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| “The Eviction” by Ray Grathwol, 1946 |
Notes:
1. Allen Ginsberg referred to line breaks in poetry as a form of composition that followed the poet's breath; "inspiration" is breathing in spirit while "expiration" refers to breathing out of spirit or, alternatively, of dying; as an aside, "orgasm" in French is referred to as "la petite mort", a little death, to breathing out, a brief loss of consciousness; as we know, poetry doesn't have this affect on people. Expiration isn't a term in poetry, but inspiration can refer to being inspired.
2. The title of my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (1978), is derivative of The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval spiritual text on knowing God.
3. Soul resides in you, is always present in you. Poetry is mapping the soul, it is a cartography of the soul. Spirit is outside of you, you breath in spirit, you are inspired. Where does spirit come from? It could be that spirit refers to the Holy Spirit, and this suggests a divine connection between writing poetry, being inspired, and what is the numinous in the world.
4. Poetry (and literature) is insightful into the human condition; many people read Mary Oliver and Billy Collins, their poetry is accessible to most people; intellectuals are critical of both Billy Collins and Mary Oliver but these two poets are popular and speak to the average person. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison, or Arthur Rimbaud and Walt Whitman, are shamans of poetry, their poetry is directed to the spiritual, the inspired, and revelation. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison were influenced by Rimbaud, for instance Patti Smith's song "Radio Ethiopia" and many of Jim Morrison's songs have a shamanistic aspect, it is "to disorder the mind"; read the very young Jim Morrison's correspondence with Wallace Fowlie, the preeminent translator of Rimbaud's poetry, (see Fowlie's Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, the Rebel as Poet [1994]).
5. The established, mainstream, churches don't give an experience of the numinous except, possibly, during communion, the eucharist; otherwise, I am sorry to say, the mainstream churches are mostly surviving on past glories, on what used to be, and promoting liberal social causes. No wonder some average people who are interested in religion, and a religious experience, have moved on to evangelical churches that give an emotional experience, an experience of the divine, these churches are often identified with a conservative ideology; the mainstream churches are (except for Catholicism) mostly identified with left wing ideologies. Most people are not intellectuals, they want a religious experience and this happens in the mainstream churches during Holy Communion; the evangelical churches emphasize a religious experience, singing, praising, and being one with the divine.
6. Another aspect of writing a poem is assembling the poem from disparate sentences and phrases one has written. You don't have to write a poem in one sitting, you can go back and piece together sentences that were seemingly dictated to you, or were written by you out of inspiration, and then assemble these into a poem. But whatever one’s approach to writing poetry, whether being inspired, or copying down what was dictated, or automatic writing, or just writing, the main thing is to make an authentic poem, one that is emotionally moving, insightful for the reader, or aesthetically pleasing; writing poetry is done for the joy of making something new and being creative. I use the word “making” because that is the root meaning of the word "poetry".
