A few notes on Confessional Poetry

1. Over a three-day period in late April 1977 I wrote a long poem, “Divisions” (Divisions, Coach House Press, Toronto, 1983). I wrote about things that had deep emotional meaning in my life. I had married the previous summer, in August 1976, and the wedding was immediately followed by marital turmoil. Perhaps this was the catalyst for me to write a poem I had tried to write for many years. Writing “Divisions” was a catharsis, a purging of emotions; it is a poem of witness, of confession, of what I had seen and experienced. 

2. In the 1990s, I wrote “The Shadow Trilogy” (The Compass, 1993; The Yoni Rocks, 1995; The Mystic Beast, 1997; all published with Empyreal Press, Montreal), books that came from an awareness of the Shadow aspect of the human soul. The Shadow is an important archetype in Jungian psychology; it is made up of what we reject in ourselves and project onto other people. “Owning one’s Shadow” refers to being aware of one’s dark side and being responsible for one’s psychology instead of projecting it onto other people. Writing these three books was an important journey for me; it was a time when I tried to make sense of the first half of my life. 

3. There has always been a “confessional” aspect to my work. Confession is the Shadow’s autobiography. My work, before writing The Compass, was concerned with family, but with The Compass the work became even more intensely confessional, more directly revelatory. It was my Shadow, my darkness that I had to purge. 

4. In Frank Bidart’s essay on confessional poetry, found in Robert Lowell, Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), Bidart writes that “Lowell winced at the term” “confessional.” Bidart writes that the common perception of what confessional poetry is suggests “helpless outpouring, secrets whispered with artlessness that is their badge of authenticity, the uncontrolled admission of guilt that attempts to wash away guilt. Or worse: confession of others’ guilt; litanies of victimization.” No poet would want to be identified with this definition of “confessional poetry.” However, Bidart continues, “there is an honorific meaning to the word confession, at least as old as Augustine’s Confessions: the earnest, serious recital of the events of one’s life crucial in the making of the soul.” The important point here is that confessional poetry, today so discredited among poets and critics, is concerned with “the making of the soul.” This is the definition of confessional poetry to which I subscribe.

"Scribble down your nakedness." -- Allen Ginsberg

Article from 11 November 1967

Back in 1967, two years after I began writing poems, I read the following article in the Montreal Star (published on 11 November 1967). This was around the time when I first heard of Allen Ginsberg and the other poets and artists who are also mentioned in this article. It was Allen Ginsberg's advice that was enormously important to me: "Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting." It was terrific advice--and certainly epiphanal--it gave a direction for my writing that was probably already present but not consciously thought out. The article also directed my reading to a generation of writers and artists who were an intellectual and creative community for many of us at the time. They inspired many of us in our life-work. Here, then, is the complete text of that article:

Scribble Down your nakedness, said Ginsberg -- and he did

By Peggy Polk

New York

Conrad Rooks, the rich boy who went from beatnik to alcoholic to drug addict to moviemaker, is going even further soon -- to the Indian province of Dharmasala, home of the exiled Dalai Lama.

His first film "Chappaqua," winner of the Silver Lion at the 1966 Venice film festival, opened at a New york theatre Sunday and is scheduled to make the rounds of art movie houses throughout the country, but Rooks is preparing to retire to the study and filming of Tibetan metaphysics.

"Chappaqua" -- named for the Indian burial place -- is a full color, baroque nightmare based on the cure which its 32-year-old author -- director-producer-principal player took in Zurich six years ago to rid himself of his addictions.

The Kansas-born Rooks traces his taste for narcotics to a series of operations he underwent at the age of 9. He says he began drinking when at 13 he started to frequent bars on New York's West 52nd Street to listen to jazz and at 14 he was an alcoholic.

Expelled from four prep schools, given a medical discharge from the Marines and arrested at 21 on a marijuana charge, he tried to learn the craft of writing from his beatnik friends. But it was not until his father died in 1961 that Rooks decided to take the 30-day "sleep cure" he was to tranbscribe to the screen in a rich melange of sound, color and stunning technique.

To make the film, Rooks assembled the patron saints of the beat and hippie world -- poet Allen Ginsberg, writer William Burroughs of "Naked Lunch" fame, French actor Jean-Louis Barrault, Moondog and Swami Satchidananda. Ornette Coleman played the saxophone and Ravi Shakar the sitar. Robert Frank, the avant garde photographer, was camerman.

The movie, from its inception as a poem, took four years and $750,000 of Rook's Avon Cosmetics fortune to film. It was one of the few such personal ventures to emerge from the underground to commercial distribution.

Rooks, who sports a Buster Brown haircut and a didactic manner, says he is delighted with the venture but has no intention of joining the filmmmaking establishment.

Business, he says, is corrupting and "businessmen have pretty much managed to run commercial moviemaking into a baloney factory.

"Of course I want to reach mass media. But I want to change mass media."

Hoping to avoid the baloney business entirely and to continue the process of self-education he began in the 1950s at the "baby end of the beat generation," Rooks, who has been married and divorced, says he will leave for northern India before Christmas with his young son, his girl friend and his crew.

There, he says, he will experiment with "pure film" under the aegis of the Dalai Lama. "He's interested in me," the movie maker said. "I've already spent some time with him in India. My guru took me. He wants me to come back; he is interested in my ideas of film."

One of those ideas is that filming should proceed like writing. A writer may experiment by constructing a paragraph a dozen ways. A film maker should do the same, Rooks says, by taking a variety of shots and putting them together in a variety of ways.

"Film isn't expensive," he says. The most you can spend if you shoot all day is $100,000.

Rooks is also convinced that the movie maker has no business trying to reproduce a novel on film. He must originate his own material.

"Chappaqua," he says, is a result of advice Ginsberg once gave him:

"Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting."

"Chappaqua" is autobiographical in the same way that Burroughs' "Naked Lunch," Ginsberg's "Howl" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" are autobiographical, Rooks says.

But in his next film, Rooks wants to go outside of himself and "through some sort of simplicity, reveal some of the teaching which Asia is about to let us learn.

"We are basically uncultured races that are now coming into contact with the vastly more subtle races of the east and their cutlural knowledge is beginning to conquer us," he says. "Look at the Beatles running after their guru. Look at Mia Farrow going to India for spiritual teaching.

Working with the Tibetan exiles also has its practical advantages.

"There are 90,000 refugees all willing to do this kind of labor," Rooks said. "There are 20,000 artists doing nothing but sitting in front of tents now waiting for the Indian government to feed them. We'll put them to work."

Be Strong: Fight For Your Vision

You have to fight for this life, fight for your vision. Fight to stay alive and creative and breathing, filling your two lungs to capacity and then letting the air out in giant breaths of poetry; breathe in that life is good, life is good, life is good. Be grateful for each breath and feel life moving through your body; breathe out the great breaths of poetry, speak love, speak the words of your vision that keep you alive, and in all things it’s a fight for your vision, your voice, your love for this life.

Cutting-up Atlantis (Ten)

This has been given. 1. The position… the continent between the gulf of Mexico on Mediterranean upon the other. civilization are to be found. of Atlantis occupied is the one hand and the Evidences of this lost in the Pyrenees and surface at the period of projections.” the first, or that known as Casian and Carpathian, or and which lies now much in and much in the rolling Northern portions were then polar regions were then more of a tropical and would be hard to describe into the Atlantic Ocean. an inhabited land and very portion of this country, then all in the ocean; only the regions that are now and Arizona formed the as the United States. That formed the outer portion , Yucatan and America. portions. . . that must have a portion of this great Indies, or the Bahamas, are be seen in the present. If the made in some of these mini and in the Gulf Stream may be even yet determined.” 2. This has been given. the beginning, or in the Garden of Eden, in that the desert, yet much in lands there. The extreme the southern portions, or turned to where they occupied semi-tropical regions; hence the change. The Nile entered What is now the Sahara was fertile. What is now the centre of the Mississippi basin, was the plateau was existent, or portions of Nevada, Utah greater part of what we know along the Atlantic Seaboard Morocco, British Honduras There are some protruding at one time or another continent. The British West a portion of same would especially, or notably in through this vicinity, these 

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Cut-up of an original text on Atlantis, by Edgar Cayce

Cutting-up Atlantis (Nine)

Many lands have disappeared and disappeared again and At that time, only the Tibet, Mongolia, Asia and Europe; that of the Peru in the southwestern of (present) Utah, Arizona, hemisphere then in the Sahara and the then entering the now region rather than flowing the Tibet and Caucasian Sea; those in Mongolia in the plateau entering the souls then in the earth plane and three million existence from the present million (10,500,000) years earth plane as the lord of in five places then at reasons, the five spheres, nations.” of man’s earthly indwelling , many have appeared again during these periods land now known as the Sah and Norway appeared in southern Cordilleras and hemisphere and the plane Mexico in the northwestern ____________________________________________ 

Cut up of an original text on Atlantis, by Edgar Cayce

Cutting-up Atlantis (Eight)

In the country, you must not be surprised I ought to warn you, that you must not be names given to foreigners. I will tell you to use the tale for his poem, enquired into early Egyptians in writing them down had he recovered the meaning of the several them into our language. My great- which is still in my possession, and was Therefore if you hear names such as are used I have told how they came to be, began as follows:— Yet, before proceeding further in the surprised if you should perhaps hear the reason of this: Solon, who was intending the meaning of the names, and found that translated them into their own language, names and when copying them out again grandfather, Dropides, had the original carefully studied by me when I was a child. in this country, you not be surprised, introduced. The tale, which was great Now the country was inhabited in those artisans, and there were husbandmen, and apart by divine men. The latter dwelt by all that they had as common property; nor anything more than their necessary food. A yesterday described as those of our Egyptian priests said what is not only were in those days fixed by the Isthmus, extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron the direction of the sea, having the district Asopus as the limit on the left. The land raised remnant of Attica which now exists may by various classes of citizens;—there were there was also a warrior class original set, and all things suitable for anything of their own, but they regarded they practised all the pursuits which we guardians. Concerning the country that in the direction of the continent they and Parnes; the boundary line came down in of Oropus on the right, and with the river as the best in the world, and was therefore able from the surrounding people. Even with any region in the world for the 

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Cut-up of an original text, Critias, by Plato

Cutting-up Atlantis (Seven)

primeval men of that country of the gods, that they distributed the and made for themselves temples and for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat in a part of the island, which I will centre of the whole island, there was a plain and very fertile. Near the plain again, of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born Evenor, and he has a wife named was called Cleito. The maiden had already died; Poseidon fell in love with her and inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all larger and smaller, encircling one another; he turned as with a lathe, each having its so that no man could get to the himself, being a god, found no difficulty land, bringing up two springs of water the other of cold, and making every I have before remarked in speaking of the whole earth into portions differing in extent, instituted sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving children by a mortal woman, and settled them describe. Looking towards the sea, but in the which is said to have been the fairest of all and also in the centre of the island at a distance mountain not very high on any side. In this primeval men of that country, whose name was Leucippe , and they had an only daughter who reached womanhood, when her father and mother had intercourse with her, and breaking the round, making alternate zones of sea and land there were two of land and three of water, which circumference equidistant every way from the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet. in making special arrangements for the centre from beneath the earth, one of warm water and 

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Cut-up of an original text, Critias, by Plato

Cutting-up Atlantis (Six)

who had no eye to see true happiness Such was the natural state of the country by true husbandmen, who made husbandry of a noble nature, and had a soil best in heaven above an excellently attempered on this wise. In the first place the Acropolis night of excessive rain washed away the earth there were earthquakes, then occurred third before the great destruction of Deucalis Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite with soil, and level at the top, except in one under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans the ground near; the warrior class dwelt by Hephaestus at the summit, which moreover garden of a single house. On the north side erected halls for dining in winter, and had common life, besides temples, but there was they made no use of these for any purpose; and ostentation, and built modest houses in in the lost island of Atlantis; and this he following reasons, as tradition tells: For many in them, they were obedient to the laws, seed they were; for they possessed true and with wisdom in the various chances of life, they despised everything but virtue, caring lightly of the possession of gold and other neither were they intoxicated by luxury; but they were sober, and saw clearly friendship with one another, whereas by lost and friendship with them. By such a divine nature, the qualities which we have but when the divine portion began to fade much with the mortal admixture, and the being unable to bear their fortune, behaved grew visibly debased, for they were losing who had no eye to see true happiness ___________________________________ 

Cut up of an original text, Critias, by Plato

Cutting-up Atlantis (Five)

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded sacred registers to be eight thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you of their particulars of the whole we will hereafter themselves. If you compare these very laws the counterpart of yours as they were in the of priests, which is separated from all the several crafts by themselves and do not and of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen in Egypt are distinct from all other class themselves solely to military pursuits; looks to the unchangeable and fashions the pattern, must necessarily be made fair only, and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or called by this or by any more a question which has to be asked at the world, I say, always in existence and? Created, I reply, being visible and all sensible things are apprehended and created. Now that which is created a cause. But the father and maker of all this him, to tell him to all men would be down from above on the fields, having always which reason the traditions preserved here are The fact is, that whatever the extremity of mankind exist, sometimes in greater, sometimes either in your country or in ours, or in any other were any actions noble or great or in any other down by us of old, and are preserved in our nations are beginning to be provided with letters after the usual interval, the stream from heaven leaves only those of you who are destitute of a tendency to come up from below; for the most ancient. they are in some way related to them. To great honour; he asked the priests who were and made the discovery that neither he nor mentioning about the times of old. On one antiquity, he began to tell about the most Phoroneus, who is called the “first man,” survival of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he reckoning up the dates, tried to compute speaking happened. Thereupon on of the Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never any among you. Solon in return asked him mind you are all young; there is no old tradition, nor any science which is hoary been, and will be again, many destructions greatest have been brought about by the innumerable other causes. There is a story, Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For unprovoked made an expedition against the city put an end. This power came forth out of Atlantic was navigable, and there was an island you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island and was the way to other islands, and from these opposite continent which surrounded the true of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow a tendency to come up from below; for the most ancient. frost or of summer does not prevent, in lesser numbers. And whatever happened region of which we are informed if there way remarkable, they have all been written. Whereas just when you and other and the other requisites of civilized life, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and education; and so you have to begin

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Cut up of an original text, Timaeus, by Plato

Cutting-up Atlantis (Four)

the fairest and noblest race of men nothing of what happened in ancient times, either a boundless continent. Now in this island of those genealogies of yours which you just now empire which had rule over the whole island and than the tales of children. In the first place you and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had were many previous ones; in the next place you of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe your land the fairest and noblest race of men into one endeavoured to subdue at a blow whole cities are descended from a small seed or region within the straits; and then, Solon, you was unknown to you, because for many her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She died, leaving no written word. For there was skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the city which now is Athens was first to stand alone, after having undergone the of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from of any of which tradition tells, under the faced, and generously liberated all the rest of us who the order in which we have arranged our occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and who is the most of astronomer amongst us requested the priests to inform him exactly and special study, should speak first, beginning are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the creation of man; next, I am to receive of your city, and above all , for the sake of the will have profited by the excellent education parent and educator of both our cities. She founded and make them citizens, as if they were those receiving the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of record recovered from oblivion, and of which constitution is recorded in our and fellow citizens. perfect and splendid feast of reason. And now disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud of the island. aged Critias heard from Solon and related to us about your city and citizens, the tale which I have and I remarked with astonishment how, by almost every particular with the narrative. For a long time had elapsed, and I had of all run over the narrative in my own mind, to your request yesterday, considering find a tale suitable to your purpose, and that on my way home yesterday I at once I remembered it; and after I left them, during As touching your citizens of nine thousand laws and of their most famous action; the exact through the leisure in the sacred registers with ours you will find that many of ours are olden time. In the first place, there is the caste; next, there are the artificers, who ply their mix; and there is the class of shepherds; and you will observe, too, that the warriors and are commanded by the law to devote the weapons which they carry are shields the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he burnt up all that was upon the earth, and this has the form of a myth, but really the heavens around the earth, and a great after long intervals; at such times those places are more liable to destruction than. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our. When, on the other hand, the gods purge in your country are herdsmen and shepherds you, live in cities are carried by the rivers nor at any other time, does the water come ____________________________________ 

Cut-up of an original text, Timaeus, by Plato

Cutting-up Atlantis (Three)

from an aged man; for Critias, at the time of age, and I was about ten. Now the day and the poems of several poets were of Solon, which at that time had not he thought or so to please Critias, said of men, but also the noblest of poets. The at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes, made poetry the business of his life, and from Egypt, and had not been compelled, found stirring in his own country when he he would have been as famous as I will tell an old-world story which I heard of telling it, was as he said, nearly ninety years was that day of the Apaturia which is called the to custom our parents gave prizes for recitation recited by us boys, and many of us sang the poem gone out of fashion. One of our tribe, either that in his judgement Solon was not only the wise old man, as I very well remember, brightened up Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, had completed the tale which he brought with him by reason of the factions and troubles with came home, to attend to other matters, in my Homer or Hesiod, or any poet. ____________________________________ 

Cut-up of an original text, Timaeus, by Plato.

Cutting-up Atlantis (Two)

The voyage is still touristic now, Voices, baggage, Anyone who travels sees others Every object a word There is more than a literal transcription Who knows where meaning. magic carpet of cold. (the place does not matter) prototype—in a mirror— we city people What does it mean? Travel is the life knee, a poem, a fiction distant, obscure And then you ask language, the record we make ___________________________________ 

Cut-up of an original text by Louis Dudek, Atlantis, Delta Canada, Montreal, 1967

Reading at Haven Art Gallery, NYC, September '08

Last September '08, CZ and I read at the Haven Art Gallery on Bruckner Boulevard in the South Bronx, NYC. It was 100 F in the shade... Above: Haven Art Gallery, .





CZ at the podium...

Stephen Morrissey reading...

Here is Carol Novack who organized the reading. Carol is the publisher and editor of the widely read Mad Hatter's Review.

Cutting-up Atlantis (One)

I think that now everything will go on here an identity, is what we really are. in the body, with things and men. it is the whole reality something that we are, I think. that now everything will go on here And yet I know that is always there; live at all. cannot know or share. This voyage is almost it is now (as all we do), as before. As it must. bird of paradise. for good—or I do not There will be always true, and each living thing There were sixty people at present lost in the placards were sent out their prayers drowned by “Othello” and “The Merchant” precincts of The Globe) to the ground? I looked for the past to the ground? (in the Borough Should I ask that tree? for Listen with my ear right by the Study a flower for a sign? This is all new to me. Univac The half of a moon. The sound of feet. Not an individuality I will take it all in and wait That continues, as it live until like a High Mass in Southwark great vault, Underground.

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Cut-up of an original text by Louis Dudek, Atlantis, Delta Canada, Montreal, 1967

Stephen and Walt

Visiting the home of Luci and Adrian King-Edwards the other day, I noticed "Stephen and Walt", dated October 1976. It's the kind of thing I would have done then, always some humour in the background.

Cutting-up Atlantis

Cutting-up Atlantis uses excerpts from four texts that all deal, in one way or another, with the lost continent of Atlantis. Each of these texts has been cut-up and the cut-up texts from each of these are included in this new work. The first text that was cut-up are pages from Atlantis, a book length poem by Louis Dudek, published by Delta Press, Montreal, in 1967. Dudek is an important Canadian poet whose vision extended beyond his native country to Europe, to Atlantis, and finally to the infinite. Two important Socratic dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, written around 500 B.C. by Plato, are the oldest historical and literary references to Atlantis. Whether Plato meant these to be read as allegory or as historical fact is not known. Pages chosen randomly from these two dialogues by Plato have also been cut-up and reassembled. The fourth text is taken from Edgar Cayce on Atlantis, written by Cayce’s son Edgar Evans Cayce, and published in 1968. This book offers an overview of Cayce’s psychic readings on Atlantis. From this text I have cut-up quotations by the “sleeping prophet,” Edgar Cayce, that are included in Edgar Evans Cayce’s book; nothing written by Edgar Evans Cayce has been used in Cutting-up Atlantis. In Cutting-up Atlantis, derived from texts by Louis Dudek, Plato, and Edgar Cayce (a more disparate group is difficult to find!), I have created a new text that has something of the feeling of an ancient document that has survived from antiquity. Cut-ups remind me of skimming a text; reading only a fragment of the complete text discovers meaning. Cut-ups, the act of cutting-up and reassembling the text, are a kind of editing without an editor. Cut-ups are also “found texts,” the poetry in them is recreated and revisioned in the cut-up process. Reading the cut-ups, the mind looks for meaning—it looks for consistency, a coherent thesis, and connections between ideas and images—even though there may be, in fact little or no meaning in the cut-up text. Meaning—what is meaningful, what gives meaning and connection to life—can be found even in the randomness and apparent meaninglessness of a cut-up text. Stephen Morrissey Samhain; Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, 2008 Sections One and Two: Cut-up of an original text by Louis Dudek, Atlantis, Delta Canada, Montreal, 1967

Sections Three to Five: Cut-up of an original text, Timaeus, by Plato

Sections Six to Eight: Cut up of an original text, Critias, by Plato Sections Nine and Ten: Cut up of an original text on Atlantis, by Edgar Cayce

"Drummer Boy Raga" and Cut-ups

Vehicule Poets at Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University
giving a group reading on 26 April 2018

Like a collagist, selecting and snipping, Stephen immersed himself in the text, emerged with bits and phrases words, even syllables. Sometimes, his selection was to introduce fragments of what was to come, sometimes a reflection (refraction) of what had just passed. His breaking up the text in this fashion turned the piece in on itself, its meditative aspect. The work was now reaching inward as well as outward. He did not add one original phrase, not one external element, yet his contribution was instructive. In visual terms, he zoomed in on the fabric, the material, offering the work as “object”, built with breaths, words, thoughts. 

                                                    —Tom Konyves on “Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light, Green                                                         Light” (Poetry in Performance, The Muses’ Company, 1982) 

By chance, I just reread Tom’s commentary on my participation in “Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light, Green Light”, a poetry performance we gave at Vehicule Art Gallery, on April 16, 1977. I believe the project was originated and coordinated by Tom Konyves; the performance included John McAuley, Ken Norris, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, Opal L. Nations, and Stephen Morrissey. My participation in writing the text amounted to cutting-up what others were writing. Then the cut-ups were assembled and returned to Tom who distributed the new work to the next person. These were my first published cut-ups. Finally, as a group, we performed the completed “Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light, Green Light”. Thinking back, this must also have been our first written group project as the Vehicule Poets; the next group collaboration would be A Real Good Goosin', Talking Poetics, Louis Dudek and The Vehicule Poets (Maker Press, Montreal, 1981). This was an interview or dialogue between Louis Dudek and the seven of us young poets. We were known as the Vehicule Poets because we all hung out and organized poetry readings at Vehicule Art Gallery. Our first group anthology, The Vehicule Poets (Maker Press, Montreal, 1979) wasn’t a collaborative work as such; it was an anthology of our work as individual poets, not work written in collaboration with each other. And now, here is Tom’s text, from above, cut-up: 

Like a collagist, selecting and snipping turned the piece in on itself, its meditative emerged with bits and phrases words, inward as well as outward. he did not add was to introduce fragments of what was element, yet his contribution was instructive (refraction) of what had just passed. His fabric, the material, offering the work as Stephen immersed himself in the text thoughts. even syllables. Sometimes, his selection aspect. The work was now reaching to come, sometimes a reflection. In visual terms, he zoomed in on the breaking up the text in this fashion “object”, built with breaths, words,

Shamanism and Poetry

From Janet O. Dallett's When the Spirits Come Back (Inner City Books, Toronto, 1988); she writes:

Reflecting upon these events, I understood for the first time that a certain kind of work, resembling what Jung calls "visionary art," functions in much the same way as the shaman in tribal societies. That is, some art is shamanic in function. Formed from the collective unconscious material, it activates the unconscious of its audience and mobilizes the psyche's self-healing capacities. It opens a door to a different reality, the world of dreams and imagination, and "spirits" silently pass into the world of every day, affecting people in unexamined ways.

Shamanic art undermines unexamined cultural assumptions. For this reason it disturbs some people and may even arouse rage. Those who are open to it, however, often find that it sets their own creativity in motion.

Such art tends to be prophetic. It asks, even insists, on being heard, just as shamans are compelled to tell about their inner experiences when they begin to apply what they have learned about healing themselves to their healing of others. The visionary creative act is not complete until it finds an audience, coming out into the world and disturbing the complacent surface of collective consciousness. If the process is blocked, one outcome may be psychosis. Cancer may be another.

Shamanic art brings eros values to the healing of the psyche. That is, unlike traditional clinical psychology and psychiatry, it is more concerned with connecting and making whole than with the logos values of dissecting and understanding. It is related to a form of psychotherapy that interprets rarely, seeking instead to set in motion a symbolic process that has its own unforseeable healing goal. Understanding of behaviour is important only to the extent that it serves a living relationship to deep levels of the psyche. . . The soul of the shaman lies equally behind the visionary artist and the therapist who works in this way. If the shamanic type of therapist ceases to live her own creative life, the capacity to function in healing ways becomes lost and may even turn destructive. (36 - 37)

Shamanism and Poetry, some definitions (One)

(from) Earth Household, by Gary Snyder: 

The Shaman-poet is simply the man whose mind reaches easily out into all manners of shapes and other lives, and gives song to dreams. Poets have carried this function forward all through civilized times; poets don’t sing about society, they sing about nature—even if the closest they ever get to nature is their lady’s queynt. Class-structured civilized society is a kind of mass-ego. To transcend the ego is to go beyond society as well. “Beyond” there lies, inwardly, the unconscious. Outwardly, the equivalent of the unconscious is the wilderness: both of these terms meet, one step further on, as one. (122) 

Notes made around 1968 from televised lectures by Allan Watts, On Living: Religious man of hunting cultures is a shaman. Magic from going alone in the forest. The priest, Brahman, has a guru; the shaman is alone with animals & trees, knows rocks are alive. Watts is a shaman, an Anglican minister “I gave it up.” Offended at the notion of telling God what he already knows— that I’m a miserable sinner. No religion or society, but sympathy for all. 

(from) Letters of Arthur Rimbaud: May 13, 1871: …I want to be a poet… I am working to make myself a visionary…To arrive at the unknown through the disordering of all the senses, that’s the point. The sufferings will be tremendous, but one must be strong, be born a poet: it is in no way my fault. May 15, 1871: … The first study for a man who wants to be a poet is the knowledge of himself, entire. He searches his soul, he inspects it, he tests it, he learns it. As soon as he knows it, he cultivates it: it seems simple: in very brain a natural development is accomplished; so many egoists proclaim themselves authors; others attribute their intellectual progress to themselves! But the soul has to be made monstrous, that’s the point:… like comprachios, if you like! Imagine a man planting and cultivating warts on his face. One must, I say, be a visionary, make oneself a visionary. The Poet makes himself a visionary through a long, a prodigious and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, keeping only their quintessences. Ineffable torture in which he will need all his faith and superhuman strength, the great criminal, the great sickman, the accursed—and the supreme Savant! …kindly lend a friendly ear and everybody will be charmed… So, then, the poet is truly a thief of fire. Humanity is his responsibility, even the animals… Baudelaire is the first visionary, king of poets, a real God!

Cut-ups, series 1.6

A SEAS

Forward! The march

weariness and anger.

To whom shall I

should I adore? What

hearts shall I break?

what blood tread?

the intractable convict

are always closing; I sought

houses he would have

with his idea I saw the blue

of the country; in the cities

more strength than a saint,

a traveler—and he,

glory and his reason.

nights, without roof, with

a voice gripped my frozen

Still but a child,

on whom the prison doors

the inns and rooming

secrated by his passing;

sky, and the flowery labor

sensed his fatality. He had

more common sense than

alone! the witness of his

On highroads on winter

without clothes, without bread,

_________________________

Cut-up of Arthur Rimbaud