspirations, etc are combined bits of information.

What information do you have to add to this conversation?

H

(NB This line of thinking is still in progress, so I apologize for the skeletal definition)     

Animal Cruelty

Here's the meat industry video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFoK3ReEnEo

"Then I reflect that modern stupidity and arrogance have their mysterious usefulness, and that often, by virtue of a spiritual mechanics, what was done for ill turns into good."

-Baudelaire

(h)

Is there wisdom?

I'm posting a post made by Pete on our blog.  I thought it was really interesting to read... my comments follow his original post...

Why do I seek to silently justify my antisocial tendencies by thinking of Thoreau and his 'deliberate' marrow-sucking of life? Was he wiser than others, was he wiser than I? Or was he just, like me, a natural recluse with a distaste for large groups and a self-loathing streak that happened to throw down some of his rantings on paper?

Perhaps there is no wisdom, but only men regurgitating various combinations of limitation, potential, dreams, delusions and ideologies, each man with his own terrifically lonely experience, his own style of perceiving, interpreting, assimilating, analyzing, and elaborating on what he believes is truth for all but ultimately applies only to his own mind. The world is, in a sense, actually solipsistic; each man lives irreducibly in his own head; our heroes, masters and shepherds are merely those who had the charisma to make their own particular learning, personality and communication styles (often fraught with psychoses and emotional derangements) accessible to masses with similar ones to their own; perhaps this be wisdom for some---the insight of one's life might make another of his specific makeup say "gee, that might be useful for my own life" and it may well actually be---but there it ends. May we hold Thoreau, Emerson, Trungpa, Rilke, Lao Tzu, the sages, the saints, the gurus, the poets, the philosophers, the artists as peers: like us, struggling, flawed, often deluded, mistaken and self-centered, and perhaps only occasionally and coincidentally helpful to what is otherwise our own lonely and fantastic condition.

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own commonsense."-- Some Guy*

(*Buddha)

(p)

One of the things I was thinking about as I read this was that wisdom is often couched in words; a sentence, a paragraph, a book - when we read or hear something inspirational or revealing, we value it as "wise" and which we call "wisdom." Interesting though (and this next thought popped into my head as I read "...who had the charisma to make their own particular learning, personality and communication styles [...] accessible to masses with similar ones to their own), that what we are reading is merely a way of describing the world; we act as if our minds and reality (i.e., the world) is as palpable as words. I like how you say "but there it ends." And it's true to a sense, as if once we've consumed our sentence, we continue reading for more, as if we are hoping that wisdom must be discovered only by reading, rather than reflection. 

h

More thoughts to come. This is good to think about for a while.

h

Being-time

"Much of our difficulty in understanding time is due to the unwise use of spatial metaphors--in fact, the objectification of time requires such spatial metaphors--but in this case a spatial comparison is helpful. We normally understand objects such as cups to be 'in' space, which implies that in themselves they must have a self-existence distinct from space. However, not much reflection is necessary to realize that the cup itself is irremediably spatial. All its parts must have some thickness, and without the various spatial relations among the bottom, sides, and handle, the cup would not be a cup. One way to express this is to say that the cup is not "in" space but itself is space: the cup is 'what space is doing in that place,' so to speak. The same is true for the temporality of the cup. The cup is not a nontemporal self-existing object that just happens to be 'in' time, for its being is irremediably temporal. The point of this is to destroy the thought-constructed dualism between things and time. When we wish to express this, we must describe one one in terms of the other, by saying either that objects are temporal (in which case they are not objects as we usually conceive of them) or, conversely, that time is objects--that is, that time manifests itself in the appearances we call objects. We find beautiful expressions of this in Dōgen. 'The time we call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers. The flowers, in turn, express the time called spring. This is not existence within time; existence itself is time.' This is the meaning of his term 'being-time' (uji):

'Being-time' means that time is being; i.e., 'Time is existence, existence is time.' The shape of a Buddha-statue is time. . . . Every thing, every being in this entire world is time. . . . Do not think of time as merely flying by; do not only study the fleeting aspect of time. If time is really flying away, there would be a separation between time and ourselves. If you think that time is just a passing phenomenon, you will never understand being-time."

From David Loy's Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (1998)

This whole discussion is fascinating--I particularly like the Dōgen stuff.

Calasso

Interviewer: What is happiness for you, as a writer and creator?

Roberto Calasso: Happiness? I try not to speak of it. I feel it should belong
subterraneously to life. It doesn't want to be talked about too much,
I think.

(Paris Review, Fall 2012)