A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.
This may sound easy. It isn't
A lof of people think or believe or know they feel---but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling---not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people : but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself---in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else---means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time---and whenever we do it, we're not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, you'll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is : do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world---unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn't.
It's the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
ee cummings*****From the Ottawa Hills Spectator, October 26, 1955
I travelled North this Spring. I went to Scotland and Ireland for two weeks, and basked in the way my imagination grew into itself there. Here's an excerpt from my journal after I'd drunk in the highlands for almost a week, just about delirious with contentment:
"...I'm so inspired I'm buzzing with impressions and ideas -- I know how I want to write in general better, and I also know that the Scottish highlands will be bleeding out of my heart, through the seams of my eyes (salty-like), and setting up house in my writing. From now on, the colors and textures, shapes, mountains, snow, waterfalls, botany, birds, tree-shapes, sky, clouds, soil, moss (!!!) -- even the weather -- will be an integral part of my writing. I now know that artists are not insane; places like this exist! I never realized a place could be made manifest out of one's own heart like this. I feel that Scotland has been living in me all my life and has just been waiting for the space to jump out and say 'I told you so!' I'll tell you, I know my inner eye isn't crazy now, and I will be giving it all the free reign it wants to create places of its own..." 4/8/06
Jon and I stayed in Fort William at a really cozy little old hostel with lots of character where I was able to take naps on beanbags in front of the fire when I returned from hikes during the day (there was also free tea and coffee and hot chocolate all day in the kitchen). On the second day out Jon and I walked 16 miles and I pulled a muscle in my leg right up at the top-- the one that lifts the leg. I don't know what it's called, but it still hurts like heck sometimes. It slowed me down for the rest of the trip, though I did do a fair amount of hiking anyway.
So I traipsed about like travelers of old, with journal and sketchbook in hand, writing poetry in my head, and looking for the unique beauty of the land and people around me (as opposed to racing around trying to follow the advice of travel experts and take in the biggest&best sights in Europe). A traveler mentality leads you different ways, taking you directly to different kinds of experiences that show you the unique aspects of the place you're in without removing you from yourself, without bringing you into company with those who would part you commercially and otherwise from your own Being. There's real substance that stays with you when you're a traveler, whereas the overall feeling one leaves tourist traps with is something like "the world is a vampire..."(Smashing Pumpkins); I much prefer the first to the second. Touristy-feeling is a darkness in the gut, a strangled lack of oxygen and a sort of inhumanity filled with human bodies, like dying of thirst in the Dead Sea. In traveling, there's still that feeling of not belonging where you are quite, but so many things about the place (aside from the rootedness of the community itself that necessarily excludes you as you are an intruder upon its history) testify to your belonging as a human being in any surroundings you choose -- the birds, the plants, the love, the care people prepare food with, the dogs and cats, the trees, the wind, the moon, and the ocean... You can't feel entirely the stranger when you observe these things embracing you and ushering you into newness and a chance to learn about other people -- both their now and their history.
~*~
Megan and I went to Connemara and took a six mile hike up Sky Road and saw the Atlantic ocean -- that really did my heart good, though my leg hurt me terribly most of that hike. {Meditated on Psalm 23}. At a little bar in Clifden we listened to some more music from some elderly locals. An old lady breezed in on her cane with her daughter and sat down at the reserved musician's table, I suppose just to be near the music, but everyone begged her to sing along to her favorite tunes -- she had a fabulous voice! I felt so honoured to be there... It was precious. The entire mood was different. Galway is known for its music and lots of people go there; it is very touristy. Clifden was a destination as well in a way, but it was still a quiet country village at the same time. Here's an excerpt from my journal at the bar that night:
"... I write stories down. I want folklore to be squeezed into 2D, but no one can quite manage it -- there's an element of human flesh and blood and experience in it deeper than anything that can be nailed down on a page in black and unmoving white. The whole give and response mechanism is truly different. Utterly different. Organic. It cannot be flattened -- it is music. It flies through the air and buries itself in people's hearts, and people's hearts give back. . . the nature of this creating is continual and communal. Vaguely Heideggarean. . . (Ha!)..." 4/11/06
I have been noting the similarities and differences between the written word and lyric mixed with note recently, and this trip helped me to do more of it. When we went to the Burren we stayed in Doolin (Dulainn) there were a couple of traditional music shops where I could sit for hours and just listen to the cds they had there. I took full advantage (one was a cafe with a fireplace and a little garden as well, and another was a dusty little cottage behind all the other shops where I talked for a few hours with the guy behind the desk as he played random instruments) and really enjoyed myself, studying the music and trying to learn all I could and asking questions when they came to me. I made friends with a couple of the people that worked at the cafe, and eventually settled on a couple of purchases for myself and my parents -- a fiddler and a harpist. While staying at Doolin, We saw the Cliffs of Mohr (breathtaking!) and the Arran Islands (I went to the tiny island and walked around the mazes of piled stones, meditated, befriended a little dog who guided me around the island, and then spent some time with a cup of tea and a sandwich in a the single pub, writing).
~*~
I noticed something about the trees in the three different countries I've been to: England's predominant tree seems to be ancient, lone, and singlularly knotted, with boils and rough bark, straight and tall and massive with many small scrabbling branches clutching its surrounds covetously; these trees hide much. Scotland's predominant tree strikes me as being various forms of straight, slim, tall, and proud, both youthful and old, adorned by moss or shivering leaves against a silver trunk, backed by a whisper of complex color winding its way through the masses of them on mountains. Ireland's predominant tree looked to be a slight woman perpetually facing a strong wind, hair blown back as branches and moss, sorrowfully skeletal and delicate-- yet still standing, dotting the green landscape, consenting to be permanently shaped by the violent weather because they have no other choice.
I discovered over the last weeks that the way I want to live in other countries and learn them is possible! That my desire to learn places and people and write about them isn't just a dream, it's a Dream, and I think I can do it, given the chance. Perhaps I shall have to give myself the chance... but I know now, rather than simply believing, that it's just as worthwhile to do that anywhere, even in a small town that has genuinely been my home for years and years. Maybe that is my simple task. We'll have to see. :)
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