Personal Poetics - Everyone Needs Them
Alright, I admit it. I'm a closet geek. Who else gets up so early in the morning to rethink theories? This morning I'm wondering about totemic words, if they actually exists and if they truly have power. Carl Jung envisioned the unconscious mind of Freud's theories to be a collective unconscious. He believed there were archetypal images that reflected the deepest recesses of our human minds regardless of race, culture, or geography. In a 1930 essay he argued that the poet is a shaman, a conscience figure, exploring the mysteries of his/her own mind while bringing into focus universal primal experiences, such as those surrounding birth and death, shared by everyone.
Based on this concept, certain words the poet uses then become what I call totemic. Like an Indian totem, each image on the pole, or in this case in a poem,
represents a consistent symbol within the society to everyone. A whole school of poetry, maybe two, developed in the 60's and 70's based on this idea called the Deep Image School. Words like silence, blood, water, stone, fire, ash, and bone all became unconscious collective symbols in their poetry. The problem with that idea lies in the fact that they all had to get together and consciously create this concept.
So, while seeing it has some merit, I don't think I buy the concept entirely. It too easily removes all responsibility from the poet regarding the world he/she lives in. Denise Levertov, who I consider a great poetic theorist and social activist from the 60's, argues that poets are responsible for their words, meaning they should take an active part in the world around them - be not only observer, but participant as well. The point she makes is that, whether we like it or not, what we write has a moral and social influence on ourselves and others. When coupled with Wayne Booth’s idea that no one writes in a vacuum and no one utilizes narrative tools without expecting, or hoping for, an audience, we owe it to our world to make poems that are a high expression of artistic craft, but also accessible and connectable to the human condition. Now, I've always bought this particular argument, that poems can and should be balanced works of art, which is why I spend so much time in my poems trying to get at the truth, rather than make a judgment about it. I see my job more as a translator of experience than a creator of it and what I translate life’s experiences into is an accessible pattern of images that can connect, hopefully, with resonance and in layers of meaning, to a larger audience than an academic elite.
It may be true that certain words create universal sensory perceptions for both poet and reader, but the poet, at some point, consciously chooses the order in which those words appear, thereby creating the overall imagistic effect. The word order may at first appear randomly from the unconscious, but all poets end up revising word order consciously, whether they like to admit it or not, just as artists will go back and make another swipe with the paint brush because the first one isn't quite right, whether they like to admit it or not. If I put Levertov and Jung together, then the implication is that certain words have great power in my culture, so I have a moral responsibility that transcends aesthetics to consider how and why I chose to use those words the way I did. In other words, there must be more than "art for art's sake" and the Beat generation’s admonition first word, best word must be braided into Stephen Dobyns’ advice to make a poem from the best words in the best order if the poet is to fulfill the role of shaman in his/her society and this may be where we've gotten off base in contemporary literature that has become increasingly self-indulgent and boring. These are the poetics I work from every time I sit down to try and write a poem.
Based on this concept, certain words the poet uses then become what I call totemic. Like an Indian totem, each image on the pole, or in this case in a poem,
represents a consistent symbol within the society to everyone. A whole school of poetry, maybe two, developed in the 60's and 70's based on this idea called the Deep Image School. Words like silence, blood, water, stone, fire, ash, and bone all became unconscious collective symbols in their poetry. The problem with that idea lies in the fact that they all had to get together and consciously create this concept.
So, while seeing it has some merit, I don't think I buy the concept entirely. It too easily removes all responsibility from the poet regarding the world he/she lives in. Denise Levertov, who I consider a great poetic theorist and social activist from the 60's, argues that poets are responsible for their words, meaning they should take an active part in the world around them - be not only observer, but participant as well. The point she makes is that, whether we like it or not, what we write has a moral and social influence on ourselves and others. When coupled with Wayne Booth’s idea that no one writes in a vacuum and no one utilizes narrative tools without expecting, or hoping for, an audience, we owe it to our world to make poems that are a high expression of artistic craft, but also accessible and connectable to the human condition. Now, I've always bought this particular argument, that poems can and should be balanced works of art, which is why I spend so much time in my poems trying to get at the truth, rather than make a judgment about it. I see my job more as a translator of experience than a creator of it and what I translate life’s experiences into is an accessible pattern of images that can connect, hopefully, with resonance and in layers of meaning, to a larger audience than an academic elite.
It may be true that certain words create universal sensory perceptions for both poet and reader, but the poet, at some point, consciously chooses the order in which those words appear, thereby creating the overall imagistic effect. The word order may at first appear randomly from the unconscious, but all poets end up revising word order consciously, whether they like to admit it or not, just as artists will go back and make another swipe with the paint brush because the first one isn't quite right, whether they like to admit it or not. If I put Levertov and Jung together, then the implication is that certain words have great power in my culture, so I have a moral responsibility that transcends aesthetics to consider how and why I chose to use those words the way I did. In other words, there must be more than "art for art's sake" and the Beat generation’s admonition first word, best word must be braided into Stephen Dobyns’ advice to make a poem from the best words in the best order if the poet is to fulfill the role of shaman in his/her society and this may be where we've gotten off base in contemporary literature that has become increasingly self-indulgent and boring. These are the poetics I work from every time I sit down to try and write a poem.
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So I think there's a place where art for art's sake is very real, and that there can be a kind of emotional catharsis for the artist in just writing down the first words (or first brushes or whatnot). In the same way, I think it's highly valuable to keep a journal where you can put down your first thoughts, get ideas going, churn up the stagnant emotions, and maybe cleanse yourself of whatever is "stuck" in there. However, nobody really wants to sit around reading people's journals anymore than they want to listen to someone on their soapbox for hours a day every day. It gets boring, irritating, and possibly even overwhelming. So I think that the poet has to take that first impulse and shape it into something that is valuable and meaningful for the reader--whoever that might be. There's already enough gossip columns on the internet, we don't need more trash in our poetry books. As you say, revising word order consciously is an absolute necessary step in the overall process of creation that the poet *must* use in order to make something that can be experienced by another in a meaningful way.