Poetry and Authenticity

As a follow up on my previous post about poetry and authenticity, see this very interesting essay Nora Khan published in the Daily Star.

Googlism for: sack (via Miranda Field)

sack is not a crime
sack is opening to your love
sack is the reason for 01/17/02
sack is a paper poke
sack is always a threat
sack is complete
sack is required
sack is flexible and tends to “round”
sack is big enough for several ferrets
sack is the answer to heavy duty sack demand
sack is made in the USA
sack is a simple rectangular bag sewn along the bottom and one side
sack is solid
sack is sealed with oil mixture
sack is a trademark of wham
sack is 4" x 10"
sack is sewed with cotton rope
sack is slipped upon the spout as shown in the picture the bottom rests upon a small table or platform which is so balanced that it slides down to the . . .
sack is completely absorbed
sack’s an attorney
sack is in the way
sack is placed
sack is for a specific child
sack is locked escape proof
sack is also good exercise
sack travels with professionals
sack is slightly more than half and measures 36" wide and 25" long
sack is attached to the hammock so you can never lose it
sack is reversible
sack is carried on the shoulders
sack is the statewide self
sack is a game whe'e dey ain't no winnas and no losahs
sack is something to think about
sack is so easy to sew
sack is a beautiful silent drive – der weg ist das ziel
sack is activated
sack is made of water
sack is 15" wide
sack is magic: inside it holds millions of

I Yi Yi

Reading Shantideva's Bodhisattva's Way of Life, I'm struck by the explanation of the self as a label which can be expanded or reduced. Thich Nhat Hanh gives the example of how the right hand cares for the left as its own without jealousy, blame or discrimination. Shantideva shows how each of us can expand our individual sense of the "I" through a specific practice of expanding the sense slowly and deliberately day by day starting with those closest to us (as the mother experiences her child's pain as her own) and then practicing with those we feel neutral to and then on to those we consider "enemies."

This practice rhymes with my own sense of how all artistic disciplines work. Music works this way most obviously -- you can feel it in any decent live performance, as what we call "music" is the activity of locating and harmonizing the feeling-tones of audience and players, how they relate and feed each other. But you can feel it too with a live play, or even simply in the interchange between a painting on the wall and the individual viewer. And with poetry, too, of course, the kind that works. A working poem harmonizes the experience of the poet and the reader/listener/audience. It's why Ta-Nehisi Coates responds so directly to a Frederick Seidel poem that might seem to oppose his own experience.

I, Lyric

Western lyric -- at least as it's traced through Italian pastoral (Petrarch et al) through England (Wyatt and Surrey) and on through to our own cutting fragments of a moment -- sparks against the impossible question, "Who am I?"

It's a trail worth following, making not only for one of the richest ways through which to read some of the best contemporary poetry, but also for brilliant insights into how we construct a male sense of self in the Western tradition. I talked about it in this review in the Boston Review, and certainly expect to go back to it in future reviews, essays and blogs since I've been thinking about it off-and-on for 20 years now. But then this morning I had a few minutes of coffee and Jack Spicer, and came upon his perfect "Sheep Trails Are Fateful to Strangers" -- inserted here like a bookmark to indicate the ongoing conversation:

Dante would have blamed Beatrice
If she turned up alive in some local bordello
Or Newton gravity
If apples fell upward
What I mean is words
Turn mysteriously against those who use them
Hello says the apple
Both of us were object.