National Poetry Month: Addressing the Problem of the Human Condition

The condition of men is the result of their disunion. – Tolstoy

We began the month recognizing the alienating effects that modern poetry can have on the average citizen, lending itself to a sense of the exclusionary. The irony is that poetry, and the arts in general, has a deep history as a means to bring people together. As our society comes to terms with its divisions and entrenched narrow interests, I argue we can again look to poetry to help enable unity.

Poetry has addressed the problems of the human condition in the past and can be useful in the present. The allegory -- a poetic device -- of Adam and Eve, generally attributed to Moses, provides a narrative to describe the dispiriting effects of the fall into self-consciousness. Thus the allegory provides a narrative to describe the evolution of consciousness toward the self apart from others and nature.

As we celebrate Easter on this date, we should recognize that the story of Christ accepting the cross, whatever theological interpreations it may have, provides a powerful poetic interpretation: a symbol of love, faith, and sacrifice. In response to the fall into the self, described in the paragraph above, the life of Jesus becomes a symbol to "deny the self", as described in the Biblical Book of Luke (9:23), toward the moral disposition of acting for the greater good.

Yet the symbol of the cross is controversial, causing the effect of differing reactions to that symbol, because it is generally viewed as a symbol of religion. But this is where poetry can step in, differentiating between religion and mythos, and making use of symbol, metaphor, and narrative to induce an evolution of consciousness.

Our socialization into the individual consciousness of the modern era, compounded by a consumer culture that incites the pride and passions of the self, may leave us in an unsustainable imbalance of consciousness toward the individual self at the expense of the greater good, leaving us drifting toward spiritual crisis. Moving from the margins of society to the forefront, however, poetry may be in a position to meet this crisis. But as it appears to me, to intone Walt Whitman, it would have to move from paper and types to bodies and souls.

National Poetry Month: Applying Poetry Toward Unity

This project is in of itself a kind of poem, making use of symbol, metaphor, and narrative. "The Promised Land" is symbolic of a collective vision capable of overriding and incorporating one's personal vision. The overall metaphor of the project is that we, as a society, have to move from the land of the dead to the land of the living; this reflects a quote attributed to Thornton Wilder as follows:

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.

It makes use of a narrative, drawn from the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, that appears to me as strikingly prescient for our times to help induce an evolution of consciousness. More about this narrative can be found at the blog entry of July 4, 2010.

By making use of such poetic devices as symbol, metaphor, and narrative, I believe we can construct a framework to enable the more vital use of the arts towards the revitalization of the the moral culture in general.

A Timely N.Y. Times Editorial about the Poetry of Everyday Life

Here's a link to a timely editorial by New York Times columnist David Brooks that addresses some of the concepts this project contends with, particularly the entries made this month. Brooks cites a book, I is an Other by James Geary, the title of which I presume is taken from Rimbaud's 1871 seer letter that's addressed elsewhere in this blog.

National Poetry Month: The Use of Poetry in the Revitalization of the Moral Culture

In regards to religion, the renowed mythologist Joseph Campbell describes the process of revitalization to Bill Moyers as follows, excerpted from The Power of Myth:

The world changes, the religions have to be transformed….It’s in the religions; all the religions are true – for their time. If you can find what the truth is and separate it from the temporal inflection, just be your same old religion into a new set of metaphors, and you’ve got it.

Yet in a pluralistic democratic society, the intent of this project is not in creating a new religion or directly revitalizing an old religion but in broadening the concept of poetry to revitalize the moral culture in general, inclusive of religion.

Note that Campbell makes use of the term metaphors. A metaphor is a poetic device, as is symbol, narrative, allegory, and parable, among others. But to make use of poetry, it has to be the truth -- as best we understand the truth to be given our limited vision -- and it has to inspire.

Here the old adage applies: man proposes, God disposes. As we attempt to draw on and make use of poetry to induce human inspiration, we are reliant on inspiration and whether it flows or not, taking us wherever it may lead us. If such a project fails to call to you, I am content to at least plant a seed should it germinate into something later. My sense is that we’re all like pieces of a greater puzzle and it may require some intermediate pieces before we can see or feel a true connection.

National Poetry Month: From Paper and Types to Bodies and Souls

In the previous entry we engaged in an ancient argument between poetry and philosophy to examine the use of poetry to help bring people together. Here we move from the ancient era into the modern era.

In a time of division in our nation’s history, in the prelude to the Civil War, the poet Walt Whitman attempted to use poetry to help bring people together based on our shared human identity relative to our democratic society. The opening poem of the first 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , later entitled, "Song of Myself" would help initiate a revolution in written poetry, that of free verse. Yet in the opening of the subsequent poem, it is as though the genius of Whitman looks back on the opening poem and its ecstatic assertions and already recognizes the limitations of poetry in written form:

This is unfinished business with me….how is it with you?
I was chilled with the cold types and cylinder and wet paper between us.

I pass so poorly with paper and types….I must pass with the contact of bodies
and souls.

– from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition

About a century later, in his book, The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud, Henry Miller writes as follows:

It does not require paper and ink to create poetry or to disseminate it. Primitive peoples on the whole are poets of action, poets of life.

The two books cited above provide some background and influences towards a proposed movement in American poetry: poetry moving from paper and types to bodies souls, or from the written poetic to the living poetic. Such a movement is envisioned to revitalize all of the arts, including poetry in written form, as we renew poetry's historic calling to help bring people together and override our societal divisions and entrenched narrow interests.

National Poetry Month: Broadening Our View of Poetry

As I’ve addressed elsewhere on this blog, to enable poetry to help bring people together and heal the divisions that afflict our society, we begin by broadening our view of poetry. In Plato's Republic, Socrates cites an ancient argument, or difference, between poetry and philosophy (i.e., mythos and logos) that I submit continues to this day. While the modern era has exalted reason, or logos, the term myth has become generally synonymous as something that's dismissively untrue. A more accurate and working definition can be as follows: the stories a society tells about itself. The term narrative seems to be currently en vogue and is similarly used to describe how an individual or group sees itself in relation to the rest of the world body. Furthermore, the modern mindset often fails to differentiate between religion, an institution, and the mythos.

The creation myth of Adam and Eve and the subsequent initial books that make up the Bible, makes use of a collective narrative and to help bring people together, former slaves, to help solidify a people, the ancient nation of Israel. The narrative provides a shared history and addresses the shared human predicament of the fall into the dispiriting effects of self-concsiousness as Adam and Eve suddenly recognize they’re naked.

The poets of ancient Greece drew on myth to dramatize tragedy. Thus poetry was used to bring people together through a shared human capacity to suffer.

National Poetry Month: Countering the Alienating Effects of Poetry

In poetry, we recognize that less can be more. As we celebrate national poetry month, we should also recognize an all too common sentiment throughout our nation that none of it might even be better.

There's a grim irony that poetry can have such an alienating effect on people. The average citizen, for example, who might attempt to read T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, perhaps the premier poem of high modernism, is apt feel alienated from the poem, and poetry in general, by its cryptic use of language.

The irony that seems indicative of the modern era is that poets and poetry by historic definition affectively inflame our emotions, not leave us in the cold. Furthermore, throughout human history poetry and the arts in general have been used to bring people together. As the avant-garde pushed the margins of poetry, it had the effect of marginalizing itself from the average citizen. It reflects the fragmentation of all of the arts throughout the modern era and lends itself to questions of elitism and government funding of the arts.

But as we celebrate National Poetry Month, I beleive that by taking a broader view of poetry, poetry still has the potential to bring people together at a time when our nation struggles with divisions and entrenched narrow interests that threaten the integrity of the greater collective.