After being asked if he could provide a definition of religion and, if he could do that, to explain the relation between religion, that is, what a person believes, and morality, that is, the way he acts in accord with some notion of how he ought to act:
I can only go back to myself. I look around myself and I see every year that, no matter what people do to themselves and to one another, the spring constantly renews itself. This is a physical fact, not a metaphysical theory. I look at every spring and I respond to it very strongly. But I also notice that every year the spring is the same new spring and every year I am one year older. I have to ask the question: What is the relation between my brief and tragic life and this force in the universe that perpetually renews itself? I further believe that every human being asks this question. He cannot avoid asking it-it is forced upon him. And his answer to that question is his religion. If he says the relation between me and this thing is nothing, then his religion is nihilism. As for morality, what ought I to do? I wish I knew.
-Leo Tolstoy
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
I'm 24 which means I will eventually be 80
Yesterday a man I know responded to an other's explanation of not necessarily desiring a piece of a poem to be understood by the reader by tossing the poem onto a table and saying, "ahhh, the myth of the inscrutable." I laughed.
I have pretty strong feelings about who the reader actually is(n't). I've said this to those close to me but haven't really publicized a clear poetic point to hint at my specific poetic intention. Until now.
No one will ever read any poem you (I) write.
Got it? Ok.
The man pressed the point by reiterating the other's point rhetorically, "You don't want them to understand it?--Then they won't. Simple as that." The "myth of them" is a major concern to me here. Who understands a poem anyway? People can understand a poem any way. Poetry is inherently inscrutable regardless of who is writing it because a poem is not a newspaper.
If a poem is entirely expository is it a poem? Forget definition. I'm saying that this myth of the inscrutable is what makes poetry poetry! Is conveying information the point of writing a poem? I hope not. That position seems like a relative of poet as the keeper of the golden sepulcher.
This brought to mind something an old professor of mine, Dr. Marco Abel, conveyed,
I approach images—cinematic or otherwise—from the idea, articulated by Jean-Luc Godard, that images are first and foremost “just images, not just images.” Images have force and do things, but they do not—at least not primarily—bear or represent meaning. Images work by their constitutive intensities and affects rather than by representing something in a way that may or may not be just(ified). Hence the question to ask about an image is less, “What does it mean?” than “How does it work?” and “What does it do?”
These two questions provide so many more interesting answers than, "what does it mean." I don't think I know anything about anything. I don't have information to convey to you and even if I did I don't think I would use a poem to let you know about it. A poem is a way for me to figure IT out. Things. Ideas. These damn pronouns are all the same! You is actually I when it comes to who is reading a poem.
I have pretty strong feelings about who the reader actually is(n't). I've said this to those close to me but haven't really publicized a clear poetic point to hint at my specific poetic intention. Until now.
No one will ever read any poem you (I) write.
Got it? Ok.
The man pressed the point by reiterating the other's point rhetorically, "You don't want them to understand it?--Then they won't. Simple as that." The "myth of them" is a major concern to me here. Who understands a poem anyway? People can understand a poem any way. Poetry is inherently inscrutable regardless of who is writing it because a poem is not a newspaper.
If a poem is entirely expository is it a poem? Forget definition. I'm saying that this myth of the inscrutable is what makes poetry poetry! Is conveying information the point of writing a poem? I hope not. That position seems like a relative of poet as the keeper of the golden sepulcher.
This brought to mind something an old professor of mine, Dr. Marco Abel, conveyed,
I approach images—cinematic or otherwise—from the idea, articulated by Jean-Luc Godard, that images are first and foremost “just images, not just images.” Images have force and do things, but they do not—at least not primarily—bear or represent meaning. Images work by their constitutive intensities and affects rather than by representing something in a way that may or may not be just(ified). Hence the question to ask about an image is less, “What does it mean?” than “How does it work?” and “What does it do?”
These two questions provide so many more interesting answers than, "what does it mean." I don't think I know anything about anything. I don't have information to convey to you and even if I did I don't think I would use a poem to let you know about it. A poem is a way for me to figure IT out. Things. Ideas. These damn pronouns are all the same! You is actually I when it comes to who is reading a poem.
Monday, October 5, 2009
my poems
Even the poems I initially think will be blogspot format friendly turn out not to be. I am so conscious of line breaks, even in blocks of text, that I can't sacrifice a word running over a line if that's not where it is supposed to go. And that's just the way it is. Maybe, I should write poems on blogspot so they will be formatted to blogspot's standards. But maybe I'm too selfish to give blogspot that much authority over my poems. I love poetry. A poem is a sovereign self.
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