Shoreline Driftwood

Free Download - Love-ism Volume III: Sitting in an English Garden A Novel

2011-12-28T21:25:00.005-07:00

I do not consider myself an economic unit. I do not consider my writing as product to be sold. I consider myself a human being with something to share with humanity. What I have to share are my fascinations, fantasies, and the thin line that separates them.

It is my desire to share with others the fruits of my writing. Consequently, I make it available to anyone and everyone for free. Here's a link to my first novel. The book is titled "Love-ism Volume III: Sitting in an English Garden." This novel was written over the last nearly 3 year period.

Somewhere outside the boundaries of Alice Through the Looking Glass meets Billy Pilgrim, the imagination runs wild in a world with John Lennon, George Harrison, Vietnam era antiwar protests, acid trips, and the draft.

You can read the book directly from here by clicking on the link below. You can also look on the right hand column for a link to the site where the book is archived (with Issuu). If you click that link, you can go to the site where you can download the book to read on your computer, you can read it right from the site (and bookmark where you left off reading so you can pick right up again when you return), or you can print it out to read at your leisure.

The link:

Open publication - Free publishing - More don coorough

Available for Free - "Love-ism Volume I: A Critical Mass and Other Poems"

2011-12-27T11:22:00.005-07:00

I do not consider myself an economic unit. I do not consider my writing as product to be sold. I consider myself a human being with something to share with humanity. What I have to share are my feelings, my hopes, my fears, my apprehensions of the infinite, my agonies and ecstasies, and an understanding gained from living fully and studying deeply into the nature of things.

It is my desire to share with others the fruits of my writing. Consequently, I make it available to anyone and everyone for free. Here's a link to the compilation of my poetry. The book is titled "Love-ism Volume I: A Critical Mass and Other Poems." The poems span a wide variety of genres including: poetry on politics, religion and social commentary, love poetry, nature poetry, impressionist poetry, surreal poetry, psychedelic poetry, dream vision poetry, and transcendental poetry.

The material contained in the book has been culled from the poems I have included here on my weblog. However, all the material in the book has been re-edited. Wherever the passage of time has caused me to re-evaluate the way something has been written, I have performed revisions. There are many small revisions contained here, in this final version of the poems included in this book.

You can read the book directly from here by clicking on the link below. You can also look on the right hand column for a link to the site where the book is archived (with Issuu). If you click that link, you can go to the site where you can download the book to read on your computer, you can read it right from the site (and bookmark where you left off reading so you can pick right up again when you return), or you can print it out to read at your leisure.

The link:

Open publication - Free publishing - More don coorough

Available for Free - "Love-ism Volume II: Essays on a Philosophy of Compassionate, Common-Sensed Evolution"

2011-12-27T10:46:00.011-07:00

I do not consider myself an economic unit. I do not consider my writing as product to be sold. I consider myself a human being with something to share with humanity. What I have to share are my ideas, my thoughts, my beliefs and opinions, and an understanding gained from living fully and studying deeply into the nature of things.

It is my desire to share with others the fruits of my writing. Consequently, I make it available to anyone and everyone for free. Here's a link to the compilation of my essays. The book is titled "Love-ism Volume II: Essays on a Philosophy of Compassionate, Common-Sensed Evolution." The essays span a wide variety of topics including: Climate Change, the nature of consciousness, economics, politics, historical foundations of the contemporary world, freedom, human rights, the nature of knowledge, time, rights and responsibilities, protection for and care of the environment, cultural influences, and many other topics.

The material contained in the book has been culled from the essays I have included here on my weblog. However, all the material in the book has been re-edited. Wherever the passage of time has altered details contained in previous versions of my essays, I have performed revisions to include more recent information than previously provided.

You can read the book directly from here by clicking on the link below. You can also look on the right hand column for a link to the site where the book is archived (with Issuu). If you click that link, you can go to the site where you can download the book to read on your computer, you can read the book online (and bookmark where you left off reading so you can pick right up again when you return), or you can print it out to read at your leisure.

The link:

Open publication - Free publishing - More consciousness

Inarticulate Slipstreams

2011-11-08T16:40:00.010-07:00

Bright night's asphalt steam devours
Hillside necking parked moon showers,
Beam's arced water sparkling tridents
Subvert firefly monuments;
Devoted tingle gardens' walls'
Cupboard door cradled ghostly shawls' -
Forests - plow sunrise corn highways'
Sight broken breastfed one act plays.
Iridescent repossessed dreams'
Of inarticulate slipstreams
Cascade by newborn unsuppressed
Symptoms, acid-etched countenance;
Dispelled conditions' snowflake flair:
Wilderness - an unbuttoned stare.

The Approaching Age of Equality

2011-11-03T12:30:00.009-07:00

Life is change, an ongoing process. No one controls the procession of social order within cultures, societies or nations. History is marked by the flowering of world civilizations from epoch to epoch.

Western Civilization has been defined by ages - epochs marked by specific qualities and social movements. The Middle Ages began after the fall of the Roman civilization, and lasted some 1000 years until the first sparks of neo-Platonism ignited the Renaissance in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The Renaissance lasted through the 16th century and into the 17th.

By the 17th century, the Reformation ensued. Together with the advance of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into local languages, the Reformation helped spread literacy. Because of the rise of literacy, new ideas expressed by the philosophers and political theorists of the late 17th century through the 18th century period known as the Enlightenment empowered masses of people to cry out for basic human, individual rights for all classes and individual autonomy over their lives and life choices. The Enlightenment ushered in an age of Revolution from the mid 18th century through the mid 19th century which was expressed through the clash between monarchists and liberal republicans.

A backlash occurred as the powerful elite sought to retain power, as exemplified by the spread of empires and imperial clashes for economic, political and military hegemony throughout the 19th century in the aftermath of Napoleon and because of the reconstitution of nobility throughout Europe as designed by Metternich. The Industrial Revolution, which began centuries earlier in England, eventually spread to France, Germany and the United States. By the 19th century, the powerful and wealthy elite discovered that the Industrial Revolution provided them with new avenues to wealth and power. No longer did they need to indenture people to the land and agrarian servitude, nor must wealth accrue solely from agriculture and mining. Industry meant the creation of new products and new sources of wealth.

The rise of industry fostered a movement of people from the countryside to the cities as a means of finding employment, their search for greater personal autonomy, and the opportunity to explore new experiences. A synergy arose out of the migration to the cities and the institution of assembly line production. Those conditions, in concert with the Industrial Revolution and the advance of science, including the creation of new technologies, products and services, also contributed to the synergy, which unleashed a population explosion.

Wealthy industrial magnates found a means to extreme wealth beyond their previous imagination with the proliferation of mass-produced products as well as a ready source of both cheap labor and a rapidly expanding consumer class. This new economic dynamic indentured workers to their industrial and assembly line employments, and became their only means of survival. The wealthy elite wielded a broader hegemony than ever before, and learned how to control governments with their wealth instead of having to be the governments as in the past through their status as nobility or royalty. A new, politician class arose to handle the task of governing in a sort of proxy for the wealthy elite. That new class was sufficiently susceptible to influence through their greed, corruption and narcissism, so the machinery of government was (and continues to be) easily manipulated by the wealthy elite.

The 20th century was marked as an age of devastation, destruction, sociopathic war and dehumanization. The wealthy elite broadened their economic interests by creating multinational corporations with highly diversified lines of products and services. In the wake of WWII, the advent of television, and the spread of mass-marketing campaigns designed to brainwash the public into orgiastic consumption, an excessive response to the still-not-forgotten Depression years grew. The consumption of products further enriched the wealthy elite at the same time as it plunged the middle class into permanent debt. The baby boom in conjunction with the sudden affluence within the rapidly expanding middle class of the post WWII period fed a new culture of greed and complicit corruption among the wealthy elite and their political lapdog lackeys.

Today, we stand upon the edge of a palisade precipice. Across a chasm of uncertainty lies a new paradigm. Recognizing the chasm, finding the best pathway to span it, understanding the parameters of the new paradigm, and cooperating in creating the world of the future is this generation's task.

Change is inevitable. Trying to hold on to the past will only lead to greater suffering as time ticks off the clock leading to the inevitable future. Oh yes, the wealthy elite and their strong armed governments can postpone the movement into the new paradigm through force, repression and conditioning, but that will only lead to a long battle between the classes which is in no one's best interest. Once the movement towards change has begun, there is no stopping it.

The wisest course ahead for humanity would be to recognize that we can ease our pathway into the new paradigm, save the best of our current civilization, and reduce the potential suffering for the greatest number of people by uniting our efforts, cooperatively, through the coming social evolution. We can accomplish common goals and effect a positive outcome by embracing change and integrating it systematically rather than fighting it and undergoing tumult and turmoil, enmity and struggle, and a great sociological soul-sickness which would derive from a consequent division of humanity accruing from any great class struggle for power, wealth, position and prestige.

There are signposts everywhere which indicate the nature of the coming new paradigm. Four movements which began in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s offer insights into the nature of the new paradigm: the peace movement, civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism. A fifth presents itself out of the 1980s movement of people in the primarily southern hemispheric regions for basic human rights for all people, even in the so-called underdeveloped nations. Other factors continue to arise: climate change, the development of information technologies in conjunction with the internet, the continuing population explosion, and the current popular demands for an economically just and equitable system - including a more reasonable distribution of income and wealth.

I look across the chasm and see the new paradigm as the Age of Equality.

How do we get there from here?

First, we must address climate change and the types of energy we will use in the future. Humanity cannot maintain a sustainable culture, economy and civilization if it continues to invest in petroleum products for its primary source of energy. However, by immediately initiating a change to clean and renewable energy sources, we can not only abate the worst effects of climate change in the future, we can also start to clean the environment, reverse climate change, provide a better world for our children, grandchildren and the generations beyond them, as well as employ masses of people in every city and town with careers that will be sustainable as far into the future as one can imagine.

Second, we must rethink the whole notion of a global economy. The point of the global economy is to further enrich and empower the already wealthy elite. The whole premise is: corporations can produce products where ever and everywhere costs for production (especially for labor) are cheapest, and these corporations can ship those products to markets where ever and everywhere prices for the products can be set at their highest level.

This system is designed to put the greatest amount of capital into the hands of the wealthiest people, and extract as much of that capital as possible from the hands of everyone else. This system explains why American jobs have been exported overseas, why the debt of most Americans has increased, why the jobs which remain are generally underpaid (the glut of available workers creates an employers' market, so they can pay what they want for labor), and why the accumulation of wealth among the wealthy elite continues to grow at rates higher than ever before.

Third, people of all genders, colors, races, creeds, ethnicity, classes, and cultures must be valued equally and treated with equal respect and consideration, while also being offered equal opportunity for prosperity. If everyone, everywhere, is paid the same rate for their work, while at the same time is taxed equally without loopholes or deductions favoring the wealthy, then income, wealth and prosperity will redistribute naturally - easing the burdens on the poor and middle classes, making affluence available to all, but also denying ostentatious wealth to anyone. Cooperation, understanding, respect, appreciation, acceptance, interconnection, and mutuality become the bywords for the ethos for this new society.

Fourth, in such a society, where everyone is included and valued, the new ethic of community and mutual prosperity will naturally create a need for, and engender a commitment to, peace. Nearly all the wars fought since, and including, the Spanish Armada attack on the British in 1588 have had as their root cause economic competition, religious intolerance, and/or ethnic or racial prejudice. These root causes would be naturally eliminated by the social changes which are inevitable as the world moves into the new paradigm.

Finally, in order to better foster all the prescriptions for change, and to best create a sustainable civilization in the future, population levels must decline, probably by about half - not by execution or war, but slowly, evolving naturally, through education, removing the social stigma on contraception, making contraception widely available and affordable, and the rise of a common understanding regarding a mutual need to reduce waste, reduce the strain on our natural resources, and create a climate which will increase each individual's affluence in the future.

To assist in these goals, a redistribution of the population is also advisable. In smaller communities, where local production of products can supply and satisfy local needs and appetites, everyone's contribution becomes necessary. That leads to everyone being equally valued. At the same time, every community will have a local investment in employing wise, ecologically sound methods and materials, waste will be reduced to a minimum, and individual participation will be maximized. Those conditions will also lead to a more even distribution of labor, affluence and prosperity. I am not talking about capitalism, communism, socialism, or feudalism. I am suggesting that the new paradigm will be based on community, cooperation, respect, mutuality and equality.

Yes, the Age of Equality awaits.

Memories' Amber

2011-10-31T21:07:00.006-07:00

In the night
light rains
from the solitary
every-star grains'
blanketed amusement
the constrained shining
all-in-one star's
perpetual light

I drink it up
to quench your thirst

You are my gift

All knotted up
indispensably untethered
your indivisibility severed
while crimson fractals
glistened individuated sparks
of memories' amber
from ancient seasons
when the unredeemed
schism fracture
birthed infinity

I-we lie
together
under the weeping willow
sorrow forgotten
stardust alive
looking through
tomorrow's eyes

Perpetual Revolutions Shimmer

2011-10-26T08:48:00.004-07:00

From All Hallows Eve
until the next Samhain day
a worthy operation works
upon each of three hundred
and sixty-six midnights
soar through dark's blackest reaches
fathom the staircased bowel's depths
of the Great Pyramid
seek out the calm eye
of turbulent Jupiter's hurricane
which no hazy mist obscures

From All Hallows Eve
until the next Samhain day
the magical rite performed
screams its birth on the final solstice
when a cold wind gusts
through the northern winter tide
and judgment bells bellow
the highest neap captures
greed and lust in ebb's onset
and the dreams of the meek
etch future's glyphs on the blank wall

From All Hallows Eve
until the next Samhain day
time circumscribes impregnation
gestation a mere
fifty-one spins more
until the door to Aquarius
creaks open gaping-eyed hearts
witnessing the Great Wheel
perpetual revolutions shimmer
a constant seed
an eternal garden

Thus I Heard Zarathustra Tonight

2011-10-25T00:53:00.002-07:00

The following are a few brief excerpts from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The passages are especially poignant at the current moment in time. I add my commentary afterward, which is intended to challenge you to think about your choices and put Nietzsche's words into the perspective of the contemporary world.

First, allow me to quote from the chapter titled "The New Idol."

"Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states."

"A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.' But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen."

"The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all - is called 'life.'"

"Culture, they call their theft - and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!"

"Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money - these impotent ones!"

"Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters."

And now, let me share some lines from the chapter titled "The Flies in the Marketplace."

"Little do people understand what is great - that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things. Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world: - invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolveth the people and the glory: such is the course of things."

"To upset - that meaneth with him [the actor] to prove. To drive mad - that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him the best of all arguments."

"Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place, - and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour. But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Only in the marketplace is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?"

But -

"Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their [the rich and powerful] poisonous injustice! They flattereth thee, as one flattereth a God or devil. Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls - thou art always suspected by them! They rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous."

Yes, indeed, "Thus spake Zarathustra."

Nietzsche wrote these thoughts in a different age, in a different world. The world of the marketplace was only just beginning to develop into what we have today. He knew not of the cajoling of advertising or the subtle, yet insidious, seduction of television and movies and the planned obsolescence of high-tech toys. He had not seen newscasters molding public opinion even as they fabricated news, slanted to make you believe in the necessity of the state and the necessity of its laws, its wars, its tax codes, its destruction of the environment for profit, and its erosion of individuality.

Our ancestors were herded off their private farms into cities. Humanity cannot subsist any longer without big agriculture and the multinational corporations that ship their packaged food to the supermarkets of the world. There is no land left to subsist upon. Your lives are those of serfs, selling away the precious hours of your so-short lives to earn a few dollars to feed and house and clothe your families. Those hours of your lives are stolen and can never be regained. Meanwhile, your toil further enriches the wealthy, while today, in the current marketplace, you are lucky if you can find a job. And if you cannot, some smug Repugnican says you are lazy and really just don't want to work.

This is bigotry in action my friends. These are the same bigoted epithets once used against African-Americans, still hurled at Latinos, and now hung about your necks. Today, the bigotry is against everyone who is not among the wealthiest or who does not, will not or cannot conform to social norms, as well as anyone and everyone who is willing to stand up and complain about the current situation. Yes, those who Nietzsche called idolaters, and seekers of wealth and power are the one's who mold the opinions of the sheep, who are then taught to direct their bigoted epithets at you for them.

The wealthy want all the money and all the property. They want you to keep doing their bidding. And if you cease to be of use to them, they don't want you to be around. They don't want to educate you, because you might wake up and see what is going on. Without education, you will not want anything more for yourself, and you will not question their pre-eminence. When you reach your mid-forties to early fifties, you are undesirable as a worker because your most productive years, your most malleable years, and your cheapest years are all behind you. If you are old or infirm, you are useless, so you may be discarded. They do not want to pay for you to be made well again, there is no profit in that for them. They do not want to pay to ease your health concerns when you are old and they have used you up, there is no profit in the for them. They do not want you to have a Social Security pension, there is no profit in that for them, either.

The state will not protect you, it is owned by those idolaters. They pay for politicians' campaigns, and advertising. They keep the elected in their pockets with perks from lobbyists. The state is here, not to serve you, but to serve the wealthy, that is why the wealthy are not asked to pay taxes. The wars that the state fights in the name of some platitude are really only fought to advance some economic advantage craved by the wealthiest within the state whose money buys the politicians, the judges, and the newscasters. The wealthy own the media, and then they create the myth of a left-wing media bias, but only to convince you to shut your mind, stop thinking for yourself, avoid listening to anything contrary to their official point of view, and buy into their programs, their wars, and the favored status for the wealthy in the courts and tax codes.

They placate you with gadgets. They give you Play Stations, and iPods, and iPads, and Social Networking, and cell phones with digital cameras that are also mp3 players that also offer a constant stream of apps, and hundreds of channels on television, and designer clothing. Then, they charge you exorbitant prices for these items, and plan them to be obsolete in 2 or 3 years so you'll buy the products all over again. Most of these items are made of plastic, so when one becomes obsolete, it will sit in a dump for thousands of years since it won't biodegrade. And all this plastic is made from petroleum. Every product is shipped across the world to local marketplaces, and that shipping uses more petroleum.

To assure an endless supply of petroleum, these multinational corporations demand states go to war in the Middle and Near East. So your sons die, not to free people from oppression, but to further enrich the already wealthy by securing the oil needed for the companies to make their products and ship them to you.

Meanwhile, the state tells you it is your use of the automobile that destroys the climate. No one can legitimately argue that individuals using the combustion engine do contribute to climate change. But the greatest damage to our climate through petroleum use arises from military engagement in wars, the shipping of products around the world, air travel, and industry as it makes the useless toys and products that sap future generations of natural resources and which brainwash you into thinking this is such a marvelous life which it is anything but. The state takes special care not to regulate those uses of petroleum, only yours.

And yet, you have come to believe, you have no way out. Your children must have the latest gadgets, latest clothing, most desirable designer labels, and hippest new games if they are to be popular at school, have the right friends, and properly be indoctrinated into conformity. You have to pay for the petroleum which heats your home and your bath water, and which powers your automobile. You must put food on the table and shelter your family. You must provide abundant Christmases and the funds for an endless stream of mind-numbing entertainment - movies, restaurants, vacations, and parties, not to mention whatever your drugs of choice may be, including alcohol.

To further numb your mind, your culture creates stars out of the most attractive people. You become obsessed with them because the media tells you to be and bombards you with their pictures, their movies and TV shows, advertising with them as spokespeople, magazine articles, gossip shows on television, and on and on. So, you give yourself over to fascination with them and join in the cult dedicated to celebrity worship.

To buy all these products, provide a comfortable life for your family, and enrapture yourself with the fascination of shiny toys and beautiful celebrities, you must sell your life, hour by hour, week by week, and still you must go into debt. You must also live with stress, and a constant fear that if you lose your job, you could lose everything. So, you shut your mouth, take whatever shit your employer decides to shove up your ass, and you go to work everyday, for the rest of your life. In so doing, you have so few hours left over to spend with your loved ones that you forget what love is, lose your connection to them, and end up divorced or find your kids arrested or overdosed. Why? So you can keep paying the interest on the debt you have accumulated. And then, you will die far too young because of the accumulation of stress and the toxic conditions corporations have wrecked upon the environment.

This is not freedom, my friends. This is a form of slavery, indentured servitude, which you cannot opt out of. This is the future for as long as can be imagined.

Is this the life you want to give your children? Is this the world you want to endow upon future generations? Is consuming, amassing debt, selling the hours of your life, and creating piles of non-biodegradable refuse while you idolize beautiful celebrities the future you would choose for yourself if you had a choice? Is this servitude to the marketplace really fulfilling enough to bequeath to all future generations?

Or -

Are you brave enough to be an individual, think for yourself, take your balls out of your bosses' wallets, and demand a better world?

Tolled Dull Waste

2011-10-21T16:35:00.002-07:00

Fowl wind's
brash past
stashed
sky, blew
flush guts'
gust: blushed.

Sever all
thrill-kilt
stilled
lie, tolled
dull waste
waits: sculled.

Corrupted file's
flies memorize
disguised
profit: net's
nest subsidized.

Unrecalled Dreams

2011-10-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

Walking through ancient corridors
over rickety bridges
behind new moon shadows

Singing atonal melodies
without breathing

Collapsing umbrella fantasies

Stranded on the edge
of a sand grain
without any salt

Drenched by your wordless rhymes
in my unrecalled dreams
as a cricket gasps

A tiny black kitten
with white paws
and a tiny white tufted ascot
who mews in the softest voice
scampers over to me every night
so that its owner raises a fuss
as it nuzzles into my lap

I hear my dead mother's voice
in the haunted river willow
awaiting the hand of cancer's taut grasp

Disconnected

2011-10-01T21:06:00.007-07:00

On the contented fields
tiled with jigsaw puzzle
leaves - cue-cured by burning hues
where flaming dreams wander by
unlit-candle starry skies -
a day lecher never winks.
But flawed October teardrops,
crowded around faulty rifts,
pass the lines of discontent
furrowed into the ancient
brow of memories relived.
Feet feelings die by inches.
Enthusiasm falters
under the last mournful gaze
of quail eggs, whose longing
smothers calculated broods.
Clever sings in its own ears.

consensus constrained

2011-10-01T20:54:00.006-07:00

in The Beginning
a Spark of Truth
spread through
Our World
proclaiming peace
without indemnity
blocking annexation
blotting out
the conquerors
and unbranding
the conquered
but the olive
branch lies
upon the ground
yet undelivered
consensus
constrained

Solaced Wistless Sighs

2010-12-21T18:03:00.006-07:00

An old man sits alone in the desert

Where he dreams of an island paradise

And when the late night slips into stillness

A faint light's illness whispers lies

Winter winds howl madness through the trees

As the faces from his past make him cry

Can a tall tale promise forgiveness

Though a wall wails solaced wistless sighs

Since birth he's lived to remember

Everyday he screams his lot to the sea

As the sand mainlines the sunshine

His hand combines refined melodies

When the old man climbs a mountain

And sits on a rocky terraced ledge

The bowels of the Earth will shudder

As his mirth fills mutters, wonders fledge

The Morgue at the Buddhist Temple

2010-11-30T13:53:00.016-07:00

The morgue at the Buddhist temple

included news crews' oglers
after six Jesuit priests tried to revive
Russian television in a city bus.

People walked onto the highway
consuming the first fetuses.

An overpowering stench
began handing out
six-month sentences
for a water-only fast.

At the gates where people cross, thousands
gather to mourn exposed potential.

The Chinese news media died
in a chic blazer of sagging standards.

Largely censored
and threatening delay,
a divided Parliament
trivialized critics
with a non-binding,
but embarrassing, gaffe –
censure for old timers making bail –
pleading from the stage door.

A warning may not be enough.

For the most part,
life goes on.
It always has.

The following is a commentary which I wrote to accompany this poem:

Individuals encounter restriction and repression. The most basic and natural social desires among all individualized living creatures is for freedom of movement and choice - in other words, self-determinism.

As greater forces of repression, restriction and homogeneity of character and socialization are exerted within any nation, religion, society or culture, the more tension and pressure builds up within the individuals comprising the unit of socialization until an explosion threshold is ultimately reached.

The history of humanity can be categorized as progressive in that it has been marked by a constant movement towards empowering self-determinism and spreading freedom of personal expression and individualism.

Senses perceive motion. Minds perceive motion through space and time. As the motion of a body through space increases, its corresponding motion through time decreases. In the same way, as governments and cultures increase their restrictions on individuals and the pressure to conform is commensurately heightened, the urge to assert greater individual autonomy also grows. However, the desire for self-determination and individualism always remains a hidden undercurrent because it wells up from within individuals and remains mostly unspoken until a dynamic leader appears (capable of expressing what the individuals feel inwardly, but which they, often, either have no conscious awareness regarding the feeling or are unable to articulate it to either themselves or others) who excites and energizes masses of people beyond the explosion threshold.

With the perpetual transition from moment to moment and season to season, the vine of liberty blossoms with more and more flowers, yielding the fruit of self-determinism. The vines of liberty line the pathway toward the liberation of those collectives of people.

Liberation is a currency. Self-determination is the product that currency buys. Wealth, in such a socioeconomic system, can only be defined as transcendental harmony - which reflects the wisdom of individuals to respect all other living creatures and the understanding by social collectives that individuals' personal liberty must always have primacy over any and all collective interests.

She Sang in the Morning

2010-10-30T08:59:00.007-07:00

She sang in the morning
as she softly reassured daybreak
from under the warm covers of her embrace

She sang in the morning
as she settled like dew on thick tufts
before all the stars could evaporate

She sang in the morning
as she serenaded robins and sparrows
who flitted about in serene commotion

She sang in the morning
as she wove a crown of baby's breath
and white doves flocked to her side

She sang in the morning
as she gently caressed my brow
etching her needlepoint onto my DNA

an isolated night

2010-10-27T21:23:00.005-07:00

a raging wind swirls
at the fabric fix
edging reality corners
when suddenly the center
of a tortured emotional
hurrIcane arises from sacred
howling dogs salivating
salvation in witness of quail
blood spilled on the asphalt
bandaid suffocating fertility
while famished tears
deafen drowning ghosts
under a shadow-filled core
ticking the midnight moment
nourished by a preservative
laden canned fruit charade
where an ancient canyon's
hermit crab crawled under
profit's calculated violence
wondered up by the sewer stench
flowing through the veins
of an isolated night
tattered by expectation's
breathless decay

No

2010-10-16T16:53:00.004-07:00

Shattered glass
A magnet without poles
The little boy crying into his pillow,
A silenced yelp
A carousel with no brass ring
The little boy's finger in a light socket,
An empty sky dwelling
A heartbeat pumping no blood
The motherless litter of one,
Dusk without a sunset
A bee sting
The boy's knuckles smacked by a nun's ruler,
Perpetual delay
A barn without hay
The child drowning in the deep end,
A dry riverbed
A locked door
The boy's menacing father lies,
A walking caricature
A searing desert
The word echoing from birth to eternity, no.

Cassiopeia

2010-10-11T00:17:00.004-07:00

A shooting star streaked,
cracking momentary brilliance
upon the new moon's canvas,
tattooing the black void
with its sole illumination.
The glowing, aphrodisiac aura
embraced emptiness, draping
vanilla and honeysuckle scents
on Cassiopeia's shivering
shoulders of silky alabaster.
Her bright eyes sparkled.
Cosmic winds seeded discovery,
eliciting an amused pleasure
acknowledged by her alluring
Mona Lisa mystery.
Only Adonis and Aphrodite witnessed
my brief, parking lot caress.
She planted an eternal garden
in the placid waters shimmering
from the forest of my heart.

Purple Plums

2010-10-05T19:09:00.007-07:00

Imagine a single,
shriveled pitted-prune
in a bushel of freshly-picked,
sweet, firm, purple plums.
Tiny beads of perspiration
trickle across goosebumps
eliciting witness to arousal.
Unblinking eyes gasp
at taut, silky flesh
when moonless midnights'
anticipation shudders.
The juice of the meaty delicacy
dribbles taboo down lust's chin
in a dream just before awakening.
An insistent shimmer-shiver
rapidly tattoos desperation
with every pounding heartbeat
of untarted forbidden flavor.

Up I Conjure Learning Inner Whole

2010-09-29T21:32:00.007-07:00

Up I conjure gift rapt down
Full of sour sweetened void.
In not lying you walk out
On me, giving getting off.
Now sew future summer past,
Here a humble stumble gone:
Live-in maid made furnace die
Black the grey, doom-bloom, bleached white.
Hush the instant droning sound!
Start to measure leisure's end.
Back when battles had no front
Sky cried coddled, cobbled ground.

Learning inner whole,
Creating game's transitional
Room doorway, talking.
Riding French questions,
Twilight columned writing
(Cross-nailed language):
Endless experience vehicle.

Atoms Moving in the Carpet

2010-09-28T21:53:00.005-07:00

Alcoholic sink table vision
of teeth in Popeye's mouth
toweled bookshelf isolation
while watching atoms
moving in the carpet
and daddy's angry fists
on mommy and my
disillusioned tears
childhood hula hoop invaded
toothbrush drop drills
coerced sirens'
rabbit eared chair pillow
molestation promising death
after life in Davy Jones' Locker
while freedom found hope in ideas.

The Hill of Desire

2010-09-28T09:28:00.007-07:00

I knew a man
who liked to say
"He's so full of shit
his eyes are brown"
I think it's the opposite
when you're full of shit
all the melanin
is sucked out
of your skin
and your hair
it drains into your feces

I used to masquerade
as white
but the pay wasn't good enough

now I'm not for sale

I'm not a high
dollar hooker you know
I give my poems away
to everyone who wants one
freely baby
for free
guess that makes me
a common street whore

Parents teach their kids lies
about the birds and the bees

Flowers never say no
they don't share
their sex directly
flowers make love
in a ménage à troi
they need a third
to inseminate for them

See the roamin' Roman kat
combin' his cat
in the catacombs

I'll let Will
take me until
I surmount the hill
of desire

Always, Never Again

2010-09-28T09:19:00.005-07:00

Goodbye
but not for good
only never
again always
always
never again

Hello
amid blue skies
and warm winds
you returned
and my smile
came with you

Goodbye
this time for good
I know never
again always
always
never again

Without a Lighthouse

2010-09-16T15:00:00.004-07:00

Grinning innocence
broadly disarms
the recalcitrant; while distant,

bright, wide eyes
capture the periphery
nakedly unaware.

Pastorally pristine
property pockets
pantomime, partially
premiering play's
partitioned preference.

Unrewarded redemption's
fog bank snares
without a lighthouse.

Among Faceless Immortals

2010-09-16T14:21:00.004-07:00

Your soul runs, aimless
and frantic,
a yet nomadic melody,
incognito
through starless nights
among faceless immortals.

You are the daughter
of a fathomless pool:
eternity's treasure.

What key fits your lock?

Whisper to me,
kiss the breath of life
into me, shadow
me with your embrace.

Aspen leaves quake in your
wake, like sound fragments
drifting on a high tide
without a current.

Impress upon me a knowledge
of every curved indentation
in your fingerprints.

Let me count your freckles!

A rocky cave cliff-dwelling
stands sentry over eons,
even as thunderous waves
splash their salty, foamy
essence into a luminescent
halo, a planetary tribute
celebrating tomorrow's birth
simply because you sparkle
among faceless immortals.

Chocolate

2010-09-09T21:35:00.009-07:00

Overwhelmed by the scent
Strawberries named Paula
The salty Venice Beach
Taffy air wizzed by
An August sunset
That 1971
Blurred lights led
Up the walkway
To my hippie beach pad

In the later moonless depths
We all shed our clothing
And ran to the dark
Red tide phosphorescence
Stars glittered
The night reflected on the sea
As she hummed
In candlelight shadows
We swam naked and alive
Together with Hershey kisses
Stolen from masculine jaws
By delicately feminine tongues

A Poetry Exercise and Prompt: From "Meeting the Mountain" to "Amniotic Steps"

2010-09-07T21:47:00.009-07:00

This prompt was offered to me today by my poetry professor, Steven Salmoni. Select a poem written by someone else. Write it on a page, but leave an empty line between each line of the poem. In the spaces, write lines between the lines. Now, write only your originally created lines. Polish and edit as necessary. Dr. Salmoni also suggested I try the exercise by using the poem "Meeting the Mountains" by Gary Snyder. Below, the exercise.

First, Gary Snyder (with spaces)

Meeting the Mountains

He crawls to the edge of the foaming creek

He backs up the slab ledge

He puts a finger in the water

He turns to a trapped pool

Puts both hands in the water

Puts one foot in the pool

Drops pebbles in the pool

He slaps the water surface with both hands

He cries out, rises up and stands

Facing toward the torrent and the mountain

Raises up both hands and shouts three times!

Now, the mix: me in the spaces.

He crawls to the edge of the foaming creek

The mouth of the river open

He backs up the slab ledge

Only in distant rills do brooks dare to babble

He puts a finger in the water

He assays the value of the sashaying current

He turns to a trapped pool

Lapping interest at penniless banks

Puts both hands in the water

Reaching for midnight

Puts one foot in the pool

Takes an amniotic step

Drops pebbles in the pool

Rippling the moment

He slaps the water surface with both hands

Before folding in despair

He cries out, rises up and stands

In the black-beamed spotlight of an empty moon

Facing toward the torrent and the mountain

Daring a clock-faced wrist watch to tick off a second

Raises up both hands and shouts three times!

Ollie, Ollie, oxen free

Now, just my poem, with a little polishing, but not too much. I want it to retain its spontaneous feel.

Amniotic Steps

The mouth of the river

Open

Mute

Straining distant fingers

Dare to brook babble

Assay current's sashay

Lapping lacking interest

On penniless banks

Reaching for midnight

On amniotic steps

Rippling rings

Cross the glassy night

Before folding in despair

The black-beamed spotlight

Of an ancient, empty moon

Dares his clock-faced

Wrist watch to

Tick off

Even one more

Second

All-in

Walk-in
Free

Sangria

2010-09-07T21:32:00.003-07:00

A blood-red, viscous sangria

paints a background wash, scattering

its thoughtless, liquid sedation.

Calloused durability wades through shallows,

curing freshly poured cement sidewalks

which exhibit no pathology: a hollow skull.

Hand holding reassurance slithers

beyond the edge of the world, smearing

sangria droplets across the cords of a snare.

Lines in the linoleum soundlessly

impersonated grout-filled spaces

between ceramic tile squares.

Convenience trips on any light beam, stuttering

incoherent aphorisms' dominating supplication,

driven along a straight-lined highway, swerving.

The blood-red, viscous sangria

impersonated grout-filled spaces

between the pithy beats of jazzed-up syncopation.

Metternich, Bismarck and Franco Reveal Reactionary-Conservatism’s Political Struggle with the Rise of Populist, Liberal-Republican Equality

2010-05-26T11:06:00.004-07:00

Introduction

It is fair to assess the era from 1814 through 1945 as reflecting a particular historical movement. This roughly 130 year period marks the struggle by the powerful elite to maintain control over European governments, their national and international economies, and cultural affairs against the rising tides of middle class demands for liberty, equality and liberal-republican styled, representative governments. Acceptance of the ancient premise that a Divine plan separated humanity into natural stations by hereditary lineage found opposition in the minds of an ever-growing, ever-increasingly educated, middle class. The result was a period dominated by reactionary policies determined to stem the tide of progress as it spread liberal-republican ideals. As the power of privilege saw its position challenged and eroded over this 130 year era, reactionary politics grew in strength and increased in the ugliness of force and policies used to hold onto power and maintain the status quo regarding distribution of wealth and power.

In May of 1814, the old European political order lay strewn on the ground like rubble, in the wake of the changes wrought by the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the execution of Louis the XVI, and the reign of Napoleon. The Enlightenment elicited popular movements based on the ideas of equality, no one is born with a right to rule over others, and governments only find their legitimacy by pursuing the best interests of the people, not the ruling class.

These ideas were taken up by revolutionaries as Europe became a breeding ground for the notion of equality and representative government. The rise of the French middle class and the spread of education among that middle class proved a sufficient incubator for Enlightenment ideals to take root. The resulting French Revolution and decapitation of the monarch, Louis XVI, led to an experiment in liberal-republican government in France. Even though Napoleon turned out to be an aggrandizing megalomaniac who wanted to dominate Europe, his initial stated desire, and much of the result of his conquest of Europe, was to rid it of its repressive monarchies and to proliferate the continent with notions endemic to the Enlightenment. He also increased the level of education and vesture of mid-level political power among the middle class.

With the defeat of Napoleon, the politicians tied to the old order were returned to a position of continental leadership. How they put this Humpty Dumpty Europe back together would determine whether or not a progressive or conservative approach would govern Europe in the following decades. In this climate, the power vacuum of post-Napoleonic Europe, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich thrust himself into the spotlight, determined to be the light of Europe who would lead her into the future.

The Age of Metternich

Napoleon’s defeat delivered to Europe the consequence that Metternich’s influence emerged preeminent in Europe. “Confirmed of the falsity of the French ideas, Metternich determined to employ his vast authority to suppress if not extinguish them. He would labor to restore the old order” (May 5). Metternich’s vision entailed a return to the traditional principles from the preceding century.

The heads of state from Britain (Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh), Russia (Tsar Alexander I), Prussia (King Frederick William III) and, of course, Austria (Prince Metternich) gathered in Vienna in 1814 in what was called the Congress of Vienna. Since someone had to negotiate on behalf of France to avoid the appearance that the resulting new order was imposed on the French without their participation and consent, the new French government’s Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, was included. The resulting accord which came into being reflected Metternich’s desire of returning Europe to a semblance of her pre-Napoleonic and pre-French Revolution form, including a revision of borders which sought to establish a balance of power on the continent and his considered ideal form of government, monarchy.

Poland was reduced to a tiny nation-state which barely included enough territory to surround Krakow. The rest of the former kingdom was divvied up between Prussia, Russia and Austria to satisfy each of their appetites, the desires by the victors over Napoleon for territorial acquisitions they deemed their rightful spoils from the war. Other territorial modifications were made upon the map of Europe as well since Prussia received territories including Saxony and Pomerania, Bavaria’s borders were increased from the Prussian border to Alsace, Holland received Belgium from Austria, and a new Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg was created under the sovereignty of the King of the Netherlands. Switzerland’s borders were also expanded at the expense of France. Norway was ceded to the king of Sweden for his role in repelling Napoleon. Lombardy and Venetia were annexed by Austria while Genoa went to Piedmont as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Pope was returned to control over the Papal States, and relatives of the Austrian Emperor were made sovereign over Modena and Tuscany. As a consequence no state on the Italian peninsula possessed the military might to challenge the authority and hegemony of Austria. Monarchies were also returned to both France and Spain (May 9-18).

In addition to a reconstitution of monarchies, the map of Europe was redrawn in a manner which facilitated the desired balance of power between the continental powers of Prussia, Russia, France and Austria. Metternich found success in one of his main objectives, the re-creation of the eighteenth century notion of balance of power. He saw this balance of power as a guarantee for peace for the nineteenth century (May 19-20). “Just as the people were given no opportunity to indicate the flag under which they preferred to dwell, so no chance was allowed them to determine the character of the government they should have” (May 20). Metternich and his cohorts, in the grand tradition of previous centuries, executed aristocratic privilege as its right to impose on the peasant class whatever political outcomes they deemed expedient to assure a continuation of nobility’s control over European commerce, culture and politics.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of reactionary repression arose from the concept of the Concert of Europe and its early attempt at international government. The idea originated with Castlereagh. The Quadruple (and later Quintuple, since it was enlarged to include France) Alliance formed the basis. The powers Austria, Britain, Russia and Prussia (and later France as well) agreed to maintain peace in Europe as defined by the terms negotiated at the Congress of Vienna in the second Treaty of Paris (May 21-22).

Between 1815 and 1848, members of the Alliance convoked conferences to deal with uprisings in areas of Europe where people attempted revolts in the name of liberal-republicanism and/or nationalism. Invariably, Metternich and/or Alexander I of Russia used these conferences to obtain the blessing (and military assistance) of one or more of the other powers when one or both men deemed it necessary to invade some nation as a means of quelling popular movements that sought the progressive advancement of liberty, liberal-republicanism, and equality.

The British refused to assist in these military actions, in large part because Britain was a Constitutional Monarchy which incorporated many liberal-republican principles. The Brits also did not feel it was their place to force the will of outside powers on the people of other nations when the matters giving rise to the military intervention were solely internal and did not threaten the peace of Europe. However, in the eyes of Metternich and Alexander I: 1) anything which threatened monarchy as an institution threatened the peace of Europe because the ideas could spread to their Empires and lead to revolt, and 2) if popular revolts were allowed to overthrow governments put in place by the Congress of Vienna, then the theoretical balance of power in Europe would be at risk, thus creating a climate which might be conducive to some power or group of powers to seek territory or other hegemony through war. Revolts and attempts at revolution in various states on the Italian peninsula, Spain, Poland and the Balkans led to military incursions by the Austrians and Russians on many occasions in the 1820s and around 1848-1849 (May 30-71).

Ultimately, the world order Metternich created crumbled as the rising tide of nationalism trampled it beneath the boots of the coming Prussian armies. Metternich could not stop the revolutionary movements no matter how much force he used or how deeply he bankrupt the economics, diplomatic strength and military might of the Austrian Empire to do so. The seeds of unrest in the Balkans would lead to future wars the Austrians could no longer win. The erosion of influence on the Italian peninsula and throughout the German Confederacy would lead to the creation of nations out of the nationalist, liberal-republican spirit sweeping through Europe. He was forced out of office and even out of Austria during the violence of 1848-49. His world order would not survive long without his force of will and the Austrian soldiers who could enforce it.

Bismarckian Opportunist Realpolitiks

Otto von Bismarck’s career cannot be as easily categorized as Prince Metternich’s. Metternich stayed true to his single-minded purpose throughout the age which bears his name. Bismarck, on the other hand, allowed his policies to be dictated by whatever necessity presented itself at the moment. He was an enigma who confounded German politicians and European statesmen because he was, “the entrenched defender of the status quo, the apparent reactionary, who brought to his campaigns the armament of the revolutionary and the temperament of a Jacobin” (Crankshaw 41). Nonetheless, Bismarck can be said to have had two major foci which dominated and shaped his political maneuverings.

Bismarck believed in monarchy as the safest form of government because it prevented power from falling into the hands of the mob and resulting in revolution which would upset the order of the things (Crankshaw 177). However, unlike Metternich, Bismarck was not concerned with maintaining traditional control over Europe by the landed aristocracy. Bismarck’s elitist ideals were far more self-centered. He didn’t trust anyone but himself and felt that both king and parliament should be subjected to his control. He was, however, dedicated to building a united Germany. “German unity was the proper desire of all who spoke German, he declared” (Crankshaw 59). His dream of German unity had Prussia as its dominant force ruled by the Prussian King. That was a self-serving dream because Bismarck’s wish for a Germany united under the Prussian King as Emperor of a new German Reich was only entertained in that fashion so it could offer him an avenue to dictatorship over that German Empire (Crankshaw 177).

In order to fashion German unity, Bismarck had to resort to war, not once, but on two occasions. His war policies showed complete disdain for human life and suffering – people were mere pawns in Bismarck’s high stakes games of political intrigue. Bismarck conceived a master plan long before war was even considered. He built up the military and seduced the Minister of War (Roon) and commanding General (Moltke) into his sphere of influence as facilitators of his master plan. The quick defeat of the Austrians in 1866, to the surprise and consternation of the most powerful nations of Europe, created fervor and excitement among the German states. Austria was forced out of the German Confederation and the minor kingdoms and principalities turned to Prussia for leadership, protection and economic stability. Bismarck used this moment to unite many of those states with Prussia. At the same time, his masterful diplomacy in negotiating treaties with the heads of the major powers to forestall any action on their part in the event of war, and his ability to capitalize on the moment and strike when his military had been properly prepared for aggression but his adversaries remained unprepared for hostilities, outmaneuvered the Austrians in 1866. Then, in order to complete the final unification of Germany, he repeated the process against the French in 1870-71. Bismarck created a new power in the center of Europe which completely upset the balance of power (Crankshaw 189-300).

Once he had consolidated the disparate states into a new German Empire, Bismarck ruled it with an iron hand. The nationalist spirit he manipulated among the masses to excite them into abetting his creation of the new Empire through war had come with expectations for a more liberal-republican government subservient to a constitution and parliament. However, just as he played the heads of Europe with subterfuge and secrecy to set the stage and facilitate the progress of his war plans, Bismarck used the force of his character and will, the dynamism of his spirit and strength, and the genius of his foresight and long range planning to outmaneuver parliament, bully the Emperor, and rule as a near dictator. His policy of Kulturkampf destroyed the power and influence of the Catholic Church (Crankshaw 303-311).

In the later years of his Chancellorship, Bismarck gave up the Kulturkampf to fight socialism and the Social Democrats’ movement to raise the standard of living and improve the workers’ conditions. Bismarck marked his stewardship of the new German Empire by economic strength and prosperity. That prosperity only trickled down to a few and was mainly vested among the industrial capitalists (Crankshaw 355-360). “On the face of it Bismarck’s triumph was complete. The entire network of Social Democratic activity was torn to pieces and destroyed. The infant trade union movement was strangled. But in fact the very thing that Bismarck most feared, a conspiratorial and fighting opposition, was being born” (Crankshaw 360).

Like those autocrats of every generation before him, the seeds of the undoing of the political empire Bismarck created were sewn by his unwillingness to see the coming changes and progressive new movements on the horizon. His determination to make every aspect of the German Empire conform to his vision even in the face of popular movements for greater equality and liberal-republican government led to the rise of an opposition which would ultimately take control of Germany, even though it took some 60 years.

Franco and Fascism

Generalissimo Francisco Franco rose to power in 1930s Spain as a fascist dictator who repressed his people and killed anyone whose ideas reflected equality, redistribution of wealth and property, and liberal-republican ideals, all of which he deemed anathema and treasonous to the new state he created. His rise to power stemmed from a military coup which came about to counter a newly formed, liberal-republican government that replaced Spain’s failed monarchy in the 1920s.

Franco’s “intention was to crush the Republican army completely, a project which, along with the repression in the captured areas, aimed to lay the foundations for an enduring dictatorship” (Preston 275). Franco refused to submit to Hitler’s and Mussolini’s constant pressure put to rush his war and take the country quickly. Even though Hitler and Mussolini funded and armed Franco’s forces in addition to sending troops and officers to lend assistance, he fought his war according to his understanding of how to achieve not just the short term goal of victory over the Republican forces but his long range plans for Fascist domination over the country and maintenance of the position and prestige of the privileged class. Franco intended to defeat the Republican armies in lengthy battles which inflicted the heaviest of casualties possible. Then, a slow process of pacification of the territory ensued in which all Republican sympathizers were rooted out and either killed or jailed. If they were jailed, in time they would end up dead anyway (Preston 274-281).

Terror was another of the techniques Franco’s troops employed to dishearten and dispirit the enemy as well as provide his army with an aura of invincibility and his campaign an appearance of inevitability. “The terror … was one of the Nationalists’ greatest weapons in the drive on Madrid” (Preston 123). In Toledo, there seemed no end to the killing. The firing squads of Franco’s troops averaged killing 30 prisoners a day for months. The prisoners included Republican soldiers and peasants, anyone who carried a trade union card, who was accused of having been a Freemason, or who voted for the Republicans in elections (Preston 123). In Madrid, 200 to 250 executions were carried out daily with an additional 150 a day in Barcelona and another 80 a day in Seville (Preston 320).

One of the grave consequences of the Caudillo’s policies (Franco was called the Caudillo which loosely translates into something like Fuhrer) was the mistreatment and torture of women. They were subjected to tar and feathering, being dragged through the streets after having their heads shaved, forced ingestion of castor oil so they would soil themselves in public, beatings, torture, sexual humiliation and rape. “As the Francoist forces captured Republican territory – in Castile and Galicia in the first few days, in the southern provinces in the late summer of 1936, along the northern coast in 1937 and then all over Spain once the war ended on April 1, 1939 – the feminist revolution of the Second Republic was reversed with extreme savagery” (Preston 207). The treatment of women by Franco’s Nationalist forces exhibited extreme cruelty and extraordinary humiliation. “Republican women would be punished for their brief escape from gender stereotypes by humiliations both public and private” (Preston 207).

The first objectives of the Franco regime were to maintain and reconstitute the ownership of land to the landed aristocracy and enforce strict control over the peasants and working class. Wages were slashed. Strikes were treated as sabotage and strikers subjected to long prison sentences. Travel and job searches were controlled by the Franco regime. Franco was especially committed to maintaining the social structure of rural areas (Preston 322). These objectives were intended to reconstitute and enforce the preeminence of the ancient landed nobility and the wealth and elitist position of the aristocracy which still existed in Spain, even through the years of the Republican government’s leadership and attempts to bring Spain into the 20th Century.

Franco’s power lasted until he died in 1975. His grip on power was enforced by his militarism: killing or imprisoning all opposed to his policies. He perpetuated his power by maintaining a strict government and through propaganda disseminated in schools and the media. No opposing views were permitted. No literature offering a contrary point of view was tolerated. Nonetheless, after his death, Spain quickly advanced socially and politically. The nation developed a constitution and a representative form of government. Again, as is always the case, the forces of progress may be impeded for a time if sufficient force is applied. However, progress and the advancement of progressive ideas cannot and will not be stopped.

Conclusion

I remain mystified by the persistence of belief in the value of conservative politics. If the history of the world has any lesson to offer, that lesson must be, at its most basic state, that progress cannot and will not, ultimately, be prevented. It may be delayed for a time, but progress refuses to be denied. The conservative position is, and has always been, something along the lines of, “Let’s keep things as they are because the current order works just fine.” The reactionary-repressionist extreme of conservatism evidences not only the traits described above, but seeks to enforce them with might, muscle, arms, propaganda and even by murdering all opposition.

If progress could be thwarted, we would still be living in caves, or alternatively, in agrarian societies run according to the principles of the feudalism which existed in the Middle Ages by ancient, hereditary family aristocracies without any possibility for economic or social upward mobility. None of us would possess books, let alone computers. Access to education (and hence knowledge), comfort, medical treatment, wealth (and consequently, the accumulation of possessions), and every other advantage available to people of all stations in life today living in lands administered by liberal-republican, representative governments would be controlled and lay vested solely among the descendants of those aristocratic, family, hereditary lines.

One can identify liberalism with the forces of progress, change and growth. The progressive movement belongs to everyone the world over. It must be encoded in our genes, because masses of people throughout time have always joined in popular movements to demand change, to improve conditions, to further the cause of liberty, to seek greater opportunity for self-expression, to create liberal-republican, representative governments, and to dream the dream of a world which promotes individual fulfillment.

Works Cited

Crankshaw, Edward. Bismarck. New York: Viking Press, 1981. Print.

May, Arthur. The Age of Metternich, 1814 - 1848. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1933. Print.

Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.

The French in Indochina and the Beginning of Decolonization and the End of Domination by Western Empires in the Third World

2010-05-24T16:23:00.009-07:00

Prior to World War II, the underdeveloped world was largely dominated by empires and colonialism. Though France was known as the Third Republic, it maintained an empire with holdings in Africa and Indochina among its colonial territories. England’s colonies included India, Palestine and Malaysia among its vast network. The Dutch, for instance, retained Indonesia as a colony. Even the United States maintained a colony in the Philippines.

WWII undid colonialism. The occupation of colonial territories by Japan, for example, changed the nature of the relationships between the colonies and the empires which were their protectors and overseers prior to the war. Vietnam, then called Indochina, was such a colony whose relationship with its governing colonial power, France, endured such an upheaval.

Jacques Dalloz explains that the occupation by Japanese Imperial forces helped fan the flames of a growing nationalist movement among the Vietnamese. The colonial relationship and its nature and social structure were destroyed by Japanese occupation. The Western powers claimed their intent as bringing modernization to backward people. However, those “backward people” had civilizations which existed for over 2000 years. The Vietnamese saw the French as hypocrites, overlooking their own Enlightenment values and republican traditions so they could extract the region’s natural resources while exploiting the underpaid and undervalued Vietnamese people who were treated like second class citizens and allowed no access to positions of authority under the French colonial system (Dalloz 20).

Ellen J. Hammer explains that even though the Mikado declared Imperial Japanese would free the people of the Far East from white supremacist dominion, the Japanese returned control of the region to the French through the September 22, 1940 agreement between the French and Japanese because, by then, Germany had conquered France, the Axis puppet Vichy government had been installed, the colonial officials accepted Vichy authority and orders, and the Japanese military had already easily routed the French colonial armed forces garrisoning Indochina (Hammer 23). Since the Vichy government was an Axis ally, Japan returned political control for most internal matters to the French. The Vietnamese nationalists began fighting the French for independence as early as 1940, during the Japanese occupation. “When the French came back to the Lang Son area in the fall of 1940, they were confronted with open rebellion” (Hammer 24).

“Ho Chi Minh was still called Nguyen Ai Quoc when he created the Indo-Chinese Communist Party in 1930” (Dalloz 23). Ho studied in both Paris and Moscow between 1923 and 1925. He also went to Canton, the capital of the Chinese revolutionary movement, as the Vietnamese representative to the Kuomintang in 1925. By the beginning of 1941, Nguyen Ai Quoc returned to his homeland after a 30 year absence and founded the Viet Minh, a broadly based nationalist organization dedicated to wresting independence for the Vietnamese. In 1944, when Chiang Kai-shek decided it was time to form a provisional Vietnamese government as preparations were being made for Chinese forces to invade Vietnam, Nguyen Ai Quoc took the name Ho Chi Minh as he founded and led that provisional government (Dalloz 48).

Peter M. Dunn reveals that on their way out of Indochina in 1945, the Japanese took steps to prevent Westerners from regaining colonial dominion over Indochina. “The Japanese dispensed with the trappings of French colonial rule and swept the French armed forces and civil administration into jail” (Dunn 52). Imperial Japan aided and abetted the Viet Minh even further. “The Japanese turned over large stocks of arms, ammunition and money to the Vietnamese revolutionaries” (Dunn 52).

In the initial aftermath of WWII, England, France and the Netherlands reclaimed their colonial holdings. India had been granted “home rule” by the British prior to the outbreak of WWII. However, India was still part of the British Empire. The British took back Burma and Malaysia, and reasserted governance in Palestine. The Dutch moved right back into the former Netherlands East Indies, then becoming known as Indonesia. The French claimed Algeria and Indochina again. What none of these empires grasped was that in the absence of colonial rule, local leaders from the indigenous populations took up the reins of self-rule. These populations were no longer willing to be dominated by Western colonials and the era of decolonization was about to begin. Vietnam was a leader in the decolonization movement.

Another of the main factors working against the perpetuation of the colonial system lay in the positions taken by Franklin Roosevelt prior to his death as the battles of WWII turned in favor of the Allies. “Roosevelt had mapped out a grand scenario of world events, which included the elimination of the British and French empires” (Dunn 70). Harry Truman did not share all of Roosevelt’s ideas. However, one of the decisions at Potsdam was an agreement between Truman and Churchill that the British would pursue military operations from Burma into southern Southeast Asia, whereas Chiang Kai-shek would lead his forces into northern Indochina, splitting it in two. The British would be responsible for taking the southern portion, assisting French forces there, while the Chinese troops and Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh guerrillas would liberate northern Indochina (Dunn 119). That split would loom large as future events unfolded.

After Hiroshima, Ho had General Vo Nguyen Giap confront the Japanese forces with his Vietnamese Liberation Army. The Japanese capitulation to the Allies on August 14th unleashed a general rebellion in the north. By August 19th, the capital fell to the Viet Minh. The same scenario occurred in most of the cities as Japanese representatives repeatedly gave in to the revolutionary forces (Dalloz 49).

Several months before Potsdam, in March, de Gaulle issued a variety of statements concerning Indochina. He denounced the Japanese tyranny. He praised the French troops and created a mythology of them as having stood up to the Japanese and fought as part of the great battle for liberation. In addition, he stated that the native population remained loyal to France. The French press and politicians took this mythology as truth and spread it among the public, who were otherwise disinterested in matters of a colonial nature, since their focus was on ending the war in Europe and re-establishing their economy and rebuilding their nation (Dalloz 53).

In 1946, the French wrote a new constitution with the term “French Union” replacing previous references to the French Empire. This constitution no longer spoke of natives in colonial lands as subjects. Everyone was theoretically a citizen enjoying the liberties of the French republican tradition (Dalloz 53). The French anticipated splitting Indochina into five countries: Laos, Cambodia, Tonkin (northern Vietnam), Annam (central Vietnam) and Cochin China (southern Vietnam). France promised free elections for a constituent assembly. Ignoring the situation in Indochina, which was one where the Indochinese people had already laid claim to independence, France envisioned these five countries as being subservient to and administered by France as part of the French Union. No date was ever set for the promised elections.

The Viet Minh led the August revolution. The Japanese essentially conceded to the Viet Minh by failing to fight. On August 16th, in a meeting called by the Viet Minh central committee, the People’s National Liberation Committee was appointed to lead the revolution and Ho Chi Minh was unanimously elected president by the committee (Hammer 98-105).

Ho hoped to reconcile all nationalist forces within the Viet Minh. However, Emperor Bao Dai retained ties to the French. Ngo Dinh Diem refused to team up with Ho (Hammer 149-150).

Giap’s troops took Hanoi in a popular, nationalist uprising, which led demonstrations in the streets celebrating independence establishing Viet Minh authority in Tonkin. Emperor Bao Dai invited Ho Chi Minh to install a new cabinet and assume authority in Annam. Ho was unwilling to operate under the framework of a constitutional monarchy with Bao Dai at the head. He sent word requesting Bao Dai’s abdication. With the national popularity and prestige of the Viet Minh so strong, Bao Dai complied. On August 26th, an official ceremony was held in which the Emperor ceded authority to Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh in the interests of peace and national unity. These actions gave Ho control over Tonkin and Annam (Hammer 98-105).

The struggle in Cochin China differed. Many nationalist groups vied for power. On September 2nd, shots marred a peaceful, Saigon demonstration, killing a prominent Catholic priest, four Frenchmen and several Vietnamese. Mayhem ensued. The Viet Minh restored order. Word spread that the British intended to facilitate a return to French colonial rule. The nationalist movements not aligned with the Viet Minh disagreed with Ho’s position that only by negotiation could independence be maintained. In-fighting resulted, often devolving into violence, and revealed serious divisions within the nationalist movement in Cochin China (Hammer 106-110).

On September 12th, the British arrived in Saigon, bringing along some French troops. The Vietnamese saw the French as weak, having done nothing to defend the country or win it back, and returning on British coattails. Anti-French sentiment ran high. In the morning of September 22nd, French troops took control of the public buildings. With the French authorities seemingly back in power, the French public in Saigon took to the streets, abusing the Vietnamese verbally and physically. Violence between the nationalists and French ensued (Hammer 115-127).

In February of 1946, Chiang and the French agreed the Chinese would cede control of Tonkin to the French in return for economic and political concessions. As the Chinese left, so did Viet Minh protection. On March 6, 1946, the French signed a treaty with the Viet Minh recognizing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with its own government, army, parliament and finances as an independent part of the Indochinese Federation and French Union. France pledged to hold a referendum to determine if the three Ky, Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China, should be united. This agreement was a ruse by the French who had every intention of stalling for time and building their strength in order to keep Cochin China separate, maintain absolute French control over it, and steadily regain control in Tonkin and Annam as well (Hammer 148-156).

Subterfuge on the part of the French was a constantly recurring theme in its relations with the Vietnamese. One government after another was promised for and installed in Cochin China. Only puppets actually assumed power. Promised elections never occurred. French troops invaded the north and forced Ho out of Hanoi. Enmity led to war. Instead of honoring the agreement and granting the Vietnamese freedom and independence within the framework of the French Union, France wanted to return to colonialism and domination. None of the Vietnamese nationalists could accept that fate. Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap and the Viet Minh led the resistance.

The French had the Viet Minh on the defensive early in the war. The dynamic changed in 1949 when Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists forced Chiang Kai-shek out of China. As Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture explain, Mao’s Communist Chinese government provided aid and armed the Viet Minh. As a result, the West took a completely different view of the conflict. No longer was Ho Chi Minh seen as leading a nationalist movement for independence from colonial rule. Now, he was a Communist and the Vietnamese movement for independence was reframed as part of Communist expansion in the Cold War struggle (Devillers 22-27).

Giap led a guerrilla campaign. His strategies frustrated the French who controlled the cities, even in Tonkin. Giap broadened the war into Laos. Despite employing a variety of generals, the French could not track him down. In the early 1950s, Giap initiated a counter offensive, ousting the French from some Tonkin cities. Only the charismatic and daring de Lattre had any real success in response, which occurred during 1952 as he retook what Giap had gained. By the end of 1952, Giap’s army was back on the offensive. In late 1953, General Salan theorized that to have any possibility of an honorable withdrawal from Vietnam, the French needed a more mobile and more powerful fighting force than the Viet Minh’s (Dewillers 27-32).

Martin Windrow noted General Navarre took charge of Vietnamese operations in 1954. He devised a plan which he hoped would stop Viet Minh raids into Laos by bringing a larger force into the highland countryside where Giap’s troops' operations were based. By setting up a fort in a valley of the northern highlands, Navarre could disrupt Viet Minh activity, cut off supply and communication lines, and pacify the region. Dien Bien Phu offered the perfect location. It was on one of the highways the French built, making it easily supplied, and from which fort patrols could operate. It sat in a valley blocking access to Laos. It was in the middle of Giap’s operational zone. It had a runway for air operations. Navarre’s plan was necessary because the People’s Army was on the offensive, taking cities from the French again. On November 2, 1953, orders were given to reoccupy Dien Bien Phu (Windrow 221-223).

David Stone explains that the cease fire ending the Korean conflict in 1953 freed up the Chinese military so it might turn its attention to Vietnam. Eisenhower believed the French could handle the increased military threat in Indochina. That assessment was flawed (Stone 79).

General Giap’s forces surrounded Dien Bien Phu and bombarded it with cannon fire. The only means of supply was by air drop. People’s Army troops attacked over and over. Giap took a brief break from his siege in early April to reinforce and resupply his forces. The break also served to improve morale. “The battle reached the final week of April 1954 and the beleaguered garrison prepared itself for what it knew would be the decisive clash of arms” (Stone 77).

Washington and Paris discussed the possibility of American intervention with Operation Vulture. “The plan envisaged as many as 450 fighters and up to 98 B-29 bombers involved in a first strike that would deliver almost 1400 tons of conventional bombs on the Viet Minh about Dien Bien Phu” (Stone 81). The use of two atomic bombs on Viet Minh positions was discussed. Considerations regarding the Chinese response and the likely escalation into a battle between the US and China delayed commitment by the US. Once the battle of Dien Bien Phu was engaged on April 3rd there remained no opportunity to proceed with Operation Vulture (Stone 79-82). The result was the defeat of French forces at the hands of the Viet Minh in that epic battle.

Mark Atwood Lawrence relates that, “By 1954, no American officials had any doubt – nor should they have – that Ho Chi Minh’s movement served the interests of international Communism. The link was real and obvious, even if Western policy was largely responsible for generating the outcome that Western policymakers most dreaded” (Lawrence 279).

Western arrogance – its belief in the right to govern third world populations and dictate the lifestyles while extracting natural resources, its failure to negotiate in good faith with Ho Chi Minh and recognize that the nationalist movement of the Indochinese people was not going to be thwarted by military means, and its repeated failure to abide by the promises made and agreements signed – combined to force the Viet Minh into an alliance with China, their ancient enemy. The defeat was the first in a series between the West and emerging third world nations seeking independence. It heralded decolonization which spread through Southeast Asia, to Africa and even to Central and South America, making it a turning point in Western Civilization.

Works Cited

Dalloz, Jacques. The War in Indo-China 1945-54. Trans. Josephine Bacon. Savage, Maryland: Barnes and Noble, 1990. Print.
Devillers, Philippe and Jean Lacouture. End of a War: Indochina, 1954. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1969. Print.
Dunn, Peter M. The First Vietnam War. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1985. Print.
Hammer, Ellen J. The Struggle for Indochina 1940-1955. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1954-1955. Print.
Lawrence, Mark Atwood. Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Print.
Stone, David. Dien Bien Phu: Battles in Focus. London: Brassey’s, 2004. Print.
Windrow, Martin. The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. Print.

On Notions of Home

2010-05-23T10:45:00.001-07:00

Home can mean many things to different people and in different contexts. One person may consider home as the house in which they grew up, especially if they resided in primarily one single residence for the majority of their formative years. Another individual may think in terms of their home town. Still others, either currently raising or who have raised families of their own, might consider home as being that primary residence in which their children currently undergo the maturation process or where they grew up. Many consider home as being anywhere they reside at any given moment. The homeless might deem home anywhere they lie down that night, or perhaps even nowhere at all.

I believe it is fair to say most of us can use any word in conversation without stopping to reflect on what that word really means emotionally and in the context of the events of daily life. I also believe a word like home, when reflected upon, encompasses a deeply emotional milieu permeating one’s entire being. Home connotes safety, security, conviviality, connection and familiarity. More than just a dwelling or domicile, home provides one’s foundation: the place where family meets, mingles and relates, finds shelter from the outside world, competition, intrusion and antagonism, and enjoys a nurturing center for sustenance, community and love. One’s idea of home reveals one’s roots, not just in terms of place or relationships, but also with reference to one’s internal sense of self and one’s place in the world.

As a child and adolescent, my family moved fairly often. The duration for our longest tenure of residence in any one place spanned 3 ½ years. After I stopped living with my parents and took responsibility for supporting myself and providing for my own life, I continued the pattern of moving from place to place fairly often. During the first couple of years, I didn’t stay in any one place longer than 5 or 6 months. The term of residence in which I dwelt for the longest period during my life lasted 5 ½ years. However, I shared that domicile with a friend, so I don’t really consider that as having been my home. Rather, the dwelling provided a place I shared with a friend, but it formed just one more stop along the way in a lifetime of searching for roots and stability. I also lived with three women, but none of those living situations lasted longer than 9 months. As far as personal residences where I lived alone, my longest term of dwelling in the same place lasted 4 ¼ years. So, given my history of wanderlust, I have never thought of any of my previous abodes as “home” in the sense described above.

I can say, on and off over the years, I spent about 39 of my nearly 58 years in Los Angeles with nearly all of my formative years included among those 39 spent in L.A. However, L.A. possesses no homogeneity, and having resided in 26 different dwellings in that city, none of them stand out enough to provide me with an emotional attachment. For whatever reason, maybe because the lifestyle is so on-the-go in conjunction with the ridiculous number of residences I passed though during my years in Los Angeles, I never even considered the city as my home.

Neil Diamond sang in his song, “I Am I Said,” “L.A.’s fine but it ain’t home / New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more.” I grant that LA courses through my blood, webs the sinews of my muscles and ossified into my bones. Its lifestyle, attitudes and values permeate and inform my consciousness and memories. However, I also rejected the city a number of times and left her as a loose woman and estranged lover because that always seemed to describe the way she embraced her inhabitants, myself included. So, I must paraphrase Neil Diamond and simply say, “L.A.’s there but I’m just gone / The road winds long but it’s my only home.”

Life is a process. One cannot extract any individual moment or experience, occurrence or place, feeling or idea, lover or friend and put that on a pedestal called quintessential. If life teaches us anything, it teaches us about the constancy of change and the fluidity and impermanence within every one of our modes of interpreting experience, including one’s sense of self. I am not even comprised of the same molecules which formed my body when I resided in Los Angeles. My thoughts, ideas and personal philosophy do not match those which made me the unique Don I presented myself as being during those L.A. years. I embrace the change, the process, the fluidity and the impermanence. I am not one Don. I am myriad Dons. I see myself as new every instant, dying to be reborn again millisecond after millisecond.

“What does that indicate home means to you?” you might wonder and want to ask me. I find home in each breath I take. I feel home in every smile I share. I discover home not as security, but through the insecurity of ever-changing experience. Home reveals itself through the process of living. Home speaks to me of and through connection and interconnection.

An old adage tells us, “Home is where the heart is.” I believe the meaning of heart in that phrase can be expressed as love. Indeed, when I speak of home, I speak of love. I carry my love with me everywhere I travel in life. Home does not refer to a place; home refers to an emotional state of being. One can experience that state of being through giving, caring, sharing, listening, understanding and nurturing, because those qualities and pursuits embrace all which best describe home and which best exemplify the feeling, experience and memory of home.

By carrying home with me in all life’s travels to all life’s destinations, I never have to feel the way Neil Diamond felt as he sang his forlorn paean to the loss of home, “Leavin’ me lonely, still.” No, by carrying home with me, inside of me, and expressing it in all life’s greatest struggles, I leave loneliness in places and find community everywhere I find myself situated in every moment of existence. In that mindset and lifestyle, I never have anywhere to go in order to go home because home will always be with me.

Peace

2010-05-22T09:45:00.002-07:00

Meditation

My meditation practice always starts by lighting a candle to illuminate a darkened room. Next, I follow by burning incense. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. Inhale, two, three, four… hold, two, three, four… exhale, two, three, four… hold, two, three, four. My body yields to a slow, calming rhythm. As I inhale through my nostrils, the scent of the incense infuses me with thoughts that mesh with the scent being burned: it might be ocean scent, or roses, or sandalwood, or any other from among the myriad of scents available. Each scent calls up the corresponding mental image, like seascapes, rose gardens or my imagination of ancient rites.

My heart rate slows down as I feel a tingling sensation run up and down my spine. I focus my mind on each of my chakras, one at a time: the base of my spine, genitals, navel, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and finally the crown. As I open and attune each chakra to receive universal energy, I feel it expand and throb, then pulse in rhythm to my breathing. With my eyes closed, my inner vision observes a whirling vortex of white light above my head. Then, a beam of white light descends from the vortex into my crown and all of the chakras emanate a glow. At this point, I intone my mantra. Over and over, the word resonates from my throat and diaphragm and I ring it out for the duration of exhaling. I never break the rhythm of my breathing.

Sometimes, my blood seems to cease circulating through my body. Sometimes a fire rages within me. There are times when I feel as if a flood of water washes me from the inside out. Occasionally, I visualize the white light enter through my crown chakra with each of my inhaled breaths, and a gray smoke expels when I exhale. In those occasions, the gray usually becomes cleansed a little with each breath, so that at first, I see dark, murky and thick strands of smoke expelled when I exhale until, with enough time and focus spent on the breathing exercise, the smoky discharge gradually changes through a spectrum of grays and thicknesses into a light, wispy and thin white mist.

At this time, I am finally prepared to empty my mind of all thoughts so I can hear the stillness of the night. I tune out words and just hear whatever natural sounds might be present. I don’t think about the sounds, I just drift on them – mindlessly, thoughtlessly, and serenely. This state offers me the most fulfilling sense of inner peace.

Commonly Accepted Understanding of Peace

According to Wikipedia, “Peace is a quality describing a society or relationship that is operating harmoniously. This is commonly understood as the absence of hostility, or the existence of healthy or newly-healed interpersonal or international relationships, safety in matters of economic or social welfare, the acknowledgment of equality and fairness in political relationships and, in world matters, peacetime; a state of being absent any war or conflict” (Peace, Wikipedia, 26 January 2010). Very much the same definition can be obtained by looking in other encyclopedias and dictionaries, so this definition can suffice as a working description of the common, universally held conception of peace.

In the sense described above, society fails to view peace as an inner state of being for an individual. Rather, society sees peace as a state of affairs – equilibrium, between two or more parties: individuals, collectives, countries or cultures. The viewpoint expressed suggests we define peace by relationships, especially by the absence of conflict in those relationships. When people get along, they feel at peace with one another. When countries do not engage in war, then peace exists in the world. When ethnicities and classes treat one another fairly, with equality and evidencing social justice, we perceive them as being at peace with one another. Thus, harmony in relationship, between and among groups or multiple individuals, expresses the popular and broadly universal conception for the meaning of peace.

On the Beach

I walked along the seashore. The sound of the surf rolling in to the beach, waves occasionally crashing, reverberated in my ears. Gulls flew overhead, and their calls rang out between the rhythmic ebb and flow of waves washing the sandy shoreline. The gray day hushed the breeze into stillness. Out on the water, a few gulls and a lone pelican bobbed on the rising and falling ocean. Three dolphins took turns diving and swimming through the waves, riding on the backs of the waves the way I once rode on breakers’ faces. Way off in the distance, I could see a fishing boat maneuvering to reap the harvest of the day’s catch.

The salty smell brought a smile to my face. My eyes laughed at the damp mist in the air. I saw driftwood and dead kelp strewn about the shoreline, left by a higher tide. I dug up some sea shells and strolled along the water’s edge. Children played in the surf. A man ran with his dog at the water’s edge. As I watched life expressed all around me, I found myself feeling withdrawn, apart. An understanding came upon my mind; I did not need to be part of the activity. I sat on a large log and gazed about me through sunglasses. All I wanted to be was one of those waves. As I imagined myself to be one, I found oneness in peace of mind.

Celebration for the End of WWII

At the end of World War II, after the last atomic bomb had been dropped and the Japanese finally surrendered, celebration rang through the streets of New York. People hugged everyone nearby. Strangers kissed to the moment. A tickertape parade wound through the streets. Bells rang out. Champagne bottles were uncorked and people toasted to both victory and peace. People shouted their glee. Mothers expectantly awaited the return of their soldier sons. The end of hostility released revelry for the newly established peace.

Summary

I look at what I have written and notice something odd. The commonly, or universal perception of peace as defined by Wikipedia is one which entails a relationship between two or more individuals, or cultures or countries or other social units. Yet, neither of the moments from my life which I presented as having been emblematic of moments in which I felt and experienced peace have anything to do with interrelationships. Rather, they express my relationship with myself, on the one hand, and my relationship with nature and universal spirituality on the other.

From my examples, I understand that peace, for me, represents the absence of relationships, the absence of people, the absence of the complications and entanglements which arise from relationships with others. It seems that my conception of personal peace develops out of an emotionless state, both joyless and without sorrow. Rather, in my life, I find evidence of peace within emotionless serenity, a place between joy and sorrow, where I am in harmony with myself, nature and my spiritual self, but where other people are only and always on the periphery. Peace, to me, describes contented serenity in solitude and will always remain outside the framework of interpersonal, intercultural and international relationships.

An Analytical Introduction to the Poetry of Jim Morrison

2010-05-13T09:06:00.010-07:00

“Is everybody in? The celebration is about to begin.” Jim Morrison.

James Douglas Morrison emerged from the womb on December 8, 1943 in Melbourne, Florida. His father, an authoritarian, from whom Jim would completely estrange himself, worked as a career officer in the US Navy and eventually attained the rank of Admiral. Jim’s family included a younger brother and a younger sister. Among other colleges and universities, he attended UCLA film school, graduating in 1965. At UCLA, Morrison first met Ray Manzarek.

While Morrison lived in Venice Beach after graduation, he ran into Manzarek. Soon, they formed the rock band, THE doors, along with Robbie Krieger and John Densmore. The band name they chose, THE doors, comes from something William Blake once wrote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” On their album covers, the band did not capitalize the word doors, an homage to the poet, e.e. cummings.

On January 4, 1967, Electra Records released the band’s first LP, the self-titled “THE doors.” “The End,” one of the songs on that album, incorporated many themes, among them a controversial reference to an Oedipus complex. Their initial performance of it at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go club on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles led to them being banned from the club.

During the years of THE door’s existence, Morrison wrote most of the lyrics to the songs they recorded. However, Robbie Krieger wrote a few of their songs, including the breakthrough single, “Light My Fire.” The albums “Strange Days” and “The Soft Parade” also contain long cuts (“When the Music’s Over” and “The Soft Parade,” respectively) which, like “The End,” took up nearly an entire side of the LP. Morrison wrote a very long piece (it varies in length on different live recordings but seems to always end up in the area of 17 minutes, meaning it would have taken up one side of a vinyl LP) titled “Celebration of the Lizard” which may have been intended for the “Waiting for the Sun” album since its lyrics appeared on the inside cover.

Reflecting Morrison’s anti-authoritarian and iconoclastic individualism, THE doors exhibited the traits of a pre-punk era, punk band. When they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and performed “Light My Fire,” Morrison refused to comply with Ed’s request to use a different word for “higher” in the line, “Girl we couldn’t get much higher.” As a result, Ed banned them from his show. However, only a couple of years later, Ed asked them back and they took his stage again in support of “The Soft Parade,” performing “Touch Me.”

“I am the Lizard King; I can do anything,” Jim Morrison.

Of his early life, Jim circulated a story which bears a semi-mystical/mythological nature. He claimed that as a young boy, prior to the birth of his siblings, on a family vacation while driving through the southwest, he witnessed the scene of an accident. As the story goes, he saw Native Americans milling around by the highway. On the ground lay an old man, one of the Native Americans. Jim held that the soul of that man entered his body and joined with him, cohabitating his body with his own soul thereafter. The scene impressed Jim for life. He included many references to it in his lyrics and poetry. Jim saw himself as a shaman as a result. He also believed himself as the reincarnated spirit of the Greek god, Dionysis.

Thematically, Morrison’s writing (both music lyrics and poetry) cover a wide range of subjects. He penned material containing topics, among others, that dealt with antiwar sentiments, the futility and waste of violence, love, sex, drugs, reflections on cinema as an art form, freedom, liberation, psychedelic transcendentalism, death, regeneration, and the politics of late 1960s. He wrote in as unrestrained a manner as he lived.

Morrison never married. However, Jim shared two significant love relationships, one with Patricia Kennealy and the other with Pamela Courson. Jim never lived with Kennealy, but did live with Courson. However, Morrison and Kennealy participated in a “handfasting” ceremony (a pagan marriage ritual not recognized as legal and binding by any state government), so she considered herself married to Morrison (and today goes by Kennealy-Morrison). He quit THE doors in 1971 and moved to Paris where he and Pam resided together. He died in Paris on July 3, 1971. How he died remains a mystery since no autopsy was performed. Patricia still lives. However, Pamela died in 1974. Jim’s Last Will and Testament bequeathed everything to Pam.

Jim’s musical legacy with THE doors includes the studio albums: “THE doors,” “Strange Days,” “Waiting for the Sun,” “The Soft Parade,” “Morrison Hotel,” and “L.A. Woman.” He also recorded some of his poetry which the other members of THE doors later turned into an album after they added music to it. They titled the record “An American Prayer.” This album was released posthumously, in 1978.

Morrison self-published two books of his poetry in 1969, titled “The Lords/Notes on Vision” and “The New Creatures.” I purchased a collection in 1971 which had both books and many of his song lyrics combined in one, thick, paperback volume. However, I am unable to find any record of that book having been published. I gave it to a friend that summer (still before Jim had passed away), so I remain at a loss to provide any additional information regarding that book. Omnibus Press re-released some of that poetry as “The Lords, The New Creatures, The original published poetry of Jim Morrison” in 1985.

The rights to Morrison’s writings went to Pam Courson’s parents after Pam’s passing. With the assistance of Frank and Kathy Lisciandro, old friends of Jim and Pam, the Courson’s released two additional books of Morrison’s poetry. The product of that collaboration resulted in the publication of “Wilderness, The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 1” in 1988 and “The American Night, The Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 2” in 1990, both from Villard Books.

Longtime hanger on and low level assistant to THE doors during their heyday, and manager of THE doors after Morrison’s death, Danny Sugarman (with Jerry Hopkins’ as co-author) wrote perhaps the best biography of Jim Morrison, “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” published in 1980. Danny also collaborated with Oliver Stone on his 1991 movie, “The Doors.”

“No eternal reward will ever forgive us for wasting the dawn,” Jim Morrison.

Despite the 1994 publication of the book, “Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet” by Wallace Fowlie, Professor of French Literature at Duke University, Morrison’s published poetry, for the most part, remains uncriticized and unanalyzed by the mainstream poetry community. Most of the attention given to Morrison’s poetry in print revolves around the Morrison myth and perpetuates the lurid tales surrounding his life. Failing to actually spend any real energy on a discussion of Morrison’s poetry and its literary value, about as deep as Fowlie goes into the material finds him offering a brief guide to the influences of Antonin Artaud, Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, the Beat poets, and Friedrich Nietzsche upon Morrison’s writing.

Allow me to begin a discussion of Morrison’s place in the historical community of poets with the influence of Rimbaud upon him. We must first acknowledge a kindredness of spirits between the two men. Arthur, it is said, was a Libertine with a restless soul. He died young, barely living 37 years. He wrote his most important poetry while in his late teens and quit pursuing creative writing at about the age of 21. The myth of Morrison leads us to acknowledge that he, too, lived the life of a Libertine who died young (27) and wrote most of his material by an early age. Jim's writings and life stories reveal him as also having been a tortured soul, especially from his personal point of view. He felt his looks, lifestyle and rock star career overshadowed the value and message of his creative legacy. He maintained a lifetime of unrequited longing to be taken seriously. Rimbaud enjoyed a fascination for absinthe and hashish while Morrison is known for his alcohol, marijuana and psychedelics consumption. Both Rimbaud and Morrison exhibited a kind of pre-punk attitude. Rimbaud has been classified with the symbolist movement of French poetry, though his writing is also considered decadent. Morrison’s writing is also highly steeped with symbolism and a decadent mindset. Even the scatological poetry of Rimbaud can be compared to Morrison’s blatant sexual writing which is evidenced by the Oedipal references in “The End” and poems such as “Lament for the Death of My Cock” from “An American Prayer,” published in “The American Night,” as two examples.

Next, let me offer a comparison between Morrison and Artaud. Antonin was born in 1896, 5 years after Rimbaud died. He was diagnosed with clinical depression and spent long stays in sanatoria. His physician prescribed laudanum for his psychological afflictions, thus leading to a lifelong addiction to that drug and other opiates. Consequently, we see the exhibition of drug influences and the personality trait of the tortured soul expressed in Artaud just as with Morrison and Rimbaud. He loved Baudelaire and Poe, both of whom were symbolists and influenced Antonin's poetry. Artaud’s writing reflected his passion for surrealism, a movement which grew out of the symbolist school and which can be closely affiliated with Morrison’s brand of surreal poetry which I call psychedelicism. The early cinema fascinated Artaud, and as we know, Morrison was a student filmmaker at UCLA who later devoted a great deal of poetry (“Notes on Vision”) to his views on cinema. Artaud traveled to Mexico and experimented with peyote, so his mind, perception and outlook received an influence by what would later be known as the psychedelic mindset. Late in his life, during the Nazi occupation of France, The Germans locked Artaud in a sanatorium where he received electroshock treatments. However, one of the significant points arises from the doctors’ disapproval of his practice of creating astrological charts and crafting magical spells. Thus we can see the kinship with Morrison as shaman/magician as well.

The Beats, of course, greatly influenced nearly everyone with a remotely bohemian mindset from Morrison’s generation. Their writings and lifestyles, like those of the poets already mentioned, expressed predilections for Libertine experiences, for anti-authoritarianism, for experimentation with drugs, and even for non-mainstream spirituality. The Beats, especially men like Gary Snyder and Allan Ginsberg, wrote poetry heavily influenced by their fascination for Buddhism. Ginsberg, in particular, can be seen as a tortured soul, like those poets discussed in the paragraphs above, who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. He also experimented with LSD and marijuana among other mind altering substances. The vernacular which appears in the poetry of Beats like Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti influenced Morrison’s own poetic language, each being infused with heavy doses of street slang and hipster lingo from the eras in which they lived. Of course The Beats also incorporated impressionistic symbolism and occasional surrealism in their poetry, and as the years passed, some, like Ginsberg, acquired the psychedelic mindset and included the psychedelic style in their poetry.

Of course, from a philosophical point of view, every one of the influences mentioned, along with Morrison, can find affinities in their points of view with the writings of Nietzsche. He promoted a movement away from cultural stereotypes, from herd mentality as he called it, and toward a brash individualism which at the same time expressed itself with anti-authoritarianism. Nietzsche believed the only life worth living was that which expressed the individual’s true nature and sought out both experience and meaning consistent with the will to power. These same themes can be discovered not only in the writings of Morrison, Artaud, Rimbaud and Ginsberg, but also in the lives they led.

“(did you have a good world when you died?) – enough to base a movie on?” Jim Morrison.

Another influence on Morrison’s writing (and by his writing I incorporate by reference both his published poetry and his recorded song lyrics) can be found in William Blake. Blake wrote poems of an ecstatic, prophetic and visionary nature. His style, though pre-dating the symbolists and surrealists, offers an early approach to both. One can even say there is a family line of poets leading to the symbolist and surrealist camps which extends from Dante (“Inferno”) through Milton (“Paradise Lost”) to Blake (“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”). Blake was another anti-authoritarian, and took part in the Gordon Riots in London. He did not believe in the authority of any church, preferring his own individual spirituality. His style remains highly unique, often combining poetry and art in the same work. Blake can be seen as the spiritual forerunner of Morrison’s writing, bringing a magically spiritual ecstasy to his poetry which is also evident in Morrison's writing. Blake advocated cleansing the doors of perception. Morrison took him seriously as he dropped acid and ate peyote.

Allow me to offer a few examples from Morrison’s writing which present his mind, philosophy and style.

“Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts. All
energy and sensation is sucked up into the skull,
a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood.
Caligula wished a single neck for all his subjects
that he could behead his kingdom with one blow.
Cinema is this transforming agent. The body
exists for the sake of the eyes; becomes a
dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable
jewels.”

This excerpt (actually from “Notes on Vision”) can be found in “The Lords.” It records Jim’s view of cinema as being a peepshow, a voyeuristic entertainment. It also provides his point of view that movies are a means by which the public mind is controlled and molded by society into a single cultural mindset, that which Nietzsche called herd mentality. At the same time, he winds the thread of these ideas through the spool of his surreal/psychedelic imagery, presenting the theme through symbols. The eroticism is vulgar, determined to impart a decadent view of cinema as mass media influencing the public into a cultural blob, sapped of individual thought, devoted to conform to a social-collective mindset serving only one master, corporate greed.

Next, allow me to offer a bit of Morrison’s surreal symbolism from “The New Creatures.”

“Lizard woman
w / your insect eyes
w / your wild surprise.
Warm daughter of silence.
Venom.
Turn your back w / a slither of moaning wisdom.
The unblinking blind eyes
behind walls new histories rise
and wake growling and whining
the weird dawn of dreams.
Dogs lie sleeping.
The wolf howls.
A creature lives out the war.
A forest.
A rustle of cut words, choking
river.”

Morrison interjects here a glimpse into his view of the new creatures, the symbol of the new society, the society and culture of 1968/9 America. Lizard woman represents the divine, the sacred, tied to ancient cults devoted to earth, land, fertility and mystery. He utters a magical incantation, calling on the sacred woman to turn her back on the glutinous, avaricious, materialist culture coming into being as it creates new histories from behind walls. The walls represent both the city (a human creation) and the new culture into which the minds and desires of the people (the new creatures) are walled up, forcing them to participate in this new and profane reality. These new creatures are the dogs, domesticated animals that lie sleeping (people who sleepwalk their way through life, are taught obedience and servitude to their masters, and who are anesthetized by finding their desires sated with products made by men). The wolf represents the sacred, too, because it lives wild and free, untamed and unchained by human contamination. The new creatures live out the war, he says. The war (besides being a reference to Vietnam) symbolizes the struggle between man and nature for dominance over the planet. Then, he interjects the entirely unexpected juxtaposition of a forest (an image he calls up often in his poetry) – nature as harmonious and beautiful. But he quickly drowns the optimism of that image by choking a river with words – humanity, again, is shown as cutting itself off from the sacred, thereby destroying nature, beauty and harmony.

Morrison presents a completely different approach in his poem “The Connectors” from “Wilderness.”

“- What is connection?

- When 2 motions, thought

to be infinite and mutually

exclusive, meet in a

moment.

- Of Time?

- Yes.

- Time does not exist.

There is no time.

- Time is a straight plantation.”

Morrison shared a fascinating view into how he saw the world in this poem. He titled the poem “The Connectors.” The poem speaks about those things which make connections. The poem appears in a unique form, a conversation. A conversation occurs between two people making a connection, so the poem contains “the connectors” in the two voices carrying on the conversation. Morrison provides his definition of connection as being something which occurs at an intersection. These connectors, he explains, are thought of as infinite and mutually exclusive (separate individuals with eternal souls or who will reincarnate eternally until becoming perfected beings when they can exist in perpetuity in another realm). Yet, they meet, or intersect. An intersection can only occur at a specific place and in a specific instant. That comment leads Morrison to reveal his definition of time, “a straight plantation.” Here, he incorporates hipster lingo of the era. Straight means that which is non-hip. Straight infers that which does not get high and thus not of the counterculture. Straight represents the mainstream, the Establishment. The word, plantation, provides a reference to the old cotton plantations of the South run by masters and worked by slaves. Hence, Morrison explains that connections have commonly (in the era he lived - and since) become dreams woven into our psyches by our masters, who have enslaved us, and who require us to toil for them so we can purchase their products. Morrison wants us to see the absurd circle in our dual enslavement. We are slaves to the shiny things corporations make, advertise and create hype around so we will buy them. In order to fulfill our desire (which has been instilled within us by the advertising) by buying them, we must work (our second slavery, to the machine and masters who create these largely useless and unnecessary things humans lust after). Thus, humanity gives up individual and collective freedom to enrich the already wealthy in a cycle of endeavor that can never be fulfilling since something new to buy will always be created causing a constant stream of reasons to enslave ourselves to the illusion our corporate masters instill within us.

Morrison meant a great deal to me. When THE doors first album was released, I had lived to the ripe old age of 14; fourteen years… impressionable, looking for a voice of rebellion, a youth wanting to be a man and independent, and in 1966, also looking for a way into the secret cabal, the hip, the cool, that which united the teenagers of my day against the Establishment, against the War, against everything “plastic” (the word we used to denote phony and unreal). There was Morrison singing about killing his father and fucking his mother (symbolically destroying the old world and its enforced conformism) in "The End," lamenting about cruelty to animals and the destruction and desecration of sacred nature in “Horse Latitudes,” offering a way into another world, a mystical and magical world in “Break on Through to the Other Side.” Morrison sang about lighting fires, about sexuality, about crystal ships with surreal and psychedelic imagery. He seduced me and an entire generation.

In the years to follow, he sang lines intended to stoke revolution like, “They got the guns / But we got the numbers / Gonna win yeah were / Takin’ over come on!” He also sang about the insanity of the war in Vietnam, “Unborn living, living dead / bullet strikes the helmet’s head.” He always gave us glimpses of the world through strange eyes, the eyes of the drug crazed shaman, chanting, urging us to see the absurdity in the world, urging us to dynamite the plastic and straight fantasy so we might replace it with a natural, sacred and free world which offered to unleash the potential of the individual by deconstructing and destroying the collective. I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to unleash my manhood and my creative instincts. I wanted to find a balance between sacred and culture. Hell, I wanted a sacred culture!

Morrison filled me with these dreams and desires. I wanted to be a sexual animal and primal at the same time as I wanted to run through the forest singing and dancing. I wanted to find my will to power, which is what Morrison extolled without ever calling it that. I wanted to end the reign of enforced conformity and cut the reins of slavery to the consumerist nightmare. I wanted out of the herd mentality that promoted the credo of "my country, right or wrong." I wanted a real freedom, not the plastic freedom of capitalism’s forced slavery to the market, to products, to corporate profits, and to keeping up with the Joneses. Morrison epitomized all these ideas and feelings. I saw him as a revolutionary and a satyr, and damn, that seemed not only romantic, but incredibly macho, too. But his macho was an anti-macho – not Marlboro Man macho with a gun and the audacity to slap a woman into her place. No, he honored women and their essence, he abhorred and denounced guns, and he decried the plastic, decadent lifestyle of consumerist, TV America. Where could I sign up?

I’d written poetry before he came along. I’d been writing poetry since I was 11, having read “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” at the age of ten. But once Morrison infused me with his animal spirit, with his shamanistic vision of the sacred, with his rebelpoet dream of revolution, and with his lunatic psychedelicism and surreal interpretation of reality, nothing I wrote would ever be the same. I waited 5 years to drop acid. But his ecstatic incantations made it a foregone conclusion that I one day would. When I did, my perception was forever thereafter altered. Psychedelics melted the plastic veneer, cleansing my doors of perception, and, true to Blake’s promise, the world did appear as it truly is, infinite.

Let me offer a stanza from the poem “The Crossroads” which was published in “The American Night" and which reveals Morrison's essential philosophy.

“Leave the rotten towns
of your father
Leave the poisoned wells
and bloodstained streets
Enter now the sweet forest.”

Yes, give up the profanity of destroying nature while creating monstrous edifices only intended to glorify the ego of men and the collective ego of humanity. Return to what is natural, your true nature, your true self, find mystery again, and walk back out into the sacred groves where life is truly lived and meaning actually unfolds.

“Cancel my subscription to the resurrection / Send my credentials to the house of detention / I got some friends inside,” Jim Morrison.

Montevideo's Beaches

2010-05-13T08:40:00.004-07:00

Montevideo’s beaches I want to sip margaritas there
Where a bright sun bakes the sand concrete asphalt into an oven
Yearning a cause for celebration
The ancient Atlantic splashes blue in my reveries
Why does ice cool me from the inside out and freeze me from the outside in
War leaves me crying myself to sleep at night
Love seeps through my fingers like water I try to hold in cupped hands
The world shovels dirt over me as if I already lay in my grave
I’d have toured the royal courts of Europe
Or I might have been illiterate and poor
Expressing universal passion matters
I am like a snail morphing into a butterfly
As a four-year-old I almost drowned in a swimming pool
I keep my mother’s ashes
Commiseration contaminates contemplation
I’m not looking for a “Heart of Gold” just a woman to smile with me
Her rose-petal skin could soothe my aging aches
Let me taste her whispering flesh with my fingers and smell her ecstasy between my teeth
If only a she existed to ignore my faults and find the latent joy
Love seeps through my fingers expressing universal passion
Passion is my raison d’etre
Passion is my undoing
I miss bodysurfing in Malibu in the summer
I miss Sunday morning polo at Will Rogers State Park with champagne, strawberries, sharp cheddar and fresh baked sourdough bread from the Pioneer bakery
I miss smelling my mother’s kitchen
In dreams I hear the Atlantic waves breaking on Montevideo's beaches

It Rains Every Day

2010-05-13T08:32:00.002-07:00

In Hawaii, it rains every day. The light rains barely disturb the seemingly constant sunshine. Foliage blooms, and the island is awash in a rainbow of orchids. Stress and tension melt away to the strains of The Beatles and Mozart. My mind now draws blanks at times and cannot recall trivial things, but I remember I once saw palm trees dancing to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Young, bikini-clad ladies still stroll along beaches, catching the eyes of angst-ridden young men. Children run and play in thick grass, tumbling with glee. Adults sip Mai Tai drinks sharing knowing gazes, oblivious to the strife and poverty at the core of Oz. I lose my train of thought in mid-YellowBrickRoadsentence. Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother Suite” reeked of Stravinsky as I reeked of marijuana in the wee hours, listening. I wonder where my words come from when I talk; I don’t think of them before they come out of my mouth. Bonfires illuminate hula dancers draped with leis at luaus. Everyone shares in the feast of roasted pig. How the scent of the charred remains of dead animal flesh induces lustful saliva. The most complex ideas cannot survive. I laugh hysterically. Frank Zappa provides the soundtrack to my life. Pollen drifts on the breeze. The Hawaiian tropical storm passes before it is even noticed.

Chasms' Rifts

2010-05-13T07:56:00.001-07:00

Beyond the ivy covered walls where hallmarks chisel tears
a camera snaps its shutter shut on toothless, ungreased gears.

A field mouse lying motionless blends into his landscape
until incendiary bombs lay waste to quick escape.

A village wraps itself within a net-webbed fishing weir
catching all the floating nothing passing a hushed cashier.

The morning kissing rays of summer curves upon noon napes
shimmer ground gold into russet, autumn-ripened rain-drapes.

Lost locks of amber cascade hues head-first hurtle, diving;
divining, sage pyres, filled with dew and death call arriving.

Corruption spilled from rotting, fleshy, bloody clogged debris
blow strewn upon serenity's once ordered pedigree.

Unkempt, unshaven, blind, unwashed, a powderkeg pump ticks
moments away, one by one, for consternating cynics.

Gladhanding politicians smirk behind their ally's backs
as courtyard countrymen recline they’re shaded by smokestacks.

Under flaming sunset skies, eon's current slowly drifts,
the setting of an era’s sun spans past bridged chasms' rifts.

The Fifth Revolution in Poetics: On a Brief Overview of the History of Poetry with Commentary and Analysis

2010-03-23T15:33:00.002-07:00

Poetry is a form of communication perhaps as old as recorded history. Since at least the time of Homer, poets have utilized poetry to share tales, lift the human spirit, appreciate nature, extol the passions of the soul, declare the depths of their love, explain morality, explore spirituality, criticize society, lampoon politics, relate details of historical events and entertain an audience. The medium soars, sings, rants and rails, as it also prods and cajoles in the hands of an artist. The ability of the greatest poems to deeply touch our emotional selves, challenge our minds, and excite our hopes and dreams aids those most human of expressions to live throughout the ages.

Allow me to provide a glimpse into the poets and styles which have exerted the greatest influence on the history and development of poetry. Since the only language I find comfort reading has always only been English, I will limit myself to a list of poets who wrote in English. I do not wish to provide a detailed analysis for each or any of the poets work. Rather, I want to provide a general overview. Let me begin with John Donne, John Milton and Alexander Pope, all of whom stand as significant and early influential poets.

In the early 17th century, nearly all poets followed one of a few poetic schools led by either: Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson or John Donne. Spenser led the Romantic Movement in poetry with his invention of The Faerie Queen, and his style offered the main counterpoint to the entrenched, formal, Elizabethan school. Ben Jonson was the acknowledged master of the Elizabethan school in Shakespeare’s day, to which school Shakespeare can also obviously be attributed. A satiric poet, Jonson concentrated on classical qualities which exhibited restraint, simplicity and precision in form and theme.

Donne, however, felt the need to break with the past and deal with the paradigm change resulting from Copernicus’ newly (at that time) interposed cosmogony. His education and mindset bridged the chasm separating Medieval and Renaissance thought. This resulted in the rise of what John Dryden would later term the Metaphysical school, because, as Dryden said, Donne “affects the metaphysics and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.”

What Dryden meant by this was that Donne came off, to him, learned and obscure. Donne’s philosophical imagery illustrated and defined emotional and intellectual adventures through the scholastic topics of his day, subjects such as: astrology, astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, Aristotelian suppositions on the natural world and Christian theology.

A reader may not sit passively reading Donne. One must engage one’s mind. Donne provides a glimpse into contemporary poetry with his high-speed, ever-shifting imagery. To read Donne properly requires one’s whole self – mind, heart and soul – to be on alert. Donne provides no imprecise words, no ineffective image and no vague suggestiveness. No word, line or phrase dare be unanalyzed or misunderstood without losing the deeper meanings in Donne’s verse.

John Milton succeeded Spenser in the mantle of leadership for the Romantic Movement. Milton stands as one of the great minds of his generation. He espoused radical, republican politics in a time dominated by monarchy. Likewise, Milton eschewed Episcopal Catholicism and Anglicanism for his preferred Puritanism which was considered heretical in the England of his day.

Paradise Lost, a magnum opus and blank verse (blank verse is a term indicating the lines are written in iambic pentameter but do not rhyme) epic, was written by a blind Milton over a six year period from 1658 to 1664 and was first published in 1667. In it, he lamented the failure of his desired revolution, a broad human movement to republicanism, while he also affirmed his ultimate optimistic belief in the great human potential to rise above its base nature and aspire to greatness. Milton expressed a deeply interconnected humanism in spite of his religious overtones.

John Dryden and Alexander Pope turned away from Donne’s Metaphysical style because their world had passed beyond the entire world view prevalent in Donne’s day. Their strengths include a mastery of technique and language, breadth of understanding of human nature, and powerful ability to provoke insight and meaning out of imagery, symbolism and circumstance. They revealed within their work an intensely subjective analysis, applied not only to the concepts of good and evil, but also to what they considered the inevitable struggle between those forces as they play out in every individual, culture, society and government that ever-was or ever-will-be.

Dryden and Pope also reinvented what has been termed the heroic couplet. The term arises from their style of writing: iambic pentameter lines which rhyme in the aa, bb, cc (and so on) scheme, and which generally appeared in epic poems and plays of a “heroic” nature. In Pope’s hands, the couplet styling can more aptly be termed “mock-heroic” because of his penchant for satire and parody (a great example being his The Rape of the Lock) as he lampooned the stuffiness and contradictions of his time. While the form existed since Chaucer, Dryden and Pope used it almost to the exclusion of all other forms.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge comprise another pair of poets who left the indelible ink of their craft upon the history of poetic imagination. The commanding presence revealed by their insistent use of beat and meter, so subtly softened by a richly ornate use of vocabulary and rhyme, magnifies tension and seduces the reader.

Wordsworth imparted his “Child as father of the man” philosophy (meaning the noblest qualities of all humanity arise out of our child-like innocence) through his poetry. Meanwhile, Coleridge, a utopian philosopher, wove wispy commentaries on a dreamily decadent culture and servile society through opium induced fantasies, forcing us to look at our individual and collective shadow-selves. Both men expressed deep reverence for nature in their poetics. Wordsworth included in his approach to his craft his belief that to communicate effectively poetry must be written in the common, spoken vernacular of the time. This announced a change in approach from his forebears and fostered a bond between poet and “everyman.”

Coleridge liked to say poetry should distinguish between mechanic form and organic form. Samuel believed that to impose a predetermined form on a poem was both arbitrary and mechanical in nature. However, to allow a poem to develop a shape, form, meter and style through writing and rewriting is to grant the poem a life of its own and “organic development.” This organic development was favored by Coleridge, who said, “A good poem is like a plant, constantly growing and evolving through its own internal energy into an organic unity.”

William Blake left a legacy of intensely spiritual poetry. Blake’s technical virtuosity, inspiring themes, beautiful language and intensely emotional content charged his poetry into angelic tools capable of lifting the human spirit above the mundane and re-direct the aims of people to the highest morality, most spiritual of pursuits, and most hopeful and loving integration of humanity possible. Blake believed in the ability of humanity (both collectively and individually) to overcome any personal shortcoming as well as the basic state of human nature as being one of continual growth toward an eventual perfection of the individual, species, culture and society.

To grapple with Blake, one must first consider this statement of his, “The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself.” Blake, far ahead of his time (1757-1827), abhorred slavery and believed in racial and sexual equality. Several of his poems express a notion of universal humanity: “As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various).” He rejected all impositions of authority to the extent that he was charged in 1803 with, though later cleared of, assault and uttering seditious and treasonable expressions against the King. Although Blake was a dedicated believer in Christ, he found a regimental approach and excessive administration of authority as being endemic to all churches and oppressive of the individual’s right to freedom, which he valued above everything save his belief in God.

Blake helped shape the modern world’s conception of imagination. He believed humanity would overcome the limitations of its five senses: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” [This quote was extracted from his “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” The separation of the words every and thing occurs in the original.] While his perspective was once perceived as aberrant, heretical and perhaps even psychotic, that Blake quotation not only seems to have become incorporated into the modern definition of imagination, but has been echoed by Aldous Huxley in both the title to, and theme of, his book The Doors of Perception and the name for, and lyrical and musical styles of, Jim Morrison’s band, the doors (which name they never capitalized, perhaps as Morrison's nod of homage to e.e. cummings).

Walt Whitman is the first American poet this list of significant poetic influences. Whitman’s extreme optimism, his belief in humanity, his reverence for the beauty and harmony of nature and his appreciation for the way the interrelationship of all of creation coheres everything into a unified whole, all provided universal themes of eternal struggle which still inspire readers.

Whitman wrote in the language of his place and time, while also breaking free from restrictions of meter and form. I should take care not to suggest, though, that Whitman invented free verse, since both Matthew Arnold and William Blake had previously experimented with the style. Nonetheless, Whitman’s work certainly helped to popularize free verse with a credibility, critical acceptance and literary success which hadn’t been afforded it before.

Whitman wrote (and self-published on multiple occasions) one book in his life, to which, over the years, he added new poems when he republished new editions of Leaves of Grass. Those new additions often revealed rewriting of previously published verse as well. His poetry truly was a representation of his life, brave enough to grow over time and reach its fullest potential.

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were American ex-patriots residing in England when they acquired literary recognition. They redefined previously held limitations on style, language and forms of poetic constructs. A few years before Eliot, Pound landed in London with revolutionary ideas about reforming the language and content of poetry not so different from those expressed by Eliot when he arrived in 1915.

Pound was a leader in the avant-garde literary circles of London at the time of Eliot’s arrival. Pound met Eliot, strongly believed in Eliot’s poetry and artistic sensibilities, edited Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, and helped Eliot become published. Without suggesting the two men agreed on everything, Pound’s and Eliot’s theories regarding the shape and breadth of poetic revolution necessary to reshape poetry into their view of greater artistic heights remained very similar.

The following discussion of Eliot’s poetics is derived from three of his essays, Hamlet, The Music of Poetry, and The Metaphysical Poets as well as my own understanding, beliefs and interpretations.

Passion was infused into subject matter through use of Eliot’s critical and theoretical construct, the “objective correlative.” Eliot broke with men like Matthew Arnold and Alexander Pope, as well as the Victorian, Metaphysical and Romantic movements. He held that to maintain what he considered to be “the integrity of poetry,” the poem must focus on its artistic sensibilities over anything else, including (and perhaps even especially) overt political, social, philosophical and ethical commentary.

Eliot believed the artistic value of poetry was to be found within the emotional content. This emotional content required the intrinsic presence of an objective correlative. That correlative is best expressed through example – a story, character study, situation, thing or event which evokes emotion within the reader. Eliot said poetry should reveal ideas through sensation as opposed to through an elaboration of the intellectual and the sensual as separate and distinct. In this way, Eliot argued, the poet avoids the pitfall he called “the dissociation of sensibility.”

Eliot believed poetry had experienced a schism of thought and feeling in the 18th and 19th centuries, where, before, thoughts and feelings had been incorporated into one another (or so he believed and said). It was to his purported ideal of a purified, poetic artistry to which Eliot hoped poetry would return.

I have a completely different point of view about 19th century poetry and completely disagree that his assessment should extend back into the 18th century. My feeling is that poets like Byron, Shelley and Keats stuck too rigidly to the kind of diction and language used by Wordsworth and Coleridge. The world had grown accustomed, one might say, to expect a certain kind of language in poetry. This led to a sense of bland detachment and an artificially created and antiquated exaltedness which became banal and hackneyed. Topic choice wasn’t the issue, nor was the interjection of thoughts and ideas into poetry (something that had always been integrated).

No, the problem was that poets didn’t write in the same “current” (to their time) language as was used in everyday conversation. The use of antiquated but traditional poetic diction made 19th century poets sound stuffy, condescending and apart from the rest of society. I suggest Eliot and Pound threw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Just cleaning up diction to bring it into the Modern Age was the only surgery required. However, that said, I would never argue the experiments Eliot and Pound explored were of no value. I believe they add to our rich poetic heritage. I just don’t think they should dominate that heritage.

Let us consider that the objective correlative premise demanded the presence of an object which gives rise to the emotion in a poem, and this object must be of a degree of intensity logically relative to the emotion intended to be evoked by the poem. The significance of this theory, to Eliot, lay in the intention to underpin the poem with a foundation of believability as well as help direct the content toward universal themes as opposed to trite, individual concerns.

A difficulty which can arise in maintaining a strict adherence to this artistic sensibility arises in the possible absence of logical connectives among the various sense images as well as between them and the thought or idea they symbolize in order to evoke out of the desired emotional response in the reader an appropriate understanding of the poet’s intended meaning.

Eliot disliked thought in poetry whenever interjected as a “meditation, reflection, or rumination.” Eliot did extol “a direct, sensuous apprehension of thought, or re-creation of thought into feeling” (sensation), and “the essential quality of transmuting ideas into sensations.” Hence, Eliot’s artistic dictum asserted a policy of abolishing abstract statements, analysis and interpretation of culture, society, politics and philosophy from poetry. Eliot aligned his point of view to that of the so-called Metaphysical School of poetry. However, the method employed by the Metaphysical poets actually always expressed both the pattern of images Eliot prescribed as the only artistic value of a poem together with the logical content of ideas and commentary upon the pattern of images, which Eliot eschewed as Donne’s poetry easily and readily exemplifies.

Eliot had no problem admitting poems created with his preferred sensibility, while leading to poetry of great intensity, place greater demands on the reader. One must read this poetry with as much increased concentration and intensity as the creation of the poem demands of the poet. Eliot justified this on the basis that the complexity of modern civilization demanded an increased complexity be reflected in modern poetry (modern to Eliot in 1915, now known to us as comprising the period from just prior to the beginning of WWI and continuing to the end of WWII which we call the period of Modernism). No one can deny that this style also yields more obscure and more oblique poetry. However, in the hands of a master poet like Eliot or Pound, the technique assists in creating intense poetry which distances itself from narcissism and banality by stripping away the restricting intrusion of personal or logical interpretation in order to reveal in pure emotion universality to discerning readers.

Another of Eliot’s innovations was a return to Wordsworth’s revolution in language. As Eliot wrote in his essay The Music of Poetry, “While poetry attempts to convey something beyond what can be conveyed in prose rhythms, it remains, all the same, one person talking to another… Every revolution in poetry is apt to be, and sometimes announces itself as, a return to common speak. That is the revolution Wordsworth announced in his prefaces, and he was right.” Again, Eliot realized the need to preserve a poetry which remained more accessible to readers through understanding that poetry is a method of communication and the best communication lies in speaking (or writing) in a language and vernacular in common usage.

One can argue the degree of challenge Eliot knew would be required for his new poetry by both poet and reader (the elitist conceptualization of the objective correlative and the excision of thought from poetry all taken together as a whole) prevented this new poetry from being “all the same, one person talking to another.” It extracted much of the content most people incorporate into normal conversation: thoughts, ruminations, pondering and value judgments. I attribute poetry’s decline as a commercially viable medium in the contemporary world to this extraction of thought from poetry. Plays, opera, musical theater, concerts of all styles and genres, art and books of both non-fiction and fiction all thrive in the contemporary entertainment climate. So, I cannot accept poetry suffers in commercial viability because of the advent of film, television or popular trends in music.

Pound and Eliot revolutionized poetry at the same time as they continued to incorporate classical symbols and metaphors, just as had the poets of the 19th century and before. The literary titans, Pound and Eliot, exhibited a fearless contempt for the limitations imposed by the mores of the Victorian Age, thereby creating poetry which aided in liberating the human spirit from the shackles of repression and sublimation, anticipating perfection of human nature might be better pursued and accelerated. Pound’s and Eliot’s use of classical mythology as symbols and metaphors for human circumstances, strengths and foibles, as well as society’s contradictions and discrimination, continued a time honored approach to reveal universality in content while also expanding the archetypal nature residing within their poems’ thematic depth.

After the conclusion of WWII, the world became schizophrenic. The evidence lies in every discipline. The mass of humanity just escaped two horrifying and extremely deadly world wars. Hovering over the emerging post-war reality was the specter of nuclear annihilation in an epic East-West conflict. Suspicion hung thickly and pervasively from the U2 to the Iron Curtain to Little Red Books to Korea to Vietnam to NATO and the Warsaw Pact to Voice of America broadcasts to drop drills, air raid sirens and tests of the emergency broadcast system. Fueled by the GI Bill, the broader mass of returning American veterans went to college and/or opened their own businesses. A more widely and better educated, as well as more broadly pervasive and affluent, middle class arose from the ashes of the depression and two world wars.

The expanding pervasiveness of educated erudition allowed new movements in every artistic endeavor to find expression in a neo-Renaissance which arose in the decades after WWII. Many trends in art arose. In music, traditional jazz has seen offshoots from more than a few revolutions including bebop, fusion and the recent foray into the bland and emotionally distant smooth jazz. In addition, music has witnessed the birth of many completely new forms including rock, electronic, new age and hip-hop. Classical music gave way to the experiments of men like Sibelius, Glass and Satie. Film has grown up from its silent and black and white eras during the Modernist period to express, in its greatest moments, works of deep emotion and intense, universal significance. The best movies are like visual, epic poems.

Poetry also spawned a frenetically varied gamut of approaches since the end of WWII. It is fair to apply to the post-WWII period an overriding term. The word commonly used is “Contemporary” to distinguish it from “Modern.” However, contemporary would have no meaning applied to a time period from 1945 to 2001 when viewed 100 years later. Besides, the 1950s are hardly contemporary with the 1990s. So, I feel compelled to reject that un-illustrative name, especially since it speaks more to the lazy narcissism which so-called culture has expressed and disseminated throughout that time period.

A fascinating anomaly during this era has been a schism of thought in two broad classes of people, independent thinkers and blind acceptors. The more highly educated an individual became, the more they were apt to exhibit independent thought. Those independent thinkers craved new insights into their world. New ideas and new takes on old ideas became a pervasive part of the newly emerging culture.

At the same time, a paradigm shift started to unfold. Time Magazine re-introduced Nietzsche through the magazine’s issue sporting on its cover the question, “Is God dead?” Science began probing the deepest secrets of the universe and uncovering the building blocks of life as The Big Bang and double helix became accepted scientific doctrine, both supporting in their own ways the obvious truth that the universe is a product of evolution and natural selection.

Simultaneously, as occurs during all periods of paradigm shifts, the old ways and old worldviews assert themselves with vigor in order to try and thwart change to hold onto their world dominance. In that vein, religious movements and politically conservative trends assert themselves and seek to spread the hand of their control over all areas of human life and expression. We have witnessed a massive reconnection between people and evangelical-fundamentalist religious movements in both Christianity and Islam.

What kind of grip can these religious trends exert over people? They hold to the strictest interpretation of Creationist beliefs and refuse to accept as facts such scientific discoveries as: evolution, natural selection, The Big Bang, carbon dating as a valid technique for determining the age of artifacts, Einstein’s theories of General and Special Relativity, the double helix and DNA. Those same scientific principles make just about every aspect of our lives in the contemporary world both possible and comfortable: from GPS devices in cars to microwave ovens to a vast wealth of medicines to laser surgery to the atomic power which provides much of our cities’ energy and much of the weaponry of the contemporary military! (Superstition, it seems, is the only addictive behavior for which a Twelve Step program has not been developed. But then, of course, Twelve Step programs are dependent on the superstitious nature of people in order to band them together into a world-wide Orwellian Big Brother Society keeping tabs on self and other simultaneously.)

I cannot begin to exhaustively critique every school of poetry since 1945. However, I will briefly touch on a few of the most important movements and a few of the most significant poets.

New Criticism, which tends to denote those following the tradition set by the Modernism of Pound and Eliot, with John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren being among the founders of this school of thought, provides a fine starting point. They enshrined some of Eliot’s complex literary values like interjecting into their poetry: paradox which one cannot logically phrase, an intricacy of irony expressing lack of commitment, impersonality and distance, and self-conscious techniques of word dexterity. Many of America’s most famous poets sprang from this group, including: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, however, by the late 50s, even they began violating their precious New Critical principles!

An “anti-formalism” spirit arose in the 50s and 60s in response to the rigidity and distance present in New Criticism. Charles Olson’s 1950 essay Projective Verse announced a new approach to poetry which we call the Black Mountain School. Robert Creeley once said, “Form is never more than an extension of content.” He found an attraction to Olson’s ideas and joined the Black Mountain School. Another significant subscriber to the Black Mountain School was Denise Levertov, who wrote an influential essay titled Notes on Organic Form in 1965.

Olson expressed a focus on breath in poetry. He believed in constructing poems in what he called a projective and open format by releasing line from the tyranny of feet and meter and reinvigorating the energy of the poem with a language and form constructed out of the interplay of ear and breath. There is a naturalness of a line which submits to the fluidity inherent in the sound of specific words to the ear while also obeying the constraints of breath. Olson explained, “… that verse will only do in which a poet manages to register both the acquisitions of his ear and the pressures of his breath.” [Emphasis in Olson’s original.] Olson also suggested poets pay less attention to rhyme, meter, and both the quantity and sounds of words, while placing greater emphasis on the syllable. Olson exclaims to us in his poetic manifesto, “Let me put it baldly. The two halves are: the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the syllable; the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE.” [Again, emphasis in Olson’s original.] Another of Olson’s significant points about writing poetry relates, “So, is it not the PLAY of a mind we are after, is not that that shows whether a mind is there at all?” [Once again, emphasis in Olson’s original.]

Olson revealed a host of fascinating opportunities for poets to explore from the possibilities arising out from employing his system of open or projective verse. Experimentation was something he excitedly advocated. One could, using the newly proliferating technology of the typewriter (then becoming widely possessed by middle class households in post-WWII/GI Bill America) to tab additional indentations, indicating how long a pause between lines might be indicated. Or, words could be arranged on the page to emphasize some additional intended meaning.

One would expect Denise Levertov’s essay, Notes on Organic Form, should pay some debt of gratitude to Coleridge, and she delivered. Denise found excitement in exploring how far one could take Coleridge’s ideas. Then, she tied what she learned from Coleridge to Frank Lloyd Wright’s concept of organic architecture. In the fusion, Levertov opened up open verse so it might be projected more broadly. She led the world to the doorstep of possibility in terms of poetry’s potential. Denise reminds us that organic means living, implying that a poem is a thing alive like you or I. A living poem requires the poet to relinquish the role of omnipotent creator, imposing whatever regularity a poet’s whim might decree. Levertov must have heard whisperings from the muses, because she directs us to listen to the poem and allow the poem to dictate to the poet what its unique structure wants to be.

Another admonition Denise joined Olson in expounding derives from a quote attributed to Edward Dahlberg, “The law – one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception.” However, to that axiom Levertov informs us she learned there are places in a poem for chasms, too. “Great gaps between perception and perception which must be leapt [sic] across if they are to be crossed at all.” The magic in that approach, she continues, occurs when the rifts are leaped over. “A religious devotion to the truth, to the splendor of the authentic, involves the writer in a process rewarding in itself; but when that devotion brings us to undreamed abysses and we find ourselves sailing slowly over them and landing on the other side – that’s ecstasy.”

The next group influencing poetic growth which I’ll cover is the New York School. This group included Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch. They were inspired by the art produced by the abstract impressionist movement. In the same way, they saw art in poetry as an evolving process, not a finished product. I see this group treading lines between a variety of other schools, deriving content from the Confessional school or New Critical inspiration, but utilizing Olson's open form while incorporating a new natural landscape – the city – and being highly experimental.

The Beats are another major influence upon our poetic heritage, arising out from a less mainstream, less middle class 1950s than the other groups mentioned so far. This group includes Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, and Robert Duncan (the latter of whom migrated to The Beats from Olson’s Black Mountain School). The Beats swirled with energies as divergent as Rexroth’s and Snyder’s Zen-like capturing of liquidly fluid imagery and mystery embedded within enigma to Ginsberg’s travels from a hell in the bowels of the American streets to his Whitman/Biblical Psalms influenced messianic incantations. Ferlinghetti reported on a world which seemed like a circus, unreal yet demanding, and right in your face. So, he incorporated language, symbolism and line breaks and indentations to jar the individual out of the conformist malaise which began gripping contemporary reality. Ferlinghetti's style also seemed to emulate the way experience imprints the brain, things coming at the mind from all over the place.

The Beats had something else going for them. Unlike most of the other poets since Eliot’s day, who it seems all emerge with College and University credentials authenticating their poetic authority, the Beats came to us mostly from the streets, from the great voice of America’s everyman. They fused drugs, eastern mysticism, jazz and improvisation. They exposed truths which nicely prim university types hesitated to notice and in language which, just like the comedy of Lenny Bruce during the same time period, cultured society found offensive. In their deepest roots, the Beats exemplified an authenticity one can find in Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. At the same time, The Beats infused an emerging subculture with a whole new way of perceiving their world and a whole new language for expressing those new perceptions.

Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti demand a deeper analysis. They continued the work of Eliot in breaking down the needless rules confining possibilities in poetic style. Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg perpetuated Eliot’s exploration of common vernacular in poems, opening new avenues to reach universal themes and broadening the horizons of artistic sensibilities. [While Ginsberg was deceased long before the writing of this discussion, Ferlinghetti is still alive and still writing poetry. I use the past tense only in the sense that their major works, and those works of theirs which most influenced our poetic heritage and the revolutionary nature of poetic evolution, had already been penned by the mid-1970s.] In so doing, they continued to advance the movement begun by Eliot and Pound throughout the second half of the 20th century and straight to this day.

Their persistence in challenging tradition contributed to generational movements (begun by the “beat generation” but most ardently pursued by the “hippies” of the sixties) towards freedom in all areas of life. They, too, sought to advance the progress of humanity toward some ultimate, future perfection looming as a desired destination. These men contributed their advances without ever detracting from the elegance and eloquence of their words or failing to interject intrinsic beauty within their poetics.

Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg reintroduced thought into poetry, together with the other Beats, the Black Mountain School and to a lesser extent the New York School, along with those who have followed them in their poetic styles and sensibilities in the decades since. They created an underground movement during the 50s which rejected Eliot’s proscription against introducing thought into poetry, making it fashionable, again, at least among Beat poets and most other advocates of open poetry, for the poet to interject thoughts and personal values into their work. However, they always did so in a manner which, like Donne, Milton, Pope and Whitman before them, maintained the poems’ universality. Thus, they avoided the pitfalls of descending into narcissistic self-analysis and expressions of self-pity, sappy sentimentality or banal, irrelevantly themed foci of attention. Rather, so liberated by the freedom to speak honestly about any subject in an organically constructed way, the poets of the 50s and 60s were free to charge their poetry with keen insight and deeply moving emotional content.

Deep Image poetry grew out of earlier visual arts’ movements in surrealism, an approach which involves distorting reality and delving into the unconscious or subconscious. While some of the New York School was influenced by French surrealism, the Deep Image poets were influenced by Spanish surrealists. Robert Bly’s magazine (named and renamed for each decade of its existence, e.g. The 50s, The 60s, etc.) gave space to the new surrealist poetry which Robert Kelly coined in Notes on the Poetry of the Deep Image, his 1961 essay. The adherents to this school of poetry include Pablo Neruda, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand and Charles Simic.

Perhaps the primary poetic school to come out of England after WWII as a direct response to what was perceived as an “age of anxiety,” was the neo-Romantic movement called New Apocalypse. Dylan Thomas was the major figure of this poetry. He reintroduced openly expressed emotion and rhetoric into British verse. Like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake before him, he tried to restore importance and value to nature poetry.

Another important British school of poetry is called The Movement. This group includes Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie and Thom Gunn. Their poetry developed in reaction to what they perceived as the romantic excesses of the New Apocalypse group. They also rejected Keats symbolism and Eliot’s and Pound’s Modernism. The Movement was steeped in urban and suburban realities, not myth, whimsy and fancy. They affected a neutral tone.

Two very contemporary poets who inspire me are Kate Braverman and Sarah Manguso, each for very different reasons. They both have dynamic voices, though from different perspectives and in different degrees. The point is that they have definite voices which are fluid, clear, evocative and nakedly honest.

Seamus Heaney talked a lot about voice in his essay, Feeling into Words (1974), and he marked a distinction between Craft and Technique in the development of voice. Seamus Heaney capitalizes the words craft and technique in his essay, so I follow his example in this discussion. Seamus explained that Craft denotes one’s ability to manipulate the tricks of the trade; it is the learned “skill of making.” But Technique, he reveals, arises from the poet’s ability to “dig” deep into “the pool” of oneself in the poet’s “discovery of ways to go out of his normal cognitive bounds and raid the inarticulate.” Heaney continues, “Technique entails the watermarking of your essential patterns of perception, voice and thought into the touch and texture of your lines.”

Braverman is in your face dynamic. Manguso is seductive and alluring. Braverman is a tempest; Manguso a siren. But they both embody Heaney’s point. When they write, they speak in rhythms and with words and sounds which seem to fit perfectly together. They prove technique does not discriminate according to either haunting assonance or blood-boiling consonance. It is the emotion encapsulated and rivetingly expressed which can place a reader in awe. Yet, it is the embedded Technique, the ability of both poetesses to create a natural language, which allows them to effectively deliver their visions and specters.

This idea of Haney’s regarding Technique is something akin to what I call passion. One can write from the head or from the heart. One can write to see the words on the page or hear them enunciated to an audience. Neither is poetry alone. Even wedding the mind and the heart, combining emotions and intellect, does not guarantee the affectation of a poem. Technique is the process of imprinting passion into words which is the essential attribute that defines poetry. The presence of passion is the essence of communication, the underlying nature of universality, and the spiritual soul of a poem.

Today, there are poetry movements for just about every minority and group. It also seems as if there is a trend back to Modernism in many of the voices of contemporary poets. There are more poetry journals in existence than ever: some print, some online, some both. Many are edited by minds which have been shaped and conditioned to accept the status quo. Sometimes I wonder, is it really communication for a small community of like-minded people to restrict their communications to one another, and to a form seemingly only they can understand? I, for one, do not think so. I believe that such a course is elitist and narcissistic. I fear the possibility that poetry can succumb into a reverence for the status quo in such a circumstance when, through the very nature of their apprenticeship as poets, aspirants should be revolutionaries in mind and heart!

At the same time, other movements in poetry exist today that are highly experimental. In clubs, poetry slams with radically experimental views on what constitutes art and poetry, a wilder poetry, of the people and by the people, piques an interest in a whole new underground.

We live in a fast-paced world where instant gratification is the rule. If you want to make a purchase but are short on funds, just charge it. If you seek a piece of information, you can look it up on the internet, where, in a matter of moments and a few keystrokes on your keyboard, all factual and erroneous information on every subject is available to everyone. Individuals who intend to vote in an election for several decades now have found they no longer want to listen to long speeches in order to determine from their own analysis and interpretation what the positions of the candidates mean both for the individual and the country. It seems huge numbers of people are content with 15 second sound bites and accept the evaluations made by pundits and preachers on how to cast their vote. Blogs populate the internet, affording everyone the opportunity to make their voice heard on any subject.

Ideas, analysis, commentary and answers are everywhere available to everyone from just about anyone. Well, they exist everywhere except in most published anthologies of contemporary poetry. Meanwhile poets with much to say and offer to the world find their only avenue to expression lies in self-publishing. This severely limits the size of one’s audience, marginalizing the voices of the newly emerging poetic revolutionaries who the contemporary world vitally needs to hear and read!

The age in which we arise as conscious beings is ever-increasingly being defined by a worldwide movement not only toward the rapid exchange of information but also toward a worldwide, rapid exchange of personal opinions. Yet, many outlets for contemporary poetry make a taboo of interjecting personal opinions, philosophy, and cultural-political-social commentary. In this way, poetry potentially marginalizes itself as a communicative medium.

Poetry is still enjoyed by people the world over. However, the kind of poetry most often preferred by contemporary culture exists as lyrics in much of today’s music. World populations cannot get enough of that form. Every month, the music industry releases new song collections to the public, who buy them voraciously, consuming them immediately. Then, this public expresses its insatiable desire for more. Songwriters have not feared to include ideas, thoughts and social commentary in their lyrics for decades now, and humanity considers much of their content worthy of the classification as being considered art.

Let us look briefly at some of the basic, historical differences between occidental music and poetry. Troubadours tended to roam across the countryside, composing songs along their travels as pieces of comedy, romance, drama, history or tragedy. They were primarily entertainers. These same genres served poets and playwrights in their creations. Song lyrics, just like poems prior to the appearance of free verse, have form, meter and rhyme schemes. Both can (and often do) employ literary techniques such as: symbolism, simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, etc. Songs, traditionally, tended to deal with lighter subject matter than poetry.

A smattering list of songwriters (from John Lennon to Bob Dylan to Jim Morrison to Paul Simon to Peter Sinfield to Ian Anderson to Pete Townsend to Pete Brown to Joni Mitchell to Laura Nyro to Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye to Neil Young to Graham Nash to Roger Waters to Jon Anderson to Bono to Bernie Taupin to Sting to Bruce Springsteen to Billy Joe Armstrong, just to name of few) combine to evidence the degree of influence poetic sensibilities and universal subject matter exert on contemporary song lyrics.

This movement has been incorporated by those of the streets in spoken word poetry, hip hop and rap. The success of these writers only proves the hunger in the public for a poetry which speaks directly to them and which is bold enough to lay the writers’ belief systems and societal judgments on the line for all to see and assess like Alexander Pope and others in other centuries have done in the past, knowing this is a service necessary and beneficial to humanity.

Too many individuals endeavoring to write poetry focus on the art In their craft, and label themselves as artists. The “art-worthiness” of something cannot be determined in the present. Artistry is not a concept one should strive to apply toward one’s own work. If well-crafted communication is the minimum value to pursue, let inspired and moving incantation be the aim. History can decide if art exists after we’re dead! The idea of considering oneself an artist is nothing more than narcissism and is guaranteed to reduce the real artistry in and value of the work created. It is the work which is to be exalted, not the individual who creates it!

Another concern regards how the points and lessons poets wish to impart to posterity often become obfuscated by failing to deal with the concepts in even a moderate degree of straightforwardness. For instance, The Iliad was written by Homer at least in part to point out wars’ inhumanity, the terrible waste of lives, cultures, human achievement and community. This is evidenced by a variety of details within the epic.

The first example arises from the realization that every Trojan citizen was killed by the invading Greeks. If Homer wanted us to arrive at the opinion that war is both heroic and glorious, why would he write a story in which every innocent and non-culpable person met a fate they did not deserve? Furthermore, none of the Trojan citizens’ deaths were caused in the least by heroic acts perpetrated by the victors. No, the city was sacked and the populace murdered ignominiously by the Greek invaders in the dead of night, not because of some sort of heroic, glorious, against-all-odds battle, but through a ruse of subterfuge and the Trojans’ stupidity in bringing the wooden horse into their city.

The next clue to understanding that Homer wrote to denigrate war rather that extol it becomes apparent when realizing that the war was fought over a woman’s infidelity. Does anyone really believe Homer honestly wanted us to accept that any degree of beauty, even of mythic proportions as suggested for Helen, should suffice as a valid reason for a whole population to sacrifice life, limb, family and prosperity? Would it be acceptable to American’s for the U.S. to entertain a war over the reputation or sexual exploits of Madonna, Jenna Jamison or Miss America? No! While Homer provided us with additional, geopolitical concerns which fueled the war, he also made it clear, those were Agamemnon’s thinly veiled agenda, but that the other Greeks generally went to war to aid Menelaus’ in reclaiming his wife and his honor. Here we see yet another example of Homer showing the power in political subterfuge and the manifestation of machinations’ ability to control and use people without regard for their safety or value.

Another indication of Homer’s real intent for writing The Iliad lies in the death of the champions for each side, Ajax and Achilles for the Greeks and Hector for Troy. None of the champions survived. One would think if war is glorious, the victory would be the result of the titanic battle between the two sides’ champions, Achilles and/or Ajax for the Greeks against Hector for Troy, and to the victor would accrue the spoils. That was not the case in The Iliad. Those who usurped the spoils were the least honorable among the victors! Furthermore, the war did not conclude after the great clash between the champions, Achilles and Hector. Indeed, after Achilles killed Hector, the war remained unwinnable for an approximate period of ten years until the Greeks devised the strategy of the Trojan horse.

Next, let us view the treatment of Odysseus. Here was a man who acted honorably throughout the war. True, it was he who conceived the plan to infiltrate Troy with the horse. However, Agamemnon was a tyrant, the chief architect of the war and most despicable character in The Iliad. Rather than subject Agamemnon to the ordeal described in his sequel, The Odyssey, Homer subjected the much more minor and honorable figure, Odysseus, and his completely inculpable family, to endure the affront that Agamemnon won the spoils and earned acclaim while Odysseus was sent adrift by fickle gods and goddesses for no real reason other than that he was one among all who failed to offer the proper sacrifices to the gods in gratitude for victory.

What has come to us through the ages is a completely different view of Homer’s intended meaning. War was glorified by succeeding generations because of a failure to understand the irony in some of Homer’s lines and the failure to subject the story to a more rational analysis. From time immemorial, the broad population of humanity was taught by those in political control of the societies which followed to see war as glorious, as honorable and as pleasing to the gods (and later to God). Kings, Emperors, Popes and madmen have used this epic (and a litany of later writing) as a means of subverting the will of the people and brainwashing them into jumping off whatever cliffs rulers have since deemed necessary.

The point of this discussion was not to provide another analysis of Homer’s great epic. This is far from an exhaustive analysis. The point is to show how real meaning can not only be misunderstood, but also subverted for ulterior motives when an author relies solely upon symbol, metaphor, irony and allusion to impart intended meaning. I believe in an unequivocal necessity for leaving a deeper and clearer indication of the poets’ intended meaning if that meaning is to stand the tests of time, language, interpretation and translation without later being subverted.

In a world in which everything is readily available to the consumer, most contemporary poetry cloaks its truths, aims, beliefs, warnings, council, hopes and fears in shrouds of obscurity (literary devices like symbol, metaphor, irony and allusion), which were conceived in the name of art, but which only serve to drive wedges between poets and potential audiences, erect barriers to communicating the intended meaning of poets to the world at large (both contemporary and future), and render the influence of contemporary poetry almost nil. Poets must relearn to identify with everyone, including the common person, give up the smug sense of superiority which is often expressed in literary devices, self-conscious styling of forms, and the occasionally expressed condescending unwillingness to explain themselves and their poems' meanings. Poets must accept that to have any value, their poems must first communicate with an audience. To cultivate an audience requires poets to identify with that audience as well as for the audience to be able to identify with the poet and the poetry.

If poets have a sincere desire to broaden the interest in their work, and if they really want to fulfill the duties of social critics, historical commentators, philosophical investigators and moral compasses for society (as should be poets’ aims), they must be willing to speak to people in a language commonly in use, as Whitman, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Eliot, Pound, Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg (and many others) all have indicated must be prized. I will be the first to admit that the Eliot’s revolution continues today, and use of common vernacular, as opposed to some idea of a traditional, poetic diction and vocabulary, is not the problem facing today’s poetry.

I contend it is not just a common vernacular which is to be prized in poetry, but also a common modality in communication expressed by a generation, age, movement, culture, lifestyle, economic system, and/or technology which will impact and influence what someday may be considered as constituting art in poetry at any given time, but which, nonetheless, must be the aspiration of poets who want to reach a public and inspire that public to its highest potential. The contemporary need poetry must address is its ever-growing commercial irrelevance. That commercial irrelevance means poets are not reaching an audience and that they are, consequently, failing to inspire their generation into pursuing humanity’s highest aims.

Anyone claiming to be a poet ought to create poetry with these ideas in mind. To do so makes the poet, like Whitman, Dickinson and Ginsberg: of the people and common. But commonness aids in transcending barriers between the poet and their ability to reach an audience. At the same time, this approach allows poets to focus on taking the best of what they’ve learned, jumble it all together and distill it through a re-defining prism in order to color it with passion and universality. It ought to be goal of all poets to find a balance in poetic-artistic sensibilities between the need to create communicative experiments which show as opposed to tell while also furthering the aim of engaging in beliefs, ideas, emotions and thoughts as well as sensory feelings in Donne’s tradition, but updated for current trends, ideas, language and modes of communication.

However, in order to reach a contemporary audience, publishers must understand and accept a commensurate dedication to applying the principles for expressing artistic poetry and, more than just making future poetry available to audiences, sing the praises of this new poetry to the great public in a commercially urgent manner!

Sensory feelings are only half what makes us human. Shall we lobotomize our poetry and deny the existence of the mind in order to hold tight to some status quo perception of what constitutes art? Is it our place to try to define art in our own times and own, self-indulgent terms to benefit our individual self-interests as economic units? Is anything art if it does not communicate to a broad audience? Can we call poetry communication if no one but another poet or critic really understands what the poet seeks to convey and/or is even willing to read the poem?

I sincerely believe there is room in poetry without sacrificing “artistic integrity” for lines which provide intellectual commentary or which arrive at intellectual conclusions just as did the poets of the so-called Victorian, Romantic and Metaphysical movements from Milton to Pope to Dante and Donne through Browning and Tennyson, stretching back to Homer, Hesiod and Ovid. Shakespeare’s writing provides the greatest of all examples of intellectual verse!

Is it not the responsibility of a poet to craft beauty and elicit emotional content out of common concerns, questions, themes and judgments? I believe so! Don’t poets owe a debt of clarity, honesty and openness to their readers? Again, I believe we must address the concern that some things are too important for us not to be forthright with our insights into beliefs and understanding. I also believe we do humanity a disservice by failing to increase the impact and influence of poetry in the contemporary world, just as we debase the respect and value our current crass society and culture of conformism, consumerism and convenience hold for the poets and poetry of ages past at the same time. The more we, and publishers who do not invest commercial urgency into the collections of poetry they publish, devalue contemporary poetry and poets by failing to reach a contemporary audience, the more a commensurate devaluation of our rich, human, poetic heritage results.

One will find in poetry throughout all ages an expression of fascination for a variety of techniques. The music of poetry is enhanced by such tools as alliteration, both consonance and assonance. Atmosphere, mood and ambiance are intricately tied to setting and theme, either to enhance the desired effect or to heighten the degree of irony in the ending. Irony, sarcasm and cynicism are other tools often employed a great deal in poetry. One will certainly discover anger in poetry as well, since anger is a legitimate human emotion and affects the world. Poets also occasionally create portmanteau words.

Line enjambment and end stopped lines are both useful in different situations. Line enjambment heightens plurisignation. I believe that by providing multiple meanings (plurisignation) to lines in poems through enjambment (which is the technique where lines are broken not at the end of a thought, but somewhere before it has resolved, allowing the inference of plurisignation’s multiple meanings), the poet causes their work to more closely mirror real life.

Symbolism is rife throughout poetry and some of the best examples can be found in the French symbolist movement led by Baudelaire. The French symbolists exploited the use of privately concocted symbols of rich suggestiveness. Anyone can attempt the same, yet one can also exploit the manner of interjecting symbolism consistent with Donne’s early Metaphysical poetry, meaning the use of ideas and thoughts as symbols as well as employing events and physical objects as symbols which can alluding to concepts. I do not believe one can divorce one’s intellect from one’s emotional self and still synthesize meaning and understanding from experience and sensation.

It is also important to take great care to incorporate symbolism from an impressionist point of view – meaning that even in a world we agree to accept as being objectively real, the perceptions each of us experience and conclusions we draw are all varied, or subjective. In other words, we each approach reality differently, based on individual, subjective impressions of that reality. Such a view of subjectivity implies all symbolism must be impressionist.

I also extol the incorporation surrealism, acknowledging the debt to the French surrealist movement begun in the 1920s with the appearance of André Breton’s Manifesto on Surrealism. The book expressed Breton’s goal of aiming for a revolution against all restraints on the free functioning of the human mind. Breton suggested a universal need among individuals, and society as a whole, to end what he called the “tyranny of certainty.” He felt the more natural human state was based on error of perception, error in analysis, error of understanding, and error in conclusion. Hence, imposing a surrealist perspective promotes freedom from uniformity, which is nothing more than conformity and always yields a false sense of certainty.

The concept of certainty, in a world where objective reality can never be apprehended because of the barrier each of us imposes to it through the intercession of subjective individual perspective, is patently absurd. Consequently, one will find absurdist interjections useful from time to time in their poetry. Without giving up the disciplines of logic, reason, morality and convention, I believe one must loosen restraints on them in order to transcend the control they exert on the individual mind. Strip society of its tyranny over the mind and the individual will find the freedom to arrive at their unique, individual interpretation of meaning as well as be able to impose that interpretation in their life as they deem appropriate. I believe poetry is all about putting one’s faith in freedom and exploring the possibilities life presents. So, it follows that incorporating and utilizing every technique which can aid in the loosening of society’s control over the mind will be something I approver of expressing through poetry.

However, I believe that combining impressionist symbolism through a lens of absurdist surrealism, while critical to creating paradoxical (and highly ironic) poetry which can aspire to challenge readers to see the world in new ways, is not enough by itself to assist an approach to transcendence. I believe in expanding surrealism into what I call psychedelicism, which indicates the bending of the mind in order to encourage transcendence through exploring insight and opening up consciousness to previously unknown aspects of itself. Psychedelic experiences result in creative exuberance arising from liberation over accepted, normal perception. My theory of psychedelicism seeks to incorporate exalted states of awareness and mysticism to create a bridge from the mundane to the quasi-divine. The psychedelic experience arises in poetry when poet, poem and reader all travel streams of consciousness to heretofore unimagined conceptions of reality.

I also hold that the use of these mind bending techniques will always be ineffective in leading to transcendence unless the poetry from which it springs also remains grounded in naturalism, realism, and a sense of bucolic, pastoral harmony. As a result, the poet ought to seek to create a foundation in truth and reality strong enough that fancy and insight may lift readers to ride upon them and thus see into, through and beyond reality.

An additional reason for my assertion for the need to ground contemporary poetry in naturalism resides in the realization that our era rests upon a precipice where nature is not only rapidly being erased by the ever-encroaching urban sprawl, but it is also prone to eradication due to the effects of machines, technology and the industrial revolution. The entire 20th century has been a period when nature and the wild have been devalued to the cult of money. Consequently, there has never been a more significant time in human history to extol the virtues, beauty and value of nature in its most pristine state. Reverential attitudes toward nature in one’s poetry can only assist us to live in harmony on the planet.

I also believe in striving to integrate modern scientific knowledge with arcane classicism to challenge minds out of Postmodernism and create meaningfully ironic juxtapositions. One can employ archetypes as symbols and actors within the lines of the poem. I also believe in incorporating Donne’s technique of the Metaphysical Conceit, where dissimilar images are combined and the hidden resemblances in things which appear otherwise unalike are exposed. Additional techniques useful in poetry include healthy doses of cynicism and sarcasm learned from Pope, use of the “mock-heroic” couplet (also learned from Pope), personification of inanimate objects (and sometimes even ideas), occasional hyperbole (often to intensify irony) and occasional satire.

Everyone who writes poetry seeks to incite the passions of the reader. Often poets receive little acclaim in their lifetimes, leaving, in those instances, many poets’ aspirations as appearing to later readers as having been lonely, thankless or unredeemed efforts. Still, it isn’t acclaim a poet seeks (or certainly shouldn’t be). When the words of the muses ring in ones ears, when one cannot stop the pen from gliding across the page, and when one is compelled for no other reason than the love of humanity and the universe, then one will discover the great joy the craft and artifice can offer. If a poet can lift readers’ spirits, if a poet can assist readers to feel the emotions coursing within the poet, if a poet can challenge readers to think, and if a poet can incite readers to feel and live more fully, then the poet has succeeded and their heart and soul can rejoice.

The time has arrived to pursue the fifth revolution in poetics. There have been four previous epochs in history when breaks were made with the past by devising new styles or movements to meet the changing needs of a new epoch because of the rise of a new social class, a changed world picture, new scientific theories, religious, social or economic developments, or a combination of those conditions.

John Donne was instrumental in the first revolution which pursued a course through the 1600s. He altered the style and quality of poetic sensibility and developed the Metaphysical movement. The next revolution occurred in the 1660s, when Dryden and Pope led the movement toward the heroic couplet, away from mystery and paradox, away from imaginative or spiritual pioneering, and toward a crisp, plain and effective language which seemed to record what all men were thinking in their age while commenting on social and political conditions of their times. At the end of the 18th century, Wordsworth and Coleridge introduced the third revolution to purge poetry of endemic and antiquated language and diction. Finally, as discussed, Eliot and Pound led the fourth revolution, to continue the work of Wordsworth and to purge intellectualism from poetic content.

Today, we are not only ripe for the next revolution, and not only is the state of poetry’s commercial irrelevance in contemporary culture creating a climate where the revolution is necessary if poetry is to survive as anything other than an anachronistic relic of the past without any further use to humanity, but the events of September 11, 2001 in concert with both Climate Change and the development and proliferation of the internet have created another paradigm shift in the history of humanity, the kind demanding a revolution in poetry, just as it demands a revolution in every aspect of our way of life to save us from the worst effects Climate Change can wreck and the threat of an unending war against terrorism which can never be won. That war will forever remain unwinnable because no matter how many followers of an idea a culture or nation kills, it remains impossible to kill an idea. Ideas die when their usefulness ends.

We are living through a paradigm shift as great as the Industrial Revolution, as great as the Agrarian Revolution, as great as the Renaissance, as great as the Age of Enlightenment, or just as easily, as terrible as the Dark Ages, perhaps even annihilation. Communicative capabilities have never been more widespread, immediate or intellectually stimulating. How we react to all the crises we’ve co-created will determine our future.

This is not a time to leave the driving to others. This is a time to get involved, to be aware, to become knowledgeable and to increase one’s insight and analytic skills. I believe in striving to incorporate in poetry of juxtaposing Multiplicity with Singularity and Unity, and Individualism with Interconnection. These approaches will challenge readers which in a manner designed to heighten the pleasure in reading as well as hone analytic skills in individuals needed so they can assist in creating a better future. Writing should be a labor of love and joy. Offer it with love, respect and humility. Then, joy will be returned.

Rubies

2010-02-17T18:17:00.003-07:00

In August,
chrome electricity
measures
Tennessee rubies.

Caramel asylum
chrome fiction
measures
rubies' condensation.

Silver eyelid
reticence petrifies
asylum
caramel electricity.

Elsewhere ghostlike
rubies illustrate
Tennessee
eyelid chrome.

Paris' sprawled
portrait drapes
caramel
rubies' romance.

Honeycombed veneers'
fabric sails
ghostlike
skyline asylum.

Oh! Blithe, Enveloping Treasure

2010-02-14T21:32:00.002-07:00

An horizonless ocean
blending into the sky
weaves, without a loom,
a mandala tapestry
as I sing Om to streaky
cotton candy clouds
languidly caressing
my beloved’s cheeks.

Conch shell trumpeters
blare out a fanfare
for a regal procession –
every drop of my blood
marches, like an army
of idolaters, an impassioned
adoration procession for her
elegance, my song of the heavens,
oh, blithe enveloping treasure!

My eyes bleed prayers…
and the answers arise –
the cold breeds the sun
as the wind hatches chimes,
the rain washes lovers
enraptured by the moment,
bulbs release tulip petals
from Hades grasp, and sighs
catch in breathless gasps.

A wild mare gallops
in the soft, impossible
night, whispering secrets
to her spring stallion.

Klimt’s painted kiss
adorns only the lips
of his sleeping Danae,
whose fiery red hair
drapes over the shoulders
of the treasure I caress
with my every heartbeat,
and the fire of your spirit
ignites my life’s passion.

In the hearth of your smile
will my eyes always reside,
and the song of tomorrow
sings in tonight’s whispers.

Flinging away all cares
I escape into the instant
And dwell there eternally.

Pound Said; I Said

2010-02-13T15:07:00.002-07:00

Pound said:

ALBA

As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

I said:

MIG ÄLSKLING

Even without
money, I will always be
a wealthy man. My fortune:
all the memories
a lifetime can hold.
In the phosphorous moonlight,
Artemis supplants Selene
radiating the nights of Aquarius -
and the sea
washes to my shoreline
the most precious sea shells:
my unsurpassable fortune
will always be knowing you.

Pound said:

ALBA

from "Langue d'Oc"

When the nightengale to his mate
Sings day-long and night late
My love and I keep state
In bower,
In flower,
'Till the watchman on the tower
Cry:
"Up! Thou rascal, Rise,
I see the white
Light
And the night
Flies."

I said:

MIG ÄLSKLING

When the wild spirit of Pan
Plays his pipes in sacred élan,
My heart whispers beyond land's span-
A silent melody,
Of epic rhapsody,
In impassioned psalmody,
Wailing.
"Wild blood coursing
Through my heart
Impart!
Beyond all art
Delight!"

And the Constellations Winked Approval

2010-02-13T14:57:00.004-07:00

Come
with me to the summit,
to the mountain peak.
View
the diffused sienna blaze engulfing
aspens quaking across a dozing valley.
Hear
violins weep at Beethoven’s command
as the shadowy fingers of dusk
clutch the landscape hushed
by the impressions of Van Gogh’s brush.
Breathe
in the rich, winter fragrance of pine
needles wafting on a gentle zephyr
the way a sonata’s legato movement
liltingly surrounds lovers in the night.
Taste
the dry, Serein River bite in a glass
of unblushing Chablis as it washes
the heart’s impassioned palate
with the honey of skittish enigma.
Feel
strong arms swallow you
in a protective and nurturing embrace,
warding off the cold, buffeting winds
that blanket the frozen, steppe wasteland.

I awaken
to an imagined spring
voice heavily accented.
She speaks
in the languages of every nation.
She leads
me into Paradise like Beatrice led Dante.
She whispers
to me in my dreams like Alba to Pound
as they lay together in the pre-dawn
dew anticipating first light.
She haunts
me from the four corners of the Earth
as Gongyla did Sappho through absence.
She leaves
the same longing within my soul
that Sappho felt for Anactoria and Atthis.

I would brave
the tribulations of Heracles
to witness one of her smiles,
gracing her countenance, to gaze upon me.

I would have walked
across the globe with Alexander,
not to conquer lands, accumulate booty
and subject people to the Great’s rule;
simply to hold her in my arms
in the moonlight, to feel her body
breathing against mine as my heart
would pound against hers,
and to kiss the rosy blush of her lips
between the gasped gaps of her radiance.

And the constellations winked approval.

Silvery Light Shrouds

2010-02-13T14:52:00.001-07:00

Silvery light shrouds her with a brilliant
Halo, she stands at midnight’s threshold –

A hesitation between breaths, and concentric
Ripples across the celestial sea spiral
From the edge of eternity to the limitless
Instant: inevitability’s expectant moment.

Sculpted porcelain, crafted from chalcedony,
Reflects her radiance, glimmering ablaze
With the boundless passion emanating from every
Unique brushstroke swept across masters’ canvases.

Cosmic superstrings tune themselves
To the chords she strums, and universes
Sing into being as her melody composes
Chance’s recollection: sweet, divine music.

She calls sublime poetry to flake down upon
Bards and poets like the softest crystal powder
Fluttering out in a fine blanket; her songs
Inspire imagination, aspiration and anticipation.

My heartbeat pounds at her door!

My pulse whispers her name…

The rushing wind
Bellows glee in a tempest.

Fervor fathoms rapturous depths.

The sashayed path she treads
Opens upon the gates of exhilaration,
There would I dare to follow.

siren of electric airwaves

2010-02-13T14:39:00.001-07:00

siren of electric airwaves
healer of the deformed infirm
butterfly on a mid-spring morn
weaver of all safety nets

under crystal skies
you open gateways
for lost souls
on the road to Elysium

angel muse
silent whisperer
clothed in brilliant starshine
revealer of the harvest

daughter of the gods
you coax ancient secrets
from flaming pyres
burning eternally

siren of electric airwaves
lead me to your island's shores
dream me into a constellation
or the sand between your toes

Bizarre, They Seem

2010-02-10T17:55:00.006-07:00

Exploding stars must produce;

when the period hits -

a blur to the human eye!

Bizarre, they seem.

Color appears like reversed

grounds, preliminary exhibitions'

relatively easy solutions:

challenge relativity's interspersing effect.

Combining and interlacing fingers'

especially ambitious details,

dialog archived collections

and proceed to small cloisters.

Rhythm, Atmosphere or Mood

2010-02-10T17:46:00.003-07:00

Planet lands an astronaut

in shifts of dominance,

consequent occurrence

makes energy carrying

particles escape the solar

center in tempo:

rhythm, atmosphere or mood.

The severe problem

consisting in earth and rocks'

observational selection

appears uniformly blue

independent of surface

color: nature loves the small.

Rotation to the rescue!

Juxtaposition restricted.

Young, old, major,

minor, pulsar, nebulae,

radiation, vacuosity.

Without absorptions,

the normal result and

most decisive difference,

set up to record hot flashes.

Consequent Recurrence

2010-02-10T17:39:00.004-07:00

Flatter the public taste

flatter than sentimental waste.

Distinguish the lighter and darker

and extinguish the flatulent marker.

Discriminate color intensity

by uttering a garbled obscenity.

Consequent recurrence of placement

reveals the irrelevance of government.

Compare the coffee in a cup

with the tail of a wagging pup.

Apples, cherries and tomatoes are red

but chapter 20 is best read in bed.

Remain unchanged in hue and light

because, man, dig it, like, it's outtasite.

Non-Observable

2010-02-10T17:28:00.006-07:00

Reason, having a direct

remainder with respect

to the subject, molasses,

illustrates indefinite

non-observable signs.

The barometer reads

value uncertainty

drawn by measuring

applied voltage.

First case destinations

formulated a mark

of causality, counter

to pre-vision intuition -

definition's revision:

uncertain incision.

The simplest cannibal

obtained repeated

calculations of models

beside the cartels

of dimensional brothels.

Points in time

drift

in variable response.

Where there is fire, kitchen

qualitatively prevails smoke.

Non-observable counter examples

understand product resistance.

An unbiased variance

squared the correct entry

relating to something else

with short, false repetitions.

concentrations, not empty

2010-02-10T17:19:00.005-07:00

an existing sign existentially

calibrates using known

concentrations, not empty

of impermanence assuming

the equation applies

to phenomena - although florescent,

straightforward slope product,

being a verb, contains

knowledge; data, applied

to the least, squares incontrovertibly

with respect to meaning -

systematic and systemic error.

three possibilities

2010-02-10T17:13:00.003-07:00

uncompounded space

in accordance

with dissimilar

class of sound

three possibilities

only if one

considers two

in relation to words

between being

and membership

necessarily

whatever perversion

comments behind

reasoning phenomena.

He Yearns

2010-02-08T21:47:00.001-07:00

He yearns to hear her breathe in her sleep,
and gaze upon her timeless and serene features.

He yearns to nuzzle the delicate lily radiating
from her soul during the moments that well up
in the heart during quiet, hesitating intervals.

He yearns to sip wine from her lips at midnight
under the full moon, while her cheeks and neck
blush from the adoration of unrestrained longing.

He yearns to embrace the scent of her perfume
as it wraps him in the blanket of her allure.

He yearns to wander through unfenced ranges
with her on spirited steeds, unfettered by convention.

He yearns to shudder from the grace of her
finger as it grazes over his shivering flesh.

He yearns to glimpse her expressions
as she sketches a kitten and a ball of yarn.

He yearns to know what it feels like
for their hearts to beat in the same rhythm.

He’s afraid that unrequited yearning
will only drive her out of his dreams.

Ekphrasis Exercise

2010-02-07T18:02:00.009-07:00

"Poetry and painting (or any visual art) have long been considered to be 'sister' arts, each in their own way offering a similar means to re-envision or re-experience the world. Moreover, poets and painters have long served as sources of mutual inspiration; a poet in search of 'images' can find an almost limitless supply within the vivid, concrete and evocative 'language(s)' of painting." - Steve Salmoni.

I am going to provide a few examples of Ekphrasis from my own attempts at interpreting the visual artistry of painters in my own poetry.

Paris through the Window, Marc Chagall

Paris through the Window

An open-mouthed, human-faced feline
sits, perched on a ledge in the city of lights,
gazing, aghast at the developing scene
which a two-faced man - half full of the blues
offering an unclaimed heart in his hand
to no one in particular, half looking away,
smiling past the borderland of existence -
fails to notice. Rising from the bodies
of a well dressed couple (every man and all woman)
laying limp and lifeless, the Eiffel Tower
glints and gleams in the illumination
of bright and colorful searchlights, a stoic and
staid edifice of emotionless steel. Unflinching,
a man parachutes down to lifeless humanity.
An empty chair reposes at the table next
to the double-faced Parisian Janus, who guards
the open, glass-paned, sliding doorwindow,
permitting an invisible breeze to refresh
the flower arrangement adorning
the empty table of the man’s solitary blues.

The Birthday, Marc Chagall

The Birthday

A tapestry on the wall of moments,
near a bed, empty in its non-union,
colors the drab plaster of existence
with whimsy, a woman’s tiptoes
strain as she reaches for a contorted
body of her ghost-man bending over
backwards, his pallid lips meet her
rosy kiss by the open window, paned
overlook onto the city, as the universal
clock points out the instant, surprise
shines through her open eyes, his dead
gaze through closed eyes blinds him
to her, and he armlessly offers an empty
embrace as a bouquet in her hands thirsts
for the limbs which blossomed them.

Composition #7, Walter Kandinsky

Composition #7

shout run lightning scream fast blown
technicolor yawn crystalline cloud shards
fragment alluring anniversary helmets
arrowhead rocking chair filtered warble smear
canoe sunnyside up sprocket wheeled wheedle
hurled curls reflection wild cityscape slab
madness cacophony nightmare seasonless
hurricane rainbow lamp strawhat duck sled
potpourri insect disjointed connection furious
fractured slithering inverted freeform dove.

The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso

The Old Guitarist

The crumpled figure of aging poverty –
an old man seen through the tint
of bluesy tones, his clothing tattered
and torn, a holy adornment – on a cross-legged
cement sidewalk, leans against the wall
eyes closed to the silent, desolate and absent
audience surrounding him - and he strums
and sings of the destitution in the stark
and barren landscape of his unfulfilled
dreams, the under-appreciation of his soul.

The Queen of Atlantis

2010-02-05T18:47:00.007-07:00

Come with me through
the mirror into which I peer,
a reflection of the past revealing
the future, to the legend
which spawned all legends
and reveals the dream of all dreams,
to fair Atlantis, and be the queen

of tomorrow as you radiate the light
from the Lady of all ladies,
the light of the Queen of Atlantis.

Clouds drift beyond the horizon
carrying harmonized chorales
who cry to the ancient oceans;
Sewn silver seeds wait to sprout
from the plowed rows. Cover
them over with the finest
Chinese silk, woven by Empress
Lei Zu from the most delicate
mulberry silkworm cocoons.
The parting clouds reveal
Luna’s countenance as
the seeds germinate
into the sublime hopes
of antediluvian prophesies.

Plato never foresaw
a utopia of nowhere
quite so somewhere.

When one heart whispers
to another, the seas freeze still
in abeyance, the winds caress
the words, lightning brilliantly
illuminates the thunderless
pulse, all swords rust
into dust, ploughshares
carve harvests out of deserts,
and the one certain truth
in the universe echoes
from the highest Himalayan
peak: a rose without thorns.

Venga conmigo
a través del espejo que observo
el reflejo del pasado,
que revela el futuro,
a la leyenda que dio lugar
a todas leyendas,
y que revela
el sueño de todos los sueños,
a la serena Atlántida,
y sea la reina de la mañana,
mientras que irradiando la luz
de la Dama
de todas las damas,
la luz de la Reina de Atlántida.

Where Sweet Incense Burns

2010-01-31T13:31:00.003-07:00

In silent stillness a lotus blossoms
Rising off the pond like a morning mist

When water hushes the ibis takes flight
Gliding on updrafts through a purple sky

A apple falls where spreading branches’
Shade cools the swami’s levitating soul

As thrushes warble a furtive fox blinks
And dandelions eddy on the breeze

Between some bushes a single moonbeam
Scales garden walls climbing through the vines

In a cold dark room where sweet incense burns
Reclines a stiff form its soul drifts away

Significant Word Exercise - Peace

2010-01-28T16:10:00.004-07:00

Meditation

It always begins with the lighting of a candle in a darkened room. This is followed by the burning of incense. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. Inhale, two, three, four… hold, two, three, four… exhale, two, three, four… hold, two, three, four. My body yields to a slow, calming rhythm. As I inhale through my nostrils, the scent of the incense infuses me with thoughts that mesh with the scent being burned: it might be ocean scent, or roses, or sandalwood, or any other from among the myriad of scents available.

My heart rate slows down and I feel a tingling sensation run up and down my spine. I focus my mind on each of my chakras, one at a time: the base of my spine, genitals, navel, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and finally the crown. As each chakra is opened to receive universal energy, I feel it expand and throb, then pulse in rhythm to my breath. With my eyes closed, my inner vision observes a whirling vortex of white light above my head. Then, a beam of white light descends from the vortex into my crown and all of the chakras emanate a glow. It is at this point I intone my mantra. Over and over, the word resonates from my throat as I allow it to ring out for as long as I exhale. I never break the rhythm of my breath.

Sometimes, it feels as though the blood ceases to circulate in my body. Sometimes it feels like a fire within me rages. There are times when I feel as if a flood of water is washing me from the inside out. Occasionally, I visualize the white light enter with my inhaled breath and a gray smoke expelled when I exhale. On those times, the gray usually becomes cleansed a little with each breath, so that at first, I see dark, murky and thick strands of smoke expelled when I exhale until, with enough time and focus spent on the breathing exercise, the smoky discharge gradually changes into a light, wispy and thin white mist.

That is the time when I try to empty my mind of all thoughts and hear the stillness of the night. I tune out words and just hear whatever natural sounds might be present. I don’t think about the sounds, I just drift on them - mindlessly, thoughtlessly, and serenely. It is in this state that I find inner peace.

Commonly Accepted Understanding of Peace

In the sense described above, peace is not viewed as an inner state of being for an individual. Rather, peace is seen as a state of affairs, equilibrium, between two or more parties: individuals, collectives, countries or cultures. The viewpoint expressed suggests that peace is defined by relationships, and especially by the absence of conflict in those relationships. When people get along, they are at peace with one another. When countries are not engaged in war, they are at peace. When ethnicities and classes treat one another fairly, with equality and evidencing social justice, they are perceived as being at peace with one another. Thus, harmony in relationship, between and among groups or multiple individuals, expresses the popular and broadly universal conception for the meaning of peace.

On the Beach

I walked along the seashore. The sound of the surf rolling in to the beach, waves occasionally crashing, reverberated in my ears. Gulls flew overhead, and their calls rang out between the rhythmic ebb and flow of waves which washed the sandy shoreline. The gray day hushed the breeze into stillness. Out on the water, a few gulls and a lone pelican bobbed on the rising and falling ocean. Three dolphins took turns diving and swimming through the waves, riding on the backs of the waves the way I once rode on breakers’ faces. Way off in the distance, I could see a fishing boat maneuvering to reap the harvest of the day’s catch.

The salty smell brought a smile to my face. My eyes laughed at the damp mist in the air. Driftwood and dead kelp was strewn about on the shore, left there by a higher tide. I dug up some sea shells as I strolled along the water’s edge. Some children played in the surf. A man ran with his dog on the shoreline. As I watched life around me, I found myself feeling withdraw, apart. An understanding came upon my mind that I did not need to be part of the activity. I sat on a large log and gazed about me through my sunglasses. All I wanted to be was one of those waves, and as I imagined myself to be one, I found peace of mind.

Celebration for the End of WWII

At the end of World War II, after the last atomic bomb had been dropped and the Japanese surrendered, celebration rang through the streets of New York. People hugged everyone nearby. Strangers kissed to the moment. A tickertape parade wound through the streets. Bells rang out. Champagne bottles were uncorked and people toasted to both victory and peace. People shouted their glee. Mothers expectantly awaited the return of their soldier sons. The end of hostility released revelry to the new found peace.

Summary

It appears from my examples that peace, for me, is the absence of relationships, the absence of people, the absence of the complications and entanglements that come in relationships with others. It seems that my conception of personal peace is an emotionless state, both joyless and without sorrow. Rather, peace, in my life, is evidenced by an emotionless serenity in between joy and sorrow, where I am in harmony with myself and nature, but where other people are only and always on the periphery. Peace, then, for me, is contented serenity in solitude.

Old Wine

2010-01-21T14:57:00.008-07:00

I am going to present a poem which was written spontaneously and has not been edited. It is a prompt exercise based on an example which comes from Charles Bernstein's Experiments. This exercise arises from a prompt or suggestion which is rooted in anaphora. Anaphora is a kind of formless form. The poem can take any shape, use any meter, be regular or irregular in line numbers, and be rhymed or without rhyme. The key point is to create one device which does repeat regularly. So, there is form within the formless. In this exercise, which I am titling "Old Wine," I am using as my form the prompt which follows:

I used to be _________,

but now I am _________.

Old Wine

I used to be an adult,

but now I am a child.

I used to be a prince,

but now I am a frog -

all the kisses which princesses

etched on my brow, cheeks

or lips have finally faded.

I used to be a heart

beating in unison

with the rhythm of a generation,

but now I am a single

candle flame flickering in the breeze.

I used to be naked

in a world with no mirrors,

but now I am mirrored

in a world of overcoats.

I used to be a puppy

running free in an open field

wondering what everything

smelled like,

but now I am an old cur

barking at passersby

while I curl up

with a flavorless bone.

I used to be the man

who wrote epitaphs

on the cemetery markers

of the boys who came

home from Vietnam,

but now I am a ghost

of the empty shell,

the space in the coffins

where souls who die too

early silently cry.

I used to be a warm fire,

but now I am old wine.

Feathery Finger Fractures

2010-01-21T14:24:00.003-07:00

The winds of a winter blizzard

cut through me, razor sharp,

revealing a bloodless heart

reclining, motionless

in a gaping cavity,

and covered with an icy

surface, like a frozen lake,

as feathery finger fractures

crack across the ice

sheet. I stand at the center

while the frigid waters

wait patiently to swallow

my shivering flesh.

This destination lies

at the end of a path

I deliberately chose, I know

my icy precipice perch

offers its greatest peril

in the warmth of sunrise.

An Interpretation and Discussion of Charles Olson's Poem "Maximus, to himself"

2010-01-21T08:36:00.009-07:00

Maximus, to himself

BY CHARLES OLSON

I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.
Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross
a wet deck.
The sea was not, finally, my trade.
But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged
from that which was most familiar. Was delayed,
and not content with the man’s argument
that such postponement
is now the nature of
obedience,
that we are all late
in a slow time,
that we grow up many
And the single
is not easily
known

It could be, though the sharpness (the achiote)
I note in others,
makes more sense
than my own distances. The agilities

they show daily
who do the world’s
businesses
And who do nature’s
as I have no sense
I have done either

I have made dialogues,
have discussed ancient texts,
have thrown what light I could, offered
what pleasures
doceat allows

But the known?
This, I have had to be given,
a life, love, and from one man
the world.
Tokens.
But sitting here
I look out as a wind
and water man, testing
And missing
some proof

I know the quarters
of the weather, where it comes from,
where it goes. But the stem of me,
this I took from their welcome,
or their rejection, of me

And my arrogance
was neither diminished
nor increased,
by the communication

2

It is undone business
I speak of, this morning,
with the sea
stretching out
from my feet

Charles Olson, “Maximus, to himself” from The Maximus Poems. Copyright © 1987 by the Regents of the University of California.

What Maximus, to himself Means to Me.

Olson talks about learning the simplest things last. The older I get the more I feel like the simplest things are never learned, for instance, learning how to conduct relationships with others. Does one ever learn how to do this properly? I don’t think so. We all end up having disagreements with other people, sometimes arguments, and sometimes misunderstandings arising from poor communication or illogical inferences drawn from some expression, action or event. Often all these circumstances lead to estrangement for some period of time all the way to occasional termination of the relationship. In severe cases, they can lead to individuals isolating themselves from the world. The truth is, people don’t ever really fully learn how to relate to one another, and each of us only does so to varying degrees. Yet, relating to other people seems like it should be one of those “simplest” things to which Olson refers in the poem. Hence, it is, as he says in the opening of the poem, learned last.

The sea is a potent symbol in this poem. I believe it is a symbol for all of humanity. It is beautiful to see how he could use an event from his life to explain life and relationships. He tells us he had trouble getting a hand out or crossing a wet deck. These are specific tasks at sea. They are also symbols: getting one’s hand out a symbol of offering one’s hand to someone else in friendship or to help when they are in need, or to ask for help when one might be in need oneself. Crossing the wet deck could symbolize the ability to traverse difficulties in relationships when they arise.

Then, Olson redirects our attention. The sea wasn’t his actual trade he says. He suggests that, in reality, we do not deal with humanity as a whole. We deal with individuals, and especially those individuals who are in our immediate frame of reference. For Olson, that “immediate frame of reference” is larger than for most people because he was a writer, so his writing affected people far beyond the number of those he met and conversed with in person. Even at this, communicating with – and relating to and with – those people in his world, he says he was estranged as he was with regard to his understanding of how to really learn the art of interpersonal relationships. So, the art of relating to his audience of readers, was delayed – or to continue the metaphor, learned last (perhaps if learned at all).

Olson goes on to say that we are all late, suggesting that the problem of relating interpersonally is universal. He explains that not only are we late (to learn the lesson and art of relationships), but we (or he and his contemporaries in the early 50s when the Maximus poems were written) live in a slow time. He is suggesting an interesting juxtaposition here. The time was speeding up with the growth of post-WWII America, the rapid rise of a post war economic boom, the sprawl of cities into the suburbs, the proliferation of the automobile, and roadways and highways being built to link every corner of the US. Yet, Olson suggests that as everything was speeding up, we also experienced a slowing down of our interconnection - our ability to relate with and to one another. This is indicative of his ability to see estrangement and alienation in his world.

He also speaks briefly of a difference in self-perception. That is, Olson says we "grow up many and the single is not easily known." Here, again, he is referring to alienation in the world. He is also referring to the pressures of society which force conformity on the individual. A third interpretation offers itself as well, that is that we have many sides or aspects to our personalities, and for an individual to get to the root and see one's true or essential self - that single unifying part of us within the multifaceted personality, the many facades we present to the world as we try to fit into situations and groups - is a very difficult thing to do. In other words, we never really know ourselves.

He refers to a quality of achiote in others, in those who conduct business. The achiote is a plant which is indigenous to the tropical region of the American continent. One of its uses is as a spice/coloring agent to replace saffron in rice. It was a flavoring for a Yucatan drink. It was used as a paste to make body paint by Native Americans. It was used as a hair dye and also as a base for lipstick. This indicates he considered these others as people who colored their world, painted their world, flavored their world. They were, thus, an additive to his world like a spice, people whose influence nuanced everything in his world and were, consequently, beyond his ability to influence. He claimed they were agile in their ability to exert influence. He contrasted that with a view of himself which he says he could not say exhibited the same agility. There is a sense of his feeling of being late to understand how to relate to his world with the kind of agility that would have allowed him to be the same kind of spice, the same kind of flavoring and coloring which might have wielded a wider influence on his world.

Olson tells us he has had some small effect in presenting what he has learned. He has given lectures and written papers, etc., which he calls his doceat. Here, he refers to Pound’s Cantos and Pound’s use of the Latin word in the sense of to move, to teach or to delight. However, he is referring to these abilities only in terms of intellectual pursuits, to ideas, to affairs of the mind. Conversely, with regard to what he calls the known, a word he is using to symbolize the physical world and life with and among people in a tangible sense, meaning interpersonal relationships as opposed to intellectual pursuits, he reaffirms his lack of confidence and adds the observation that he came late to understand it. He lets us know that life and love came to him, more as a gift than as an active process in which he took part. He speaks of past experience as tokens, meaning symbols of the life lived, but not the direct expression of life.

Next, he calls himself wind and water. These are two pliable things which, however, are capable of causing very slow erosion upon the land. In the sense of their being pliable, meaning they can be resisted, dammed, walled out, guided into specific channels and withstood, he indicates that he is missing the proof of his ability to affect and influence his world and to impart some real sense of himself on others interpersonally. However, in the sense that they cause slow erosion, he may be inferring that his work might have a more lasting quality with the effect of influencing future generations more than his contemporary world. He knows the weathers and where they come from. In other words, he knows acceptance and rejection when he meets it. And as a consequence of rejection and acceptance of his work or himself in interpersonal relationships, he says, the world determined his worth by the acceptance and rejection it expressed toward him. This is what he means when he uses the symbol, “the stem of me.” It is his essential self but not his view of himself. He accepts society's view of him as society's view. But, his arrogance, meaning his self-worth, he says, was not affected by others’ opinions regarding him or society's perception of his worth to the world.

He concludes on a hopeful note. He says that the business of his relationship to humanity (the sea) is unfinished business. The sea stretches out before his feet. In other words, he is still alive, so still working on his relationship with the world. He is still offering his work to the world. He continues to strive to impart his unique impact on the world. Hence, the future is undefined, and whatever will be his ultimate effect on the world is yet to be determined. He still has time to learn the lesson of relationships, both interpersonal and with humanity as a whole. So, the lesson comes late in life, indeed. He infers it is not complete as long as one is still living.

This means a lot to me, as an older man still trying to learn how to conduct interpersonal relationships as well as feeling inadequate in my ability to either accept or offer the deepest levels of connection in interpersonal relationships. At the same time, as a man who is only now, at 57 years of age, trying to pursue a career as a writer and to conduct a dialogue with the world, with humanity as a whole, I can take heart in Olson’s final optimism. There is still time for me to begin and enter into this relationship with the world and with people individually through interpersonal relationships. I can still hope to offer my doceat from my learning and perspective. I can still be a pinch of achiote on the world. Nothing is defined. The fulfillment of interpersonal relationships and a dialogue with humanity still loom as possible.

The Night Howls Hysteria at the Moon

2010-01-15T18:57:00.006-07:00

Sheets of paper lie shredded on the ground -

words that once made sense, now jumbled,

tumble aimlessly in the wind, someday

strewn in regions so far apart they'll not

call up memories: staying submerged,

until drowned. Fleeting smiles' spent

energy fades in time to the gray haze

engulfing a foggy beach as witness

to the cruel ends that swallow treasures

at the bottom of a dark, cold ocean.

Don't sing me anymore songs or paint

another spring landscape - they haunt

the empty echoes reverberating through

the last lost shades of color reflected

as dusk envelopes the Pacific sunset.

The night howls hysteria at the moon

while dogs bark and cats screech

in drunken alleyways of a forgotten

past: the last line cast to mooring

pillars, slithers awry, all sense defied.

A caterpillar crawls across a leaf's stem

seeking a secure refuge to shed its skin

which will harden into its cocoon,

but the vulnerable pupa offers a tasty

meal before ever having a chance

to form into a chrysalis, leaving no time

to transform into a butterfly.

Sidewalks erupt under foot as discordant

jazz plays in the nearby cafe. Colors run

together, leaving a muddy wash background

coagulating in the sewer of my veins,

and the last violin sonata strains derange as

the night howls hysteria at the moon.

a willow who weeps

2010-01-15T12:20:00.002-07:00

only a cold wind blows

the heavy, drooping arms

weighed down by a clinging

frost dripping from the eyes

of a willow who weeps

An Inky Ooze

2010-01-04T15:56:00.013-07:00

"I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened."

- From T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," III of The Dry Salvages (No. 3 of the "Four Quartets.")

The moon cries teardrops of blood

as a foreboding gloaming encroaches -

its shadow-finger injecting an inky ooze

onto the sky-blotter. A zillion catapulting

electromagnetic fields etch invisible arcs

across the motionless vortex, skidding

and careening like billiard balls shot

apart by the break. No cue stick lies

nearby, evidencing a lack of prescience.

If you drop a pebble into a pond

you'll see patterns expressed in ripples,

though not through the design of your

intelligence. All apparent sequence, order

and plan in a universe with a single

common denominator - infinite

expression - arise like mental figs,

the fruit of the perceiving imagination.

Every electromagnetic field emanates

a unique perspective. No imagined

perception of order agrees with any other.

All deductions are equally true and false.

Tears of blood flow because we kill each

other over our disagreements in deductions.

Patterns only arise in response

to the parameters of hypotheses.

What you see is what you get

because it's what you expect.

Each individual reality looms

into view as a mirror's reflection.

As the moon's shadow-finger injects

its ink ooze into the sky-blotter, people

spread an inky ooze on it, too,

butter-knifing the air, land and sea

with the excrement of Jonestown.

On Dignity, Rights, and Balancing the Individual with Society in Ethical Considerations for the 21st Century

2009-12-30T12:12:00.015-07:00

The ideas of ethics and morality are as old as human consciousness. They stem from the interactions of individuals with one another and grow out of social and cultural pressures to balance individual desires with the rights other individuals possess to pursue their own needs and desires. Out of these pressures, societies formed laws (whether religious or secular) to legislate and enforce a standard of acceptable behavior on individuals which would not only consider the rights and expectations of other individuals, but also the needs and concerns of the entire society.

Eventually, social and cultural ethical concerns grew into social standards of group conduct ensuring enforced codes of conduct requiring acquiescence to societal and cultural conformity. Nietzsche would later see that kind of overwhelming control over the individual human spirit as erasing individuality by superimposing upon it what he called herd mentality. The current relationships of individuals with one another and the societies in which they live, as well as the relationships between and among societies, seem to be dominated by many slippery approaches toward what constitutes right action. Out of the environment of indisputable power which permeated western culture during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Machiavelli recorded in his book, The Prince, the evolution of dominance exercised by authority. Among the evolutionary encroachments of ruling class' authority over the rest of society included the idea that ends can justify any means used to obtain those ends. Studies into the aggrandizement, application and spread of power reveal the notions that power corrupts, and the more absolutely power is held, the more absolute will be the corruption of those in power. Hence, the question of what constitutes individual and societal right action is one which needs to be investigated by every individual and each culture.

As one begins to study the development of ethics, one is drawn first to the ethical systems discussed by Plato and Aristotle. These two giants of philosophical thought are two of the first philosophers to consider and record their insights into right action yielding approaches to ethics.

Both Plato and Aristotle begin their approach to ethics out of an appreciation for arête. In the region we call Greece today and which was their homeland, the word arête was applied to excellence. However, the sense of excellence meant by arête refers to a very high ideal or level of attainment in any sphere of activity as well as with regard to an individual’s character traits.

In Plato’s “Phaedo,” included in From Plato to Derrida, 5^th Ed., edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann, Plato defined virtue as being achieved when the soul is in a state of well being (Eudemonia). “A man should be of good cheer about his soul if in his life he has renounced the pleasures and adornments of the body… and adorned his soul with the adornment of temperance, and justice, and courage, and freedom, and truth… (Plato 56).”

Plato conceived what is called the tripartite division of the soul (what we call mind): rational, emotive and appetitive. For the soul (or mind) to be virtuous, it must be regulated into a harmonious state. He felt such a harmonious state exists when the rational mind is ruled by wisdom, the emotions are governed by courage and the appetites are regulated by temperance (Plato 54-55). When this kind of harmonious state is reached, the individual may be said to be one who strives solely for the Knowledge of Forms, Wisdom, Truth, and the Highest Form of the Good (Plato 55). To Plato, that individual’s soul is virtuous.

Aristotle looked at virtue similarly, given he also extolled arête driven ethics. He believed all people actively seek to be good and strive for goodness. His admonition was to find it by seeking out the middle or mean virtue (arête) between two extreme vices: deficiency and excess.

Aristotle explained that souls are not substances, but are the animating force of the body. Aristotle, like Plato, arrived at three divisions for the soul. Those divisions were nutritive (found in plants, animals and humans), sensitive (found in animals and humans, but not in plants) and rational (only found in humans). The nutritive part of the soul seeks self-sustenance by acquiring the necessary nutrients. The sensitive portion of the soul possesses senses to perceive the world and interact with it. The rational part of the soul thinks and reasons (Aristotle 158-59).

All of this is similar to Plato in general terms though differs in some specific details. One can find more similarities between Plato’s appetitive soul and Aristotle’s nutritive soul, than Plato’s emotive soul and Aristotle’s sensitive soul. However, both men speak of a rational soul in very similar terms and with very similar ramifications. Aristotle delves deeper into this area.

In Book I of “Nicomachean Ethics,” also found in From Plato to Derrida, Aristotle defines virtue as happiness, but not a banal happiness in the sense of having a good time and sating one’s appetites. Aristotle’s teleology dominates his philosophy. Ends define value and meaning for him (Aristotle 163). The happiness to which Aristotle refers is arête based. He explained that it is found in the accumulation and culmination of a lifetime of deeds, actions, thoughts, aspirations and relationships (Aristotle 168-70).

Aristotle spoke of two kinds of virtue, moral and intellectual. In Book II of “Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle explains that intellectual virtue is an arête which is acquired by applying one’s mind and full effort to one’s studies, having a good teacher, and being willing to listen to and learn from that teacher. Moral virtue, however, can only be developed by nurturing the proper habits of living, constantly practicing those habits and acting morally in all situations because of a conscious decision to do so. Those constant decisions become easier by vigilantly practicing the habits of morality and right action (Aristotle 177).

Aristotle broke the soul down into three expressions to determine where in the soul one would find virtue: emotions, capacities and characteristics. He concluded that the emotions were not virtuous by themselves, nor were an individual’s capacity to feel emotion. Virtue lay in the character of the emotion as it unfolds in a given situation. The character of the emotion is defined by the degree to which one expresses an emotion, and when combined with the intensity of the emotion and the choice of the emotional response will be a more or less appropriate expression depending on the circumstances of the situation (Aristotle 180). Moderate anger may be appropriate in one instance, whereas a violent reaction may be more appropriate in another depending on the circumstances and whether or not one’s life is in danger.

What Aristotle recommended was to find the mean between extremes (Aristotle 183-84) and a lifetime of habit forming practice for determining what constitutes right action in any given set of circumstances (Aristotle 185-86). As a general rule, Aristotle said that vices lay in the extremes of excess and deficiency, and between any two extremes of deficiency and excess a mean or arête of proper response is always present. The individual is always called upon to make a choice as to what action to take (Aristotle 182). In Book IV of "Nicomachean Ethics," Aristotle provided illustrative examples into ethical concerns and his insight into what constitutes the virtuous mean between the extremes of vices (the extremes being excess and deficiency). For instance, vanity is self-esteem carried to excess while pettiness results from too little self-esteem. He taught that the mean between these extremes, what he called high-mindedness, offered the path to virtue between those two vices. (Aristotle 186-89). As Aristotle explained in Book II, the pathway to living a virtuous life is found by cultivating an awareness of these principles, spending a lifetime nurturing the right response as a habitual reaction and choosing right action as a way of life because it is the correct thing to do and not for any reward or other gain (real or perceived) that might come from acting correctly (Aristotle 183-84).

It is valuable for one to consider the concerns of ethics as expressed by Plato and Aristotle with those espoused centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In his Preface to “Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals,” which appears in From Plato to Derrida, 5^th Ed., edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kauffmann, Kant said he felt it self-evident that there must be “… a pure moral philosophy which is completely freed from everything which may be only empirical …” and thus an anthropology of human affairs (854). Kant sought a system of morality founded on laws, like everything else in nature. He wanted morality grounded in obligation, containing an absolute necessity that the law be followed (854). Kant stated his supreme principle of morality as the categorical imperative (868-870).

Kant believed morality is not subjective and is not open to interpretation from moment to moment based on specific circumstances existing only in that moment. Morality had to be universal, he believed. He explained that only from universal laws can one ascertain right action in any situation (866). Kant said, “The conception of an objective principle, so far as it constrains a will, is a command (of reason), and the formula of this command is called an ‘imperative’” (868). Imperatives command hypothetically or categorically (868).

A hypothetical imperative arises when one sees practical necessity in an action: it is a means to achieve something else due to individual inclinations (868). A need for money may make one seek a loan. To allow a need for money to override one’s honesty in promises concerning repaying the funds is a moral determination made out of what Kant calls a hypothetical imperative. The inclination to acquire funds creates a hypothetical imperative to obtain the loan.

A categorical imperative exists when one’s choice in any given situation is objectively necessary, without any regard to incentives or individual inclinations (868). Acting consistent with this ethic is emblematic of the “GOOD WILL” (856-7). The will reveals a person’s nature and a good will reveals a moral person. Action must be based on morality, never on an outcome of personal preference. To remove personal motivations (inclinations and desires) from moral choices yields universality for determining right action. Universality, or universal law, for choices in moral decision-making is what Kant valued as an objective morality applicable to everyone instead of different subjective moralities for each individual and in each unique moment.

Kant formulated a single categorical imperative as the moral system for determining right action. It is formulated through three principles. The imperative arises out of deontological ethics, meaning it is duty based. He explained, “… willing from duty the renunciation of all interest is the specific mark of the categorical imperative …” (878).

The first principle for formulating the categorical imperative is: one ought to act according to maxims which can at the same time be universal law (872 and 881). Every moral decision must be equally applicable to everyone. My action is only moral if the action is something that everyone could do. For me to borrow funds based on a lie (I know I will not be able to pay the money back) is not an act everyone could do because it would lead to a complete breakdown in everyone’s ability to trust as well as wreaking havoc on the economy.

The second principle for formulating the categorical imperative requires one to always act according to that universal law from one’s intention (one’s will) and to do what is right solely because it is right (876-7 and 881). It is not enough to do what is right if the reason for one’s actions is to derive a benefit (whether karma, heaven, good favor among one’s peers, friends or associates, or the accumulation of gold stars, salary increases or perks). Moral justification for acting rightly only arises from one’s intent or will; that is, when one legislates one’s actions based on the universality of their moral applicability. When one’s actions arise from the intent of a good will, the actions will not be empirical (based on experience) or subjective (individually motivated by inclination or inducement), but will arise from pure reason.

The third principle for formulating the categorical imperative is to act toward every rational being (others and oneself) so the maxim is an end – it involves its own universal validity for every rational being (878 and 881). Kant admonishes respect for all other rational beings and to treat them as ends in themselves. One should never make another a means to one’s own ends. Respecting all other rational beings preserves and embraces dignity (881). If one uses others for one’s ends, one demeans and disrespects the others and strips them of their dignity. Each person embodies their own ends. I have no more right to make you a means to my ends than you do to make me a means to your ends. To use others as a means is to reduce them to relative worth (a price, like a commodity). Respecting others as ends acknowledges their intrinsic worth (dignity).

The individual loses autonomy when used as a means to someone else’s ends. Without autonomy, one is stripped of free will. This is what Kant called the realm of ends (879). The realm of ends honors the concept that every rational being must regard itself as giving universal law through all the maxims of its will. Consequently, one judges oneself and one’s actions solely from the standpoint of universal law. All rational beings stand under the law: each should treat himself and all others as ends, never as means. The result of the realm of ends approach is the emergence of a systematic union of all rational beings through the acknowledgement of common objective moral laws.

This ideal, the realm of ends, was Kant’s most fervent hope for humanity. Out from this ideal, considerations of ends justifying the means and motives which place individual gain over consideration to and for the rights of others are purged. Only from such an approach can we avoid the slippery slopes of moral and ethical considerations which put the needs, wants or desires of an individual or some particular society over other individuals or societies. In Kant’s system, each individual is not only answerable for their actions and motives, but each also justifies their very existence through the manner in which they not only act but by acting rightly for the sake of righteousness.

Out of Kant’s approach, in the 20^th century, existentialists, like Jean-Paul Sartre, suggested we must each be our own saint. Certainly, we are all human, and consequently, both fallible and far from perfect. However, we can aspire to be the best we can and to uphold our highest ethics.

The only way to come close to that aspiration lies in being utterly conscious in each moment. The more awake and aware one is in each moment of life, the more one will make conscious decisions based on conformity with individual conscience – not herd mentality, which can lead one astray as it did all of Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

A conscious, awake, aware and fully activated individual mind centered in the morality and ethics of a conscience rooted in the deontology of Kant’s categorical imperative is required to build a better world as well as to justify one’s own existence. This is how we learn not to blithely invade other nations with suggestions that the ends any war might try to force might justify the means used to obtain those supposed ends. Such means involve killing, destruction, maiming, despoiling and aggrandizement. There are no ends which can ever justify these kinds of means. Likewise, the idea that anyone may lie to another or cheat another, or use another in any way contrary to the other's free personal choice to obtain something of individual interest, inclination or desire also fails to yield morality. If I use you or lie to you, I strip you of your dignity at the same time as I strip myself of both dignity and honor. Once again, no end is sufficient to allow me the right to place my needs, wants or desires above anyone else's.

Besides, there are no ends. All that exists is one moment oozing into another in a long river of life. What may appear as an end today arises tomorrow as some other individual's or culture's reason to pursue some other act of personal or societal desire, perhaps even revenge. As Kant called them, all such perceived ends are no more than incentives. Incentives cause individuals and collectives of individuals to act in ways which they perceive as their own best interest without respect for ethical morality.

By avoiding incentives and personal or societal desires for specific ends or outcomes, individuals and cultures create redemption in every moment of life, thus establishing worth, value and dignity out of meaninglessness. This is the task of the future: the only way to a viable future for so large a population.

When we love instead of fear, include instead of restrict, share instead of hoard, cooperate instead of demean, and respect instead of degrade, then the world can become a place of hope. That hope is for a future of joy and peace.

LuShae Jewelry

2009-12-22T08:13:00.003-07:00

For those looking for a very special gift for someone special in their life, a trip to the LuShae Jewelry webstore will be a worthwhile web excursion. The website is of the highest quality. The photographs of the merchandise are large, clear and professionally produced. The examples of the jewelry are clear to view, and the quality of the products is immediately discernible.

The jewelry, itself, is absolutely exquisite. The rings and earrings are all made with 14k gold and white gold. Great attention is paid to the most minute details of the rings and settings. They are constructed with a Rhodium finish for scratch resistance and tarnish protection. The gems are gorgeous stones that catch the eye. Anyone would be proud to wear these examples of fascination-inspiring, faceted gems set in LuShae's unique and original designs.

You will find the shopping experience a pleasant one. Your orders will be filled and sent rapidly and you will receive your order within 48 hours. LuShae also promises 100% satisfaction guaranteed on all orders made with them. I strongly recommend that anyone seeking unique jewelry ought to pay the LuShae Jewelry webstore a visit. You'll be glad you did.

A Rendezvous with Harmonic Symmetry

2009-12-19T11:52:00.008-07:00

Awaken me with your sympathetic syncopation

under spreading, broad leaf, ficus limbs, chanting

ancient hymns; dread not crossing great oceans -

engulfing chasms of elemental virtue - a potent,

mass-resurrecting elixir slowly drips

from a cosmic IV into the veins of awakening

souls: self-sacrificing lambs whose blood

nourishes the sleeping hordes too self-absorbed

to stand on lily pads in ponds like lotus blossoms,

opening under a phosphorescent moon's

luminescence. Ill luminous shadows desecrate

dreadnoughts carrying a cargo of feathery souls

on the currents of Styx to a rendezvous

with harmonic symmetry, illuminated

by primordial rays of the first star: the seed

which fertilized a sea of dark matter, inaugurating

an eternal, celestial tide, wave after wave,

to etch enlightenment with lapping erosion.

Persephone

2009-12-09T23:16:00.004-07:00

The myths concerning Persephone have some interesting applications to the way we look at ourselves and our place in the world.

Persephone provides an archetype of a goddess who stands for birth and rebirth, travels to the Underworld yearly, and returns from her place beside Hades each spring for another, roughly, two thirds of the year. Potent symbolism lies in Persephone’s journey. She travels to the Underworld where she stays through the winter with her husband and lover, Hades, the god of the dead and Underworld. Then, Persephone returns from the land of the dead to live among the other gods and goddesses each spring. Obviously, one of the main symbols is of death and rebirth. Another symbolic representation presents itself through one the principle motifs in her story: that is, the cyclical nature of planting season and the sprouting of new crops arising in the spring after laying dormant over winter’s period of infertility. However, that portion of the symbolism falls more prevalently on her mother Demeter, who it is said willed that no crops would grow and the land would not be fertile again until her daughter, Persephone, was returned to her. For those who believe in the theory of the transmigration of souls (reincarnation), this period of dormant infertility is also akin to the period after death before rebirth. Reincarnation was a belief which was widely held in antiquity.

However, the image of Persephone, a virgin before being abducted by Hades and taken to his realm, in the embrace of the god of death, blending her youth, her vitality and her purity with his cold severity in the world of shadows calls forth a very different symbolic meaning. She redeems death and the god of eternal oblivion. She brings life to ends, suggesting that ends are merely another illusion. She transforms oblivion into transition, hinting at timelessness (meaning time is just one more illusion) and converting the finality of death into a medium for change and renewal. Persephone blesses death with the vitality and vigor of new life, promising that around every corner, even seemingly permanent and eternal oblivion, awaits the opportunity for redemption and new beginnings.

In Christian mythology, Jesus made one brief 3 day visit to Lucifer’s domain in Hell (translated as Hell in English, and taught as such by contemporary Christianity, but the Greek word Hades was used to indicate the Underworld, or the realm and domain of the Greek god Hades). Then, he is said to have risen from the dead before ascending into heaven. Christian dogma essentially claims that Jesus’ death is confirmed by his travels to the Underworld or netherworld or land of the dead, and at the same time, his death offered redemption to souls held there since Adam and Eve (including Adam and Eve) whose sins were washed away by Jesus as his suffering redeemed their souls. Thus, they could then ascend to heaven.

There is a significant difference in the meaning of the two myths which is relayed in the symbolism and revealed by the details. Persephone transforms and redeems death, itself, bringing new life back to the world out from the bowels of Hades’ realm. Jesus redeemed the souls held in the netherworld who awaited his coming to release them to their final reward. Persephone offers hope for continued existence and reveals the interrelationship of death (transition) with renewal – every death places matter back into the ground which feeds plants and gives form to new life. Christianity is more concerned with finality and ends. By asserting a soul’s ends (or all souls’ ends as, according to Christianity’s dogmatic intention, a demand that everyone accept its truth as the only truth) are only justified through worship of Jesus and receiving his redemption, Christians foster a belief in the illusion of ends.

In a universe that is nearly eternal within the boundaries of human ability to contemplate it, ends can never be known. Each end quickly ebbs like a wave of the tide, giving way to the surge of another wave lapping across the shores of experience, bringing with it a new beginning, as well as a continuation of the unraveling of the long thread off the spool of eternal activity. Each moment that dies is an end, but it is also a seed, because a new moment arises from it. This is the lesson the myth of Persephone teaches. The lesson is a cautionary tale, too. Consider what seeds one wishes to sow before acting, because from one’s seeds one will reap the harvest of one’s deeds. This is also the true lesson of Karma.

Merging the Emotions with the Intellect

2009-12-08T19:44:00.004-07:00

The Roman mythological tale of Amor and Psyche has many meanings because its symbolism can be interpreted on many different levels. The initial interest, which it piqued in me, came directly from the names of the mythological characters, Amor (better known by his Greek name, Eros) and Psyche (a Latin word meaning mind, and a mortal) and the interpretation of them according to Jungian principles.

Basically, the story entails the two falling in love, then being kept apart by Venus (in Greek mythology called Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, and Eros’ mother) because of acts of transgression committed by Psyche. Venus demands Psyche prove her worth through accomplishing a series of impossible tasks. However, Psyche is aided along the way (first by anthropomorphized nature – ants and a talking reed – later, by Zeus’ eagle), and each task is performed to Venus’ consternation. In the final task, Amor, himself, must come to Psyche’s aid and help her to complete it. As a result, Jupiter (Zeus in Greek mythology) blesses the two, unites them in marriage, and transforms Psyche from a mortal into an eternal and divine goddess.

In C. G. Jung’s psychological system, the term eros denoted the essential or primal foundation for feminine psychology. In Volume X of A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Jung wrote, “Women’s psychology is founded on the principle of eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to men is logos. The concept of eros could be expressed in modern terms as psychic relatedness, and that of logos as objective interest” (255).

Here, Jung is suggesting that the feminine nature is more intuitive and more emotional, whereas the masculine nature is more intellectual and scientific. Now, I guarantee you one can find any number of 20^th century feminists who would find fault with this kind of chauvinist stereotyping. I wouldn’t argue with them. Jung might reply that many women employ a masculine nature in getting through life while many men have learned to get in touch with their feminine side, and that he didn’t necessarily mean men and women, just masculine and feminine natures. Whether or not this is true, and ignoring for a moment the historical fact that over countless centuries, cultures all over the world, being male dominated, forced women into roles which would tend to reinforce those gender stereotypes, there is still value to be gained from looking at symbolism and metaphor through Jung’s prism. I suggest one replace the words feminine and masculine with receptive and active respectively if it alleviates the inference of gender biases and stereotypes.

If we look at the respective character roles, the man in the story (or the active principle) is named Eros while the woman (receptive principle) is named Psyche. In other words, the author of this tale has reversed the polarity of each character. This had to have been done for a reason, because even in an antiquity contemporaneous with the tale, the ideas Jung presented were already understood and held as valid. This means that the symbolism intended to infer the kind of bias Jung expressed centuries later. Consequently, it is as if the writer is calling Amor “she” and “her” throughout the narrative and Psyche “he” and “him.”

As we contemplate the narrative of events, Psyche is given numerous tasks to complete. That requires taking an active role. Meanwhile, Amor is kept by Venus in hiding, waiting to receive the love of Psyche if she earns the right to give him her love by accomplishing the tasks assigned to her. As a result, Psyche is held at bay from fruitfully enjoying the pleasures of a loving relationship with her beloved. Amor lies dormant and unfulfilled. Psyche is mortal, or human. Amor is divine, immortal and eternal.

The point the author is conveying in this is greater than the obvious one, that the wedding of mind to emotions is a symbol for bringing together the conscious mind and unconscious mind by bringing the unconscious to the surface where it can be examined by consciousness and demystified. Certainly, there is an element of that as one of the ideas the writer wished to convey in this myth. However, by reversing the roles, he hints at something more than just that.

What the myth really conveys is that each of us has an avenue to becoming a whole person. However, that avenue can only be found by actively engaging the antithesis of one’s nature, by transcending one’s typical role and natural inclinations, and ultimately, by activating all the latent potencies and harmonizing every aspect of one’s being into a unified, complete and cooperatively compatible synthesis of wholeness. In other words, when the woman activates and incorporates her masculine side and the man activates and incorporates his feminine side, then the two can come together and not only imagine an ideal future, but build that future out of their perfected souls.

Jung and Mythopoetic Thought

2009-12-07T20:51:00.005-07:00

Carl G. Jung’s ideas concerning Mythopoetic Thought contain highly significant points for anyone interested in evolution, perceptions of reality and transcendent thought.

Jung suggested that in the mind of early humanity, people didn’t differentiate wholeness into the separate constituent elements we see today when looking at the physical world. In other words, the tree was not pulled out of the landscape by the perceiving consciousness and noticed as one of many separate things in the environment. Instead, everything in the environment was viewed as one complete and undividable entity. He suggested that to understand this conceptualization of the world, one must grasp how cause and effect has refined our perceptions of reality and helped us learn to differentiate separate and distinct physical objects out from the unity which was physical reality as early humans perceived it – an un-individuated whole.

First, people realized, for instance, that fire could provide heat for warmth, and light at night, as well as aid in warding off predators. Fire was also valuable for cooking one’s food, both to purify it (by killing germs, bacteria and parasites like tapeworms) and to make it taste better. This leap had to occur in early human reasoning as a necessary step for discovering the cause and effect relationship between things in the environment and the subtle interrelationship of interaction among and between those things in that environment (including people). Once the cause and effect relationship was discovered, the mind began to differentiate the unified whole of the environment into its constituent elements. Then, for instance, one could differentiate the dead branch which could be used as kindling to build a fire and then grasp it and use it for the intended purpose.

The stage of development prior to this differentiation of thought, the sense perception of the world as being all one big thing and not an amalgamation of many things, is what Jung called Mythopoetic Thought. Though one may think of it as a primordially primitive way of looking at the world, it may be far more accurate than the fragmented view we have of what is now commonly perceived and called the physical world.

Science tells us that the universe is composed of energy and matter. Einstein discovered that energy and matter are two sides of the same coin, meaning that when energy is slowed down below light speed, it condenses into matter while matter, when accelerated to light speed evaporates into energy in much the same way heat can turn water to steam or the lack of it can cool steam into water or even ice. Thus, matter and energy are the same thing, just vibrating at different frequencies, so to speak. Science also informs us that subatomic particles cannot be said to be anywhere. Rather, they are in constant motion at the speed of light, making them essentially everywhere at all times but nowhere ever.

This understanding allows us to imagine just how incorrect the contemporary view of physical reality is. Solidity is an illusion. Things seem solid only because of probability patterns. There is more space between the constituent subatomic particles in an atom than actual matter. The reason solid things do not let other solid things pass through them is because there is a probability that enough subatomic particles will line up to prevent the things from passing through each other, not because there is real stuff there that is impenetrable, but because there will probably be enough things lining up to make the solid things seem impenetrable.

If we are all striving to regain unity with Unity, as I believe, then one of the things we must learn to do is see the world as a Unity again, and not as separate pieces of marginally related objects whose relationship is based on cause and effect when the perception of cause and effect is, itself, a fabrication of the mind to make events fit into the manner in which the brain stores information. As one strives to see the unity of all things in order to reconnect with Unity, one discovers oneself step into a larger world: microcosmic and macrocosmic perceptions dissolve, differentiations between universal and personal wither away, and connection with a grand sense of the complete interconnection of all things and beings focuses from a blur into crystal clarity. This is known as transcendental perception.