Tag Archives: Transcendentalism

More on the Beats/Outsiders

I wrote last week about Outsiders and Beats. This week, Ron Silliman posted a list of styles that fall under the list of post-avant. In his defining, he includes the Beats in his long list of p-a card-carrying members. I was surprised by this, and I think it’s ludricous. According to Wikipedia, “Central elements of “Beat” culture include a rejection of mainstream American values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality.” I suppose it’s possible that the combination of these values within American literature could be considered new, but in the bigger picture of humanity this is old news.

Rejection of mainstream American values

I’m sorry if the beats want to take claim of this (typical baby boomer behavior), but it’s nothing new in American history. James Fenimore Cooper tried to fight against growing materialism (weak example, and I’m not sure it started here, but this is early 1800s). Emerson and Thoreau were disgusted with the social herd that manipulated and strangled the individual. Emily Dickinson thumbed her nose at the puritanical tradition (like it or not, that tradition is a part of American history and literature). Other authors criticized mainstream values (Twain and Fitzgerald) but didn’t necesarily make a life change to truly reject the social standards of the time. I understand how Whitman and Dickinson can be a part of the p-a clique, but does following in their tradition constitute admission into the p-a country club? Isn’t imitation and copying merely quiet, old, and dead?

Experimentation with drugs

Uh…Kubla Kahn? So Coleridge wasn’t an American, but according to Ron’s post the p-a must include writers outside the American sequence. If this were the case, again, there’s nothing new or experimental here. Unless I’m at fault for misunderstanding experimental. If experimentation isn’t limited to poetry and poetics, then Bill Clinton and Marie Curie could join the club.

Alternate forms of Sexuality

This is a silly label. It should be “Exploring all forms of sexuality” but oh well. Ancient Greece had this whole sex-religion thing going on, and Aristotle claimed that Greek drama tied deeply to religion. Therefore, can it be said that exploring sexuality was ingrained in the literature? If so, then again, there’s nothing new or envelope-busting going on with the Beats. They are merely lassoing in on a past (passed?) tradition.

Interest in Eastern Religion

Again, I’ll bring up the transcendentalists. This idea of incorporating Eastern mysticism into American literature/culture is over a hundred years old. So in the name of originality and newness, this can’t suggest being a part of the p-a crowd can it?

*

Maybe, just maybe, the synthesis of all these elements could suggest relation to the post-avant because the combination of them under the American umbrella is revolutionary. But Silliman writes, “Post-avant poetics involves literally thousands of American writers. It would be very easy for me to do nothing but focus on just this portion of English-language poetry in my blog, as tho nothing else existed. But that’s the fundamental move Quietism makes that I would challenge, so I don’t.” With this thought in mind, I don’t think one can use the justification of synthesis to label the Beats as purely post-avant.

Finally, is post-avant a lifestyle or a poetry? Silliman is a language poet, but his prose writing uses language traditionally. So is the theory of language poetry a lifestyle or a form? I would assert that it’s a form. In this same train of thought, is Beat “poetry” a lifestyle or a form? From what I’ve read, it’s a lifestyle that is recorded and replayed via literature. So the label of p-a becomes muddy and contradictory. Is this what makes the Beats p-a?

Now, I do think that the Beats revolutionized American literature, and in a sense they were pioneers (this is easy to see if we wear our “America Only” glasses that Silliman accuses the Quietists of), but in the larger scope of literary canon I see nothing truly “new.” So, despite our attempt to break out of the bubble of the old and rocket into new forms, languages, and ideas, I wonder if it is even possible for us to do. If so, is the p-a crowd simply a large historical slingshot hoping that the faster we are launched into the blur of poetry the more creative we think we are?

Luci Shaw: What the Light Was Like

Just a few problems with Christian art can be seen here and here. I’m not one to criticize somebody’s creative effort in itself, but I think that too many Christians that want to make art (music/literature/paintings/drama/everythingelseIdidn’tmention) get so caught up in forcing their message (most of the time the gospel) that they miss true depth and meaning. It’s something I call church cheese–people with good intentions but limited sight in terms of artistic expression. Some would say that simply relying on God (or a god of any sort) is limiting, but that’s for another day.

One poet that does an excellent job of creating powerful art inspired by faith is Luci Shaw. Her latest collection, What the Light Was Like, draws on Christ as inspiration but moves beyond the cross for subject matter.  This collection views/evaluates/observes light in various facets of life.

One example, “The Simple Dark,” states, “Everything / is drawing down into shade. / But the dark, which is at first so simple / is not simple.” Maybe this is stating an over-simplified obviousness but then Shaw explores this darkness as the poem ends:

The unbroken velvet swims
with complications so subtle that
seeing and hearing must take their time
to know. The shadow purples,
the dusk intricate with crickets. The sky
infested with pricks of light.
My whole body an ear, an eye.

My mind automatically turns to Emerson’s transparent eye walking through nature perceiving all of these things. I’m struck by the emphasis of sense and perception rather than talking and making noise and ruining the moment.  All of this without one mention of the cross. Shaw continues the perceptions of nature in “Without a Shadow,” a poem where the narrator is taking a walk along a shoreline blanketed with thick fog:

Not exactly dark, but without shade,
the sharp purity of morning has been
diminished. I read somewhere that
“only full light reveals shadow.”
Moving through fog, living
is a blindness, a yielding
of my layered ignorance to the mist.

The ambiguity of light and confusion of shadows relates this experience in nature to life–sometimes we get so caught up in searching or trying that the fog of confusion (regardless of how thick or thin it actually is) blinds us.  The poem ends with “A rumor of blue / begins to kiss its way through.”  The fog never quite goes away or completely fades, but there still seems to be glimmers of hope, or rest, or illumination despite ourselves.

I’ll end this too-brief review with “Breath,” a poem starting in the darkness of the womb, gasping for those first breaths, and then becoming the spoken word, something so powerful we may not always understand the strength behind it.

Breath

When, in the cavern darkness, the child
first opened his mouth (even before
his eyes widened to see the supple world
his lungs had breathed into being),
could he have known that breathing
trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs
as it brushes in and out through flesh
to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating,
tramping the crossroads of the brain
like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and
invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes
and toenails? Did he have any idea it
would take all his breath to speak in stories
that would change the world?

This poem mentions the cross in the scope of a bigger picture. Shaw’s poetry does not end at the cross like too many other poets of Christian faith. This book is filled with poems about journeys, contemplations, let downs, and illuminations. Whether or not the reader prescribes to the Christian faith, this collection reminds the reader to slow down and look at the little things receiving small slivers of light, in all its forms.

A greater purpose for Poetry

When I was a child, my parents often wondered where I came from. Hmm. But really, how does a poet rise from two scientists–my father had a PhD in Geophysics and my mom double majored in math and chemistry. My brother? History (his educational focus, not the state of existence).  So even I can ask the question: where did I come from?

Joking aside, I really do like science…physics anyways. I don’t get chemistry and don’t care for biology (outside of evolution and creationism). I took calculus based physics in college. Yup, I was in way over my head. I like literature more than science, but there are aspects that grab my attention. I’m actually going to be studying optics for my capstone project in grad school. But there is a disconnect between science and poetry. This blog goes deeper into the problem than I care to, but here’s a quote:

One of the great dichotomies that Carl Jung drew in his book on personality types (which is retained in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) is that between feeling and thinking. Feelers are interested in human relationships, while thinkers are more interested in the objective world. Feelers are more interested in the humanities, while thinkers are more interested in the sciences.

And why can’t the two connect? Emerson saw a connection between humanity, nature, and God and labeled it the Oversoul. I think the Oversoul can be taken out of the equation, with God unifying man and nature through origin. In terms of origins, I do believe that humans were purposefully created, but I also believe the Big Bang set things into motion.  This is a tricky spot to be in: evolutionists accuse me of having bad science and some creationists accuse me of having bad faith. I don’t think I have either.

I believe in God–not a distant entity that can’t be bothered by the goings on of the planet Earth, but rather one that cares deeply about us and desires to see us choosing love above all us–and I believe that he has given us things to reveal himself, science and literature being two of them. Literature, over time, has recorded our attempts to find what’s missing, to fill a void, to achieve joy, to rise above an oppressive culture, etc. With literature, especially poetry, we have the physicalization of the spiritual, the realization of the idea, the imitation (and actuality) of creation. I also believe that God gave us science to reveal himself. From the greatness of our expansive universe to the information inscribed on a strand of DNA, I can’t accept that it just happened randomly, or even by chance. But this stance on science isn’t really popular with the Christian community. The Bible says the the world was created in 6 days, end of story. A sermon I heard at church last year presented this idea: God made things in six days–God could make an old rock look like a new rock–a three second old rock still looks like a rock!

Amen. Or not quite (I’ve gone round and round with my pastor on this, and we civilly disagree, so it’s not like I’m trying to call him out on this). Scientifically, a three-second rock is probably still glowing lava, cooling in ocean mists (oops, didn’t mean to get too poetic!). My question is, if God gave us science to reveal himself, why would he lie? I don’t believe that God has set out to trick us, so what’s the answer?

I think back to Galileo and Newton, who were coming up with really cool ideas…like the earth not being the center of the universe. These guys were persecuted by the church. Oops. Who has egg on their face on that one? I don’t mean to be anti-establishment, but the church was guilty of bad science.

What does this have to do with poetry? I think that all to often contemporary science doesn’t allow room for the supernatural, the mystical, the unprovable. I think religions often times don’t allow for evidence, questioning, and theorizing (i.e. the scientific method…I may have gotten things out of order, but hey, I’m a poet).

I assert that poetry is the unification of the two (I hope this isn’t too single-minded of me–poetry can do much more than this), taking the unseen, the supernatural, the mystical, and making it physical, taking the physical, the proven, and the tested and making it mystical and mysterious, all with the purpose of revealing the Creator.

[Edit]

I just found this quote on the top 10 reasons to attend a poetry reading:

Poetry is simultaneously emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

The Farmer, The Emo, and The Transcendentalist

Contemplating the deeper issues of life over the Thanksgiving holiday, a thought occurred to me: Who ever dreamed up that apples were the perfect gift for teachers? The top five results of a “gifts for teachers” search on Google (my results here):
1. http://www.artisticlabels.com (3 of the 7 gifts have apples, and one a school bus)
2. http://www.successories.com (good inspirational gifts, but nothing specifically for teachers)
3. http://www.homeroomdirect.com (2/6 have apples, one school bus, and nothing for men)
4. familyfun.go.com (no apples, no gifts, just school outside of school)
5. lovetoteach.com (3/6 have apples, one book, a bell, and a Santa)

Having taught elementary school, I grew quite accustomed to receiving mugs, ornaments, magnets, desk decorators, and other various “teacher” goodies with some sort of apple on them. One year I even got a bronze apple bell with a red ribbon tied around the stem. I still have it in a box somewhere.

The point here is not people’s generosity. I am thankful for those who go out of their way to say thanks to their teacher (more the case with younger kids, older kids hate their teachers, or at least tell them that on a regular basis). I can’t blame the generous in spirit. They are nice and caring. What I’d like to complain about is whoever decided teachers liked everything about apples, pencils, school buses, carrying bags (see this post), and alphabets. I hate school buses–they’re the place where kids melt the seats (with fire or farts), yell and scream, throw paper, light firecrackers, put condoms on their heads, beat up little kids, tell dirty jokes, etc. If this doesn’t happen regularly, then I happened to ride the bus from Hell everyday from 5th grade to 9th. This is not a happy environment for teachers. The pictures of school buses on teacher gifts show a group of happy, playful children showing extreme bliss for an educational experience. Yeah right.

My biggest beef is with the apples. I like apples. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. I like doctors less than apples so this is a good adage. Some kid somewhere took an apple to a teacher and it became status quo. Here’s some possibilities on how it all went down:

The Farmer
Little Johnny Appleseed lived on his family’s apple farm. The farm sold just enough apples to get by. When Christmas rolled around, Johnny wanted to show his teacher that he was thankful for her. He didn’t have any money to buy a gift, so he decided to give her an apple. It would cost the family twenty-five cents of income, but it was worth it. Johnny picked out the biggest, shiniest apple and took it to school. When he gave the apple to the teacher, she thanked Johnny and ate it in front of the whole class. Johnny was proud of his gift and was richly rewarded for his generosity.
(Typical teacher story)

The Emo
Little Johnny was angry. He wore all black, grew his hair over his eyes, listened to angry music, and glared at people. He hated his English teacher. You see, Mr. English taught such classes as Greek mythology and the Bible as Literature. Emo Johnny loved the mythology. He especially liked the story of the goddess (he can’t remember her name because he’s so soaked in anger) who threw a golden apple into the middle of a wedding ceremony. The ladies wanted the apple and began fighting over it, the wedding taking a back seat. Johnny liked the goddess of discord and her golden apple. Johnny also liked the role of the apple in the Bible. A man and woman (again, forgetting the names) are put in a garden and told not eat from a tree. A serpent slides along and tells Woman she’ll be cool if she eats the fruit. She does. Then she gives one to Man. They both doom mankind to hell and damnation. Johnny is ecstatic. He runs home, steals the last apple out of his step-mother’s fruit bowl, and takes it to school the next day. He smiles as he hands the apple to Mr. English. The teacher, surprised by little emo, thanks Johnny and eats the apple in front of the whole class. The problem is Mr. English didn’t know what the smile on Johnny’s face meant. Johnny smiled, hoping that the apple would cause Mr. English’s life to fall apart, damning his soul and his entire family to hell!

The Transcendentalist
Little Johnny loved nature. He ditched school regularly to take nature walks. He decided that he didn’t need teachers anymore and tried to think of a way to tell his own school teacher that. So he brought the teacher an apple. The teacher was so pleased he ate the apple in front of the whole class. Johnny could only think of the apple’s place in nature, so he left and the teacher never saw him again.

Okay, so neither of these are likely the origin of the apple pandemic. Why didn’t that kid way back when give his teacher a book? It was probably due to money issues and availability. But this tradition of apples has got to change. Every teacher worth his/her weight in gold (apples) wants to learn more. One of the best ways to learn is to read books, the gift that keeps on giving. Books are useful. Books don’t rot unless you have a mold problem. A hundred years from now, a book may be fragile but still exist. An apple? Smelly for awhile but nothing more than dust. Maybe I’m partial to books because I’m an English teacher, but I know a lot of teachers and professors in different subjects that love books.

The irony of posting a blog like this during the holiday season is astounding. But asking for gifts is not my point. And for those students who see me daily, it’s not funny to have everybody bring me an apple. I will put them in a box until they rot and then mail them to you. Happy Thanksgiving.