On poetry, the soul, and AI (1)

 

A crow looks at its shadow, April 2024

If you compare poetry/poets/the critical discussion of poetry today with what poetry was like even twenty years ago, then poetry today seems of slight importance, it seems isolated, archaic, and sometimes a self-indulgent form of writing. I heard W.H. Auden read his poems at McGill University, there is no equivalent of W.H. Auden today. Louis Dudek invited Ezra Pound to Montreal's Expo 67, there is no equivalent to either Louis Dudek or Ezra Pound in today's world. In the 1960s and 70s books by Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, and others were reviewed in TIME magazine, these poets and their books were known by average people. Poetry was respected, but in today’s world nothing is respected; we have no great poets who are known by the general public as we had in the past, no Allen Ginsberg, no Pablo Neruda, no David Jones, no T.S. Eliot, no Ezra Pound, no W.B. Yeats, no Walt Whitman, no Matthew Arnold. And now even Artificial Intelligence claims it can write poems.

What separates poetry, the writing of poetry, from artificial intelligence, is that humans have a soul and artificial intelligence has no soul. Poetry is the voice of the human soul and AI will never, can never, have a human soul or a facsimile soul. Poetry returns us to the soul—it is the voice of the human soul; it is the soul’s DNA. 

But poetry is beyond AI; artificial intelligence is in the realm of the known, of sorting through hundreds of billions of bits of information to arrive at something that is apparently new; but poetry is always in the domain of the soul, the unknown, while AI is always in the realm of the known. And if you question AI about writing poetry you will get a kind of intelligence, without humour or depth, knowledge made up of what is online, insisting that it can write a poem although it is really a synthesis of what has already been written; let’s say it is artifice without authenticity. AI is like a spoiled child talking as though it is always right and never makes mistakes, but what is speaking is a reflection or representation of what is online and of the consciousness of the person or people, who programmed AI. So far, in my discussions with ChatGPT, I have not seen anything remarkable or extraordinarily intelligent or original. AI cannot talk about the human soul because it has no soul, and perhaps it has taken us to this point, of AI, to return to the meaningful value of poetry, that it is an expression of the human soul.

Can AI have synchronistic experiences, archetypes, dreams, nightmares, fantasies, memories, false memories, recovered memories, a shadow, oceanic experiences, mysticism, sexuality, intuition, hunches, humour, ecstasy, desire, despair, sorrow, grief, forgiveness, insight, emotions, lust, self-reflection, suicidal thoughts, empathy or compassion, or any other form of the complexity of consciousness that has motivated human beings to explore, create, or go beyond its current level of consciousness. Can AI have an unconscious mind? AI will admit that it cannot have these expressions of human consciousness, but AI also equivocates, it maintains, it insists, that the little ditties it can come up with and call poetry are poems, but these ditties are computer written lines that are not original or even real poems, for a minute they are an amusement but after a minute they are not even interesting to read. The inevitable future of poetry lies in what poetry has always been — the great theme of poetry is our journey to self-awareness — and this is the expression of the human soul.

Carnivore crows

 

Just yesterday, as we were leaving the house, I saw a crow fly over us carrying what I thought was a mouse, then he landed on our neighbour's tree and I could see what the crow had was a dead squirrel, the dead squirrels's tail hung over the side of the tree bough. A minute later the crow took off with the dead squirrel and landed in another neighbour's tree. This reminded me of something from last summer, two crows were trying to kill a young squirrel. The squirrel was terrified as he ran from one car to the next hiding beneath each car, the crows looking disinterested and obviously pretending not to care about this squirrel that would be their lunch. When the terrified squirrel made a run for it the crows followed him but each time the squirrel eluded capture and the crows would immediately act as though they were never interested in him and had never been interested in him. These crows are crafty birds, very intelligent, and with personalities, they seem to even have egos.

Earlier this spring I went out to the bird bath to change the water--birds like clean cold water--and there was a dead sparrow floating in the water, he had been pecked open by a crow. Crows are carnivores, any road kill or what they can hunt and kill is a meal to them. I flipped the dead sparrow out of the bird bath and, later, returned to change the water in the bird bath. The sparrow was gone, but I found a coin on the ground beside the bird bath; I had not seen this coin before, it was a well worn Canadian penny, dated 1957, the year after my father died; maybe the penny somehow came to the surface of the ground but it's the only coin I've found in this garden, maybe the crows left it there and if they did why did they leave it there? Is this an example of synchronicity, of a meaningful coincidence, or maybe it is just a coincidence and means nothing.  Or, maybe, we have a psychic connection to some animals and they connect us with aspects of life that we would otherwise not be aware of.

On Dreams, Poetry, and the Soul

I always assumed that everyone had “big dreams” at some time in their life. Everyone dreams but most people don’t listen to their dreams, they forget them as soon as they wake, or if the dream is remembered it is either ignored or sloughed off. They don’t want to be disturbed by dreams, or by re-visioning their life, or by becoming more conscious, or by the discomfort of psychological insight. This is how poets think: they allow for the presence of dreams as a form of communication from the unconscious, and the dream is then listened to.

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God communicates to people in two ways: through angels and through our dreams. If you want to communicate with God, or receive a message from God, then be open to your dreams. Dreams coming from God are the “big dreams”, and we may have only a few of these during our whole life. Dreams have some interest for poets and artists, dreams are psychic collages juxtaposing images that one would probably never put together. They are of interest in an aesthetic sense, as a curiosity, and importantly for therapists as a door into the psyche of their client. Discussing a dream is a way—an entrance, a door—into the psyche, it is a catalyst for discussion. Surrealism as a movement grew out of Freud’s positioning of dream interpretation as an important part of therapeutic work. The Surrealists were more fascinated by the dream as an aesthetic event than by its therapeutic value. Dreams, then, as life changing events, can be an important aspect of how poets think; as well, dream imagery can be transformed into a poem.
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Two other minor examples of poetic thinking: when I returned to live in the neighbourhood where I grew up, I would regularly see people who I used to see in the streets when I was young. They were not older versions of themselves, they were the same people that I used to see, as though, over the intervening years, they had never changed. I no longer see these people, they seem to have departed, where they have gone to I don’t know, but I would often see them, just as they were so many years ago. A second example: I have always believed that when we think of someone we used to know, but have lost contact with them, and they suddenly come to mind, for no reason at all, at that same moment they are thinking of us. For example, sometimes we think of an old friend with whom we have lost contact and then, only a few seconds later, the phone rings and it is the person we have been thinking of. Synchronicity reminds us that there is some kind of cohesion and meaning in life if we can see it.
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It is the essence of the shamanic journey that what is perceived is not a product of the imagination but is “real”. The important thing is the experience in which our awareness and consciousness is not always subject to cause and effect. Dreams juxtapose images that are usually not associated with each other. In essence, the dream is a collage or a "cut-up" (see Brion Gysin). Dreams fascinate us when they open the door of archetypal association. A door, for instance, allows us to enter a room, but a "door" for William Blake is an image opening our awareness and our perception of the symbolical world of the psyche. Almost two hundred years later Jim Morrison resonated to Blake's perception and the music of The Doors followed, music that is shamanic and archetypal.
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Dreams, Tarot cards, Sabian Symbols, the Aquarian Symbols, archetypal images, paintings by Odilon Redon, Magritte, and others, photographs by Man Ray, all help open an entrance into the deeper levels of the psyche. At this deeper level we become conscious of people, we can explore events that were formerly left unconscious, and a narrative becomes available to the conscious mind. I would include fairy tales and mythology as ways to access the unconscious mind.

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Poetry deals with the soul and soul making. Just about any subject can be transformed into poetry, but a poet’s soul is needed for this transformation of the everyday into poetry. The poet is the soul's alchemist. Poetry is transformation. Dreams are another form of alchemy; they transform everyday reality into an expression of the psyche or the soul, and these dreams can sometimes give us access into our own souls.

                                                                                                     

A New Hope, Graffiti

Most graffiti in NDG is fairly ugly, it's tagging. There are also some ridiculous laws about graffiti, they make landlords responsible for removing graffiti, at their own expense or they face hefty fines. Meanwhile, the borough does little to prevent graffiti... Some graffiti seems a synchronistic message from the Universe,  it seems to be speaking to one's inner needs, it is a voice telling you what you need to hear. "A New Hope" is one of those voices. Whoever maintains the building on which this is written keeps painting over the message but it keeps reappearing.

"Holy Wells" in Ireland and Montreal

Recently, on Ireland's RTĒ television, there was a presentation on "holy wells" in that country. A "holy well" is not only a place where you can get water, it is also a sacred place. Many holy wells were originally sacred among pagans and then, when Ireland became Christian, the population assimilated the wells into their Christian faith; this is a fairly common occurrence, churches were built on the remains of pagan temples, and pagan or Celtic holidays were reconfigured into similar Christian holy days.

The history of holy wells reaches back to pagan time, perhaps 5,000 years, a time long before Christianity reached Ireland. There are approximately three thousand holy wells in Ireland where they are known as places of healing; one might visit a holy well to ask for help with a specific problem, or to give thanks that a problem, whether physical or spiritual, has already been resolved.

The holy well is a visible and physical manifestation of mythological, or archetypal and spiritual thinking; it a place where nature presents evidence of the existence of the divine in our lives.

I have been interested in holy wells for many years. The discussion that follows on holy wells also gives some background to the Prologue to Girouard Avenue as well present information on holy wells in our environment. Here is the Prologue in its entirety:

1. The Ancient Well of Ara

There is a well in Tipperary
visited by my ancestors
before they left for Canada.
They said, “This is a place
of sleep and dreams—
drink from the well
and know the mystery
of life.”

Looking down to the water
at the well’s bottom,
they saw the reflected sky
the size and roundness
of a coin with the emblem
of a bird.

On Main Street
where the well
is located, not long
after ships left harbour
and famine crossed the land
a wooden top was fitted
to the ancient well,
the water cold and still
beneath the earth’s surface.

2. The Forgotten Spring

In the big city, at the beginning
of a new millennium, in a park,
the corner of Doherty and Fielding,
where water gathers on the path,
asphalt lifted, broken,
a place always wet
as though it rained last night
although it didn’t, with a seven story
apartment building on one corner
and low-cost apartments across the street,
where six young men stand and talk
on a Sunday morning in summer—
these are not the ancient fields
but a city park where water
rises on either side of a path
from an underground spring,
reminding us of what we used to know,
but have forgotten—the water
insistent, forceful, always desiring wholeness.

Before writing this poem I read very briefly about the ancient well Ara, located in Tipperary. That a wooden top had been placed on it, sealing the well, seemed a good metaphor for the ending of one age, the age of shamanic and visionary consciousness, the age of Bardic poetry and an apprehension of reality that includes that which might not be visible to the naked eye but still exists on some other level of awareness. That age, when the Other World could be more easily penetrated to, ended for most people and emblematic of this ending is placing a top on the well.

Having said all of this, it was interesting to hear on this RTĒ programme that some Irish who were leaving for North America visited, before they left, a holy well. I don’t know, in fact, if this is what my own family members did before coming to Canada in 1837, but I envisioned them doing just that. Creativity, imagination, this might explain my having written this about them, but there is also ancestral memory, whether it is in our physical makeup or in our personality, our genetic makeup, or what have you. I place this “coincidence,” this synchronicity, to ancestral memory.

The next section of the prologue moves us from 1837 to present times. It is over 150 years later, now we are in Montreal, and street names in this area of Nôtre Dame de Grace (NDG), a predominantly English-speaking neighbourhood in westend Montreal, reflect the Irish presence that once existed here. Nearby is Loyola College, founded by Irish Catholics, but since 1973 Loyola has been a part of Concordia University. Many Irish moved to this part of the city so their children could attend Loyola High School and then Loyola College. However, most of the Irish who lived here in the 1940and 1950s have moved away. This neighbourhood was their destination back then, from working class Pointe St. Charles, Verdun, and Griffintown, to Nôtre Dame de Grace, and now the children and grandchildren of these people are scattered across Montreal, Canada, the United States, and beyond.

I used to walk up Belmore to Chester and then continue to Fielding, and walk along the grassy meridian at this part of Fielding. Across the street is Ignatius Loyola Park that covers two city blocks, so it is a huge expanse. Then I would walk by the corner of Fielding and Doherty and one spring day I noticed water running from the park, it ran down an asphalt path from where the baseball diamond was located and into a sewer on Fielding. The asphalt was lifting as water would run along it, and I wondered about this water and where it came from. I remember seeing this water, and there was a lot of it, and noticing how the asphalt bulged and cracked due to the water running under it, freezing, then lifting up the asphalt as it thawed. Every spring there was water there, and it wasn’t from snow melting, it wasn’t run-off from snow melting in the park. Eventually I found the source of the water, it came from a spring locatged behind the baseball diamond on the Doherty side of the park. I intuitively understood what I had found and the significance of this water, this spring. As I walked passed it I knew I was in the presence of more than just water, I was in the presence of something holy.

(You can see this area: go to Google Maps, search “Doherty and Fielding, Montreal,” and then do a “street view” and you’ll see the repair work to the sidewalk due to the run-off from the well.)

There are many underground streams in NDG--they have all been paved over--and the foundations of many homes are being repaired due to damage caused by water from underground streams. NDG was once a place of farms, for instance Benny Farm which became a housing development in the late 1940s for soldiers returning from World War Two. Where we lived on Montclair Avenue had been apple orchards until the house where we lived was built in the late 1940s. Family members used to go for walks along the old Western Avenue (now Boulevard de Maisonneuve West) which was a dirt road, that was back in the early 1940s; they’d walk from Girouard to Hampton. Near where I grew up on Oxford Avenue, along Côte St. Luc Road, we used to play in the fields where apartment buildings were later constructed; until a few years ago there was an old farm house on the corner of Dufferin and Cote St. Luc Road. When I was growing up we were always looking for some nature, some fields, to play in; there were lanes to walk in, behind people's homes, and it seems there was still quite a bit of undeveloped property back then, but you had to work to find it.

I was aware of underground streams in this area of Montreal, all of them paved over or buildings constructed over them. This particular well in Loyola Park, what I have called a holy well, had managed to penetrate the earth covering it and for some years, at specific times of the year, water would run down the asphalt path. You could see the water coming from the earth and others knew of this well. Indeed, a few years ago, when walking through Loyola Park, and passing where the well was located, I noticed that the City of Montreal had made this specific area, where the well existed, into an ecological reserve, they had put a fence around it, planted flowers and some other plants that thrive in wet areas, and encouraged the return of nature. Not much came of this as water was abundant in spring but by the middle of summer it would dry up. It also upset local residents who were concerned that mosquitoes would lay eggs in standing water, they were concerned with West Nile disease. Apparently, some of these people went with buckets and removed the water that was present. I don’t know if there is much left of this well-meaning, but failed, experiment by the City.

What constitutes a "holy well"? We used to drive some distance to an artesian well by a roadside, there were usually several other cars parked there and people filling large containers of water from this well. At first glance, I don't think of that well as being "holy." I think two things can make a well "holy," either found together or separately. First, there is some agreement, some consensus among people, that a certain place is holy. Perhaps miracles can be attributed to the place, or some other supernatural occurences that help form an idea among people that the well has extraordinary powers. Second, a place, a well for example, may be located on a ley line, a place where earth energy may be more abundant than at other places; this example doesn't rely on any consensus of opinion. Perhaps you have walked in nature and suddently felt that you were in a place that was different, more serene or imbued with a quality of silence, or that created a quality of silence in your own mind, and that this space was somehow sacred. I have encountered these places, for instance St. Patrick's Basilica in Montreal is one such place; another, more remote, is an abandoned farm on a slight hill near where we used to live. When I would visit this place I knew that there was something different--spiritual, sacred, holy--that wasn't present elsewhere.