Poetics

Aristotle has written in his Poetics that poetry is higher than history with regard to revealing the truth. This is so, he states, because while history attempts to record and describe what has been, poetry is able to describe what may possibly be, or what may possibly become.

Like the photographic images which mirror (icon) the phenomena in their coming to be and coming to pass, poetry refers to a world that is and also to a world that may be. A poet may experience a jarring in his/her existence particularly in the material world; particularly in this era, and particularly in this culture (U.S.). This is not entirely true. Each human being experiences a full quantum of limit in the material world. To state this more eloquently I quote Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom": "Is the bird free from the chains of the skyway?" The cerulean sky is the limit to man's freedom. Airplanes and rockets that defy gravity prove nothing, and add nothing to man's freedom. Images of the blue sky so commonly employed in modern PR and marketing to depict an icon of freedom and limitless space is a pious lie.

Bungie jumping and rock climbing and all of these "feats" do not prove one's freedom---far from it. They actually further highlight and underline the human limitation. The impetus to move history forward according to a myth and theology of progress as adopted in the U.S., as thoughtful people have realized, is a dead end, because in the face of a potential infinite freedom each and every step outward in this technic progress is an insult and slap to the face of serious thinkers or anyone who has realized that the purpose of human life is not to be entertained.

Each human being by trying to get "more" freedom actually disproves the unlimited nature of their freedom. More on this paradox later...

I was stating that it is particularly strange to be a poet in the USA in the 21 st century. It is to be a "stranger in a strange land". Still the poet has his finger on the source---i.e. beauty. Beauty is all that matters and is the object of every one of my poems---even when I attempt to describe the bare, gritty, mean streets, or the "failed poet" drowning the croaking throat of the nature poet in the bog water. There is beauty in truth---in fire, in water even when fire my scorch and water may drown.


Folks join clubs, become members of exclusive social groups in order to experience the "good life"---that is good taste, good food and drink, aestheticism, "pretty people". And they avidly seek to know which film is best and which music really counts, or which painter paints well. All those things called 'culture'. Members of society want to have a "corner" on culture. They purchase art, stack their newly painted bookshelves with poetry and literature, and somewhere hidden behind all of this they are searching for some real contact with the beautiful. I want to say to them: "leave behind your clubs and society and walk awhile with me into the woods or down to the stream. I find more life and culture in the dewdrop on the moss than I find in any yacht, yacht club, dinner club, or even country club!"

And the beauty is to be found there on the golf course, in the water---and beauty is what we are all seeking. It is the very presence of the godhead in material manifestation. For some people the work of art is as close as they can get to beauty itself. For example, my poetry opens up and shows beauty---it reveals a world above and beyond this world and hence suggests as Aristotle so eloquently noted in his Poetics that poetry is indeed higher than history. If I could have my way I would first of all teach philosophy and then reach up to poetry and music, and finally lead my students to walk in the fields near streams and along the seashore. We begin with rational question which leads us to mystery and then we discover music and the music in poetic language, and finally we search directly for beauty in the worms that ply their way through God's moist soil, or in the trout whose sheen glimmers beneath the cool water, and on and on and on... Why anyone would prefer the image, the fake, and phoney, even if it is artwork, to the actual I cannot imagine.

Beauty alone is worthy of our complete devotion.