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Thinking Is Primordial Poetry

2006-07-07T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is from Martin Heidegger's Early Greek Thinking, and the essay entitled "The Anaximander Fragment."

"Thinking of Being is the original way of poetizing, more than poetry and song. Thinking says
what the truth of being dictates...Thinking is primordial poetry, prior to all poesy, but also proir to the poetics of art, since art shapes its work within the realm of language..." (p.19)

I like this description of thinking as poetry, however, I don't feel, when I'm writing poetry that I am thinking, or I should say only thinking...perhaps a more dimensional combination of feeling, imagery and memory, entwined with language. Perhaps this is actually what thinking is? One difference between my poetry writing and Heidegger's philosophic writing is abstraction; I have avoided abstraction whereas Heidegger treads in the more etherial regions of being, the being of Being, becoming, the oblivion of Being -- abstractions of abstractions. Often very hard to follow what he is saying. Nevertheless, his writing is often very beautiful and often his thinking is like poetry, and since I want to explore the possibilities of using more abstraction in my poetry, he is very interesting to read, dangerous as well. But I need to risk. Heidegger goes on to say:

"The poetizing essence of thinking preserves the sway of the truth of Being. Because it poetizes as it thinks, the translation which wishes to let the oldest fragment of thinking itself speak necessarily appears violent."

Here's my violent translation of the Anaximander (not entirely serious) :

Where beings (humans, animals, trees, machines, images, words)
have their origin, there they also have their death;
they must pay, charge, barter, redeem, sell, beg, fight their way
in order to live in the city of things, all injustice only struggle
more or less well done in a timed trial.

This may be too disrespectful and un-serious, but I would like to try to do some other violent translations of Pre-Socratic fragments.

Persephone on the Beach

2006-06-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book on the Pre-Socratic philosopher
Empedocles by Peter Kingsley. He talks a lot about
the influence of the volcanic geology of Sicily on
Empedocles thought -- how Sicily, Empedocles'
birthplace, is honeycombed with subterranean channels
of lava (fire) and water. He quotes Strabo's description of Sicily:
"the entire island is hollow beneath the earth, filled
with rivers and fire."

Then Kingsley goes on to say:

"as far as Empedocles' equation of fire with Hades is
concerned...Subterranean fire, as we have seen, was of
fundamental importance in his cosmology; in the first
instance that points us to the volcanic fire under
Sicily, and of course under Etna. As for Pindar, by
placing his giant simultaneously in Tartarus and under
Etna he was simply giving expression to the common and
fundamental idea that the volcano, with its craters
and caverns, in an opening into the underworld. This
idea is only one instance of the tendency--reflected
in literature as well as in local cults and myths--to
associate volcanoes and volcanic regions with
entrances to Hades. It of course explains the versions
of Persephone's abduction  which have her dragged down
to the underworld via the caverns and craters of
Sicily."
(Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic, p.
73-74.)
Then he asks, almost as an aside, What was it like for
Persephone, living with Hades in the underworld,
surrounded by the dead? So I thought I might try to
write about that from Hades' point-of-view.

Hail Stanley Kunitz

2006-05-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

Stanley Kunitz died on Sunday 5/14/06. He was 100.

A quote from him in his obit in NY Times

“The deepest thing I know is that I am living and dying at once, and my conviction is to report that self-dialogue.”

This is a wonderful and inspirational statement about the role of the poet, and a modern parallel to the Heraclitus fragment:

Immortal motals, mortal immortals, living the death of the others and dying their life.

The obit ends with a stanza from Kunitz’s poem “The Long Boat.”

Peace! Peace!

To be rocked by the Infinite!

As if it didn’t matter

which way was home;

as if he didn’t know

he loved the earth so much

he wanted to stay forever.

This really speaks to me and is so economically written, so emotionally profound. The infinite coupled with the love of the earth, and the poets job to report on both as he experiences it in his life in his time.

Can poetry be about ideas?

2006-05-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

Can poetry be about ideas? Poetry was a potent medium for the Pre-Socratics, who I find fascinating. I'm delving into these poet/philosophers as well as the Roman poet Lucretius whose book long poem was inspired by the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles and Epicurius.

"Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles wrote in the traditional meter of Greek poetry [hexameters] and Heraclitus wrote in a prose deeply shaped by various poetical techniques."

(Cambridge Campanion to Early Greek Philosophy, 350)

Heraclitus as free verse? He has a great enigmatic style. Here's an example:

"Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living the death of the others and dying their life."

This is very dense, ambiguous and spooky...gives me a shiver to think that I am living some other being's (an immortal) death?

What do you think?

More about these wonderful early Greek philosophers later...Empedocles also has some great lines.

"The gods spoke through oracles, at Delphi and elsewhere, and in this period never did so except in poetic meters, almost always the very same poetic hexameters that characgterized epic poetry." (Cambridge Campanion..., 353)

I need to find some of these oracular writings...how to combine them with current culture and speech? Why do I find this so fascinating? Time to google

Simic Rocks

2006-05-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

I just read about the fevered run-up to poet Charles Simic reading in Washington this month. A great post by Moxie about finiding Simic's translation of the Popa poems at a library sale. If only Simic could read the blog (and he can at The Dangerous Perhaps) he'd be pleased. I, too, really love Simic's poetry. I got a volume by him in '96 and have treasured it since.

Simic is also a great writer about poetry and art. He has a wonderful series in NYRB. Here's a gem I love about the French painter O. Redon:

"Corot [older painter] told him to go paint the same tree each year. He also gave him another piece of advice that Redon never forgot: 'Next to an unknown, place a known.' In other words, strive to have 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them,' as Marianne Moore told poets to do."

I love the idea of putting something ordinary next to something strange, and I think it says as much about Simic's technique as it does about Redon's. While Simic's poems are surreal, creepy and strange, they are accessible, and even if not at first discernable they always connect emotionally. And they can do this by juxtaposing ordinary things next to surreal ones. Just as in one of Redon's famous imges of a hot air balloon lifting a single eye secured with cables as if it were the gondola basket -- very strange and yet perfectly ordinary -- eye, balloon, cables.