Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

Are we then all existentialists
hopeless travellers over life-time?
are we being absurd ,as life seems to be empty
bereft of content and all that's deemed sublime?

time is worse than an executor
who  kills but once--it clings to the flesh--nothing does it relish
it festers and speaks no kind words
only that humans are born to perish


transient is human joy
brittle is its hope
old age creeps in too soon
(it's hard for existentialists to cope)

the waiting
the sighing
the heaving
the suffocating

the questioning
the doubting
the monotonous and inane grinding
which all seems to know no ending

but we are all existentialists anyhow
bearing the cross of being in the here and now

THE STORY OF SARA

Ayad Gharbawi


CHAPTER 2: UNIVERSITY

  
  Well, I did study and, I did pass my exams, and I did succeed in ending up in a decent, upper class school!
  How did I pay for it? I hear you ask me?
  I didn't: I got a scholarship!
  And, what a new world I faced!
  What a totally different society I saw!
  I felt that I was in another country, for I never knew that there existed, from my own people, men and women such as those I encountered!
  My studies in psychiatry really excited me: I thought that I would be able to 'solve' anyone's mental problems.
  All I had to do, was to study and study as feverishly as I could.
Studying furiously, and with love and passion, was the key to success.
  Study, and then you pass your examinations, and then you become a doctor in psychiatry - and I would thereby become successful.
  I would then be someone important.
  I would be respected by everyone.
  My life would have a purpose and a meaning because I would be going in the correct path.
It was simple as that!
  And what was the alternative?
  Not to study?
  And what would I do then?
  Go do a menial, low paying job?
  That was anathema to me!
  It made me sick, to even think about that!
  Why?
  Because, I came from a poor background, and I lived in poverty, and I saw the culture and the people who lived in poverty, and by God, I don’t want to ever live in those circumstances ever again in my life.
  What was poverty to me?
  Your house is ugly; your neighbourhood is ugly; your neighbours are the most indecent people you can imagine.
  The area you live in, swarms with people who live their lives in ‘anti-social behaviour’!
  And what’s ‘anti-social behaviour’?
  That means your community is one, where most people are drunks in  public, where fights, with guns and knives, are an everyday occurrence; where the most filthy language is the norm in public; where ******* covers large parts of the town; where vandalism and damage to cars and property is another daily occurrence; where people play ear-deafening music in the streets and there’s nothing you can do – because, if you call the police, they’ll obey, but then they’ll come back and make hell out of your life – in other words, the gangs rule the community.
  Aren’t those enough reasons to get out of poverty?!
  And, then for me, there are other things that are really important to me.
  For example:
  I mean, who is going to respect you, if you have a menial job? Who is going to look up at you?
  Who is going to listen to your words, when you speak?
  And, most importantly, are you yourself going to be happy with your self and with your life, if you had a menial job?
  Of course not!
  To be a fully satisfied human, you need to live in respectable surroundings with a respectable job.
  Otherwise, there cannot be happiness for you.

  Once I joined my university, I encountered mostly upper class students.
  That’s why, I say it was like ‘another world’ for me, because I had never encountered people like that before!
  Their dress was different; their accent and they way they spoke was different; but what interested me the most, was the fact, that their intellectual interests were extremely varied, as opposed to the people that I had grown up with and knew – those people whose only interests, were getting drunk, practicing promiscuity, crime and drugs!
  Now outside classes, I got began to get involved with different groups of academic students – each group held differing ideas about the world, politics, economics, philosophy of life - and any other subject you can imagine.
  I was never interested in what I called the other 'superficial' groups; that is, those who discussed what I considered to be the stupidities of life, such as fashion, make up, cars, sports and so on. No way; not for me, were people like that!
  For I was far too serious for such mind-wasting people, and, frankly life-wasting people.
  No, I wanted to learn; my God how utterly hungry and thirsty and deadly serious about acquiring more and more knowledge on every 'serious' subject I was - so that, one day, I would be a useful and productive human to society!
  If I was not in my classes, and if I was not listening to those intellectuals, I would sit on any desk and search the internet and read endlessly, on any and every 'serious' subject.

With respect to my classes, as the months rolled over, I began to feel, and think, that my professors were not all that smart at all. I began to feel that they were, in fact, quite ordinary, dull people. But then, I grappled with next obvious question: if they were 'ordinary' and 'dull' people, then how come they were professors – and by 'professors', I mean that they must be far from 'ordinary'? Surely, any person, who is able to be a professor, must be intelligent?
  And yet, the more I listened and took down notes from these professors, and the more I analyzed their words and ideas, the more I became convinced at their emptiness and stupidity!
  My God, you must believe me, for they were talking utter *******!
  Well, who exactly, 'made' them professors?
  I began to dislike them.
  Then, the obvious consequences took place in my mind: the more I disliked them, the less I paid attention to their words and that, in turn, increased my boredom in class!
  No, this was a complete and utter waste of time for me. Yes, I would still need to read the text books given to us by the university, and I would need to understand these books in order to pass the examinations.
  But, I was also determined to do my own independent psychiatry studies, in order to find the ways and means of solving people's emotional problems.

I found it really thrilling to see so many students having so many ideas about the world, because, for me it was so utterly unusual to see young people actually caring about so many issues in our lives!
  You had the conservatives; socialists; Dadaists, existentialists, communists of every shade you can imagine; fascists, socialists, liberals, Nazis, monarchists, Hare Krishnas, Hindus, Budhists, yoga-followers, animal rights campaigners, environmentalists, religious fundamentalists, anarchists  - the list was quite endless to the point of absurdity for, within each group, there were sub-groups, that ranged from the so-called 'left' to the so-called 'right'.
  However, in all this confusion and chaos, there were, at least two things, that you knew for certain: and that was, firstly; that no group agreed with any other group, whilst secondly; every 'leader' of any group sincerely and passionately believed that, yes they, and only they, had all the answers to all the questions that faced our dear Humanity!

But with time, it dawned on me that that most of these intellectual students were not quite what I expected of them.
They would passionately discuss any subject and in excruciating detail!
  To me not every subject was worthy of being discussed!
  Everything was criticized in university.
  Everything was questionable.
  Nothing was certain.
  On the opposite these students believed that they had a duty to deeply philosophise and intricately analyse and scrutinize from every angle every subject and issue in our planet!
  Nothing was accepted and nothing was taken for granted.
  And it was exhausting to listen to them!
  I say ‘exhausting’ because after every meeting, I would actually feel emptier!
  I simply did not learn or gain anything from all these endless discussions!
  So they would analyse issues like: what is the soul?
  What is the difference between the soul and the spirit?
  Where is the soul located?
  Where is the mind located?
  What is the difference between bravery and foolishness?
  Are mathematical facts like 1+1=2 discovered or created by mathematicians?
  What does the word ‘the’ mean?
  What does the word ‘a’ mean?
  Who has a right to create rules and laws?
  How much taxes should each adult pay?
  Is the universe finite or infinite?

  And so it went on and on until your brain became numb with the deafening boredom and pointlessness of it all.
  What irritated me the most was that with these groups of students, was that nothing was sacred.
  Nothing was certain.
On the opposite, everything was completely uncertain.


  As for myself, I gradually gravitated to the leftists – that mixture of socialists, communists, anarchists and other such-like groups.
  Why?
  Because to me their philosophy was more or less simple.
  There wasn’t all that endless series of critiques and analysis that so nearly damaged my brains!
  Their idea was simple: we had to removed the oppressors.
And the oppressors was anyone who had power and influence.
  And what kind of society did we want?
  A purely egalitarian one where there would be neither master nor slave.
  Simple!
  Here I found that much needed sense of certainty!
  Here was an ideal, a philosophy that had strict rules that we were meant to follow in order to achieve our sacred aims!
  

  I was immediately attracted to one student leader, Tony, who passionately urged his listeners to use any means necessary – except violence –in order to achieve our goals of total equality within our society.
  He was a tall man of average weight, with short hair – actually, let me immediately stop myself here - because actually there was absolutely and totally nothing remarkable about the way he looked; but what really made him so attractive was in his personal charm, and the way he spoke, with such a theatrical ability, that made you unable to move as long as he talked.
  I can still see him, as he gracefully gesticulated in such an animated manner, giving further power and reason, to every word and idea he uttered:
  "Can't you see and feel what is going all around you? My friends, listen to my words, because we are living in a society that is dominated by greed and ultimately misery and death on an everyday scale. Why is the dustman paid any less than a doctor? Aren't we all human beings, born free and equal? And, so, if you, my friends, agree with me that all men, women and children, are equal, then it should make obvious sense to you that we should all live equally. Do you feel what I am saying to your hearts, or not?!" he would thunder at us, with his face contorting from the passion, and with his ability to be so majestic and, yet, so utterly humble at the same moment!
  Yes, I began to think more and more about what Tony had to say.    Why was there poverty in the first place?
  Where was Humanity?


  Indeed, aren't we all equal human beings; so why this discrimination? It seemed so sensible to me; and yet, what was I, Sara the Nobody, doing about this problem?
  Nothing, of course.
  Yes, I was just a student – but I was not actively working against the dark forces, as Tony was always talking about.
  Tony would mesmerize his listeners, which were usually held in the evenings, at around eight o'clock.
  He always managed to talk to you directly – or so it felt, despite the large number of listeners.
  "There are people who make millions in minutes – did you people know that?  While most people in our society struggle and sweat not only tears, but, I tell you, they sweat blood – yes blood" he would scream at this point, "day in and day out, and getting paid next to nothing, you also have a minority who make millions in minutes!   How can you, yes you, tell me that that is fair? Why do you, my listeners, why do you lamely accept, that we live in a society that allows conditions, whereby the majority, and I say the vast majority of human beings, men and women, have to bleed to death just, to pay their never ending bills, while a minority lead an easy life overflowing with money, glamour, power and luxuries that are indescribable? I ask you again and again to answer my questions: is that fair? And if it is not fair, then what should be done about this sick situation? Well, clearly, we must use violence to take our rights, because no democracy will allow our party to succeed in any election and obviously the rich will never voluntarily give up their oceans of wealth; therefore, if you ask me, what is to be done, I firmly tell you as my response, that we must fight for our eternal rights, and by using the verb 'fight', I mean we 'fight' with every weapon at our disposal – be they words or bullets!"
  I was simply exhilarated by his symphony of words!
  And yet, I couldn’t help but feel that there was something ‘missing’ in Tony’s personality.  
  He just didn’t have that supreme self assurance that others had.
  I guess that was what was ‘missing’.
  I couldn’t understand why he did have that degree of insecurity – because, it seemed to be a contradiction when you are living your life for an ideal, and at the same time, you have insecurities within your heart!

  It was also at university, that I first met Sanji.
  He was a tall, dark wavy haired man with a dark complexion.  His beautifully oval eyes had a deeply pensive look, and at the same time, they were always somehow mired within a sorrowful gaze.
  Even when he would talk to you, Sanji's eyes seemed to be far away, deep in thought, about God knows what subject!
  Gracing his eyes, were beautifully arched eyebrows and the longest, thickest eyelashes I have ever seen, that beautifully complimented those seemingly lonely eyebrows in perfect harmony.
  He was a quiet, soft spoken gentleman, who was the most polite and sincere man I had ever met – I would forever ask myself, how can this man, be so gentle and compassionate, and without seeming to get distressed, angry or anxious?!
  He had such a depth of serenity in his personality – and that trait was something that made so utterly envious of him; I was constantly wishing and trying to have a millionth of that serenity of his.
  He was utterly sure of himself – and not in any arrogant way. He was completely happy and secure with the ideas and principles which guided him throughout his life.
  He had a complete knowledge as to what the purpose of his life was. As a result he knew exactly where he was going with his life.
  There was no sense of being lost with Sanji; for he knew the endless, twisted, meandering number of Paths of Life ahead of him - and more importantly he knew which path he wanted to tread on in his life’s journey.
  He would never use foul language; and would always listen to you with interest as you talked – which is rare in our world.
  And he had that most beautiful ability and talent to be so extra careful in choosing his words when he spoke, for he always wanted to get his thoughts and ideas properly across to you, so that people would understand him well, and so that there would be no confusion as to what he stood for.
  That's why he was so pensive and why he spoke so deliberately; there was never any impulsiveness on his part; he intended exactly every word, and exactly every phrase, and every sentence he used; there never was any carelessness on his part when he would interact with you.


  I never met a man who was so wholly and totally considerate for the feeling

A REACTIONARY TRACT FOR THE TIMES

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
'Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The **** Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
*** plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:--

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.

This is a poem about nothing
which is impossible since Nothing is actually Something
An indefinite pronoun.

Now, I'm discussing nothing
a concept that makes 'nothing' a thing
Confused? I am.

My mind is buzzing with the thought of nothing!
So is my mind empty or not?!
Discussing nothing is leaving me blushing!

Now existentialists,
Sartre was influenced by Heidegger
Heidegger says he was misunderstood

In the effort to bring about a poem about nothing,
I've created something, so this poem is now about Something'
what, I know not.

Trees, houses, Treehouses,
Abandoned.
                  beaches
                ­                 still
                                 appear the same as summer
but the sky's gone
                 Sunshine
to
                Windwine
                                  (Clouds and clouds, some much            
                                    larger than others, sometimes just one big cloud  
                                   mapped out between            
                                   us and rest of universe to the cascade horizon)

All the pets can tread cement
without
worry of burns and the two hundred calamities
of July are over.
                              Replaced with
                              rain and bums escaping to the
                              soup kitchens and
Churches
                                  (East side Vancouver, Pandora Victoria,  
                                                 astreet in a city astray)
Ashtrays freckled in the evening drizzle
common.

My hands are held by gloves and
                                 fingertips from half of
                                 Japan,
my lips are kissed by the                          comet
beauty mark on right side
bottom
                                                (Though this universe is attending
                                                  unive­rsity in a distant city
                                                  while I hold my own
                                                  practicing the Dharma,
                                                 or MAYBE none of this will happen!)
Everything is in its place
as it always was-
though circumstance has tried to
teach us otherwise the                        
                                     ­                            Blackbox
                                      made of star-rubber S T R E T C H I N G
Hasn't the concept
of          calendars or
                             Jesus or
                                medicine cabinets
                                                         Dentists and
                                                             ­               Saints.
Everything is in its place
as it will always be
        as it has never been...
(Ever)
SPONTANEITY of matter
                         Gliding thr-
                                          -ough matter.
What does it all matter anyway?
There's                    loving
and                    ­     experiencing,
                Music.
           Personsong.
         Do-no-wrong.
That        no-no           of making
             mistakes?
A falsity!
**** up

In blissful circles
to the         SOUND
                    OF SNOW
                    MELTING
on streetlamps front of my
House.
                                (A very silent orchestra performing
                                 Before collision and like dog whistles
                                 It's a sound we cannot hear.
                                The peoples got their poetry and
                                cognitive thought so the other
                                Animals get the REAL sensory
                                Inconceivables to write about
                                But the ******* can't)
In that
                        future
_____
basement house

Where the Van Gogh
                   Velvet Underground sit
P
O
S
T
E
R
E
D
on the wood-c
                        u
                          r
    ­                       v
                             e walls.
I'm in unfolding daydream
Thanking
HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS
predating my
EIGHTEEN.
Thanking the
                              Beats and the Dadaists
                           and Buddhists and
                        Existentialists
                     ­ Post-modernists
                  Minimalists
                Expressionists
            FOR BEING.

Really, they aided
Me off
  the ^ ground
during
eight month unemployment induced depression where
I felt disassociated with myself
and the dynamo                                                       outside the front door..
Glowing via
         sunlight in the day window and
            headlights in the night window.
Either way
I filled up with
                                   (((Purposeless cynicism)))
The world bulb clicked ON
With/without me           there,
None of the corner stores
Or      airports
Or      hospitals
          courts and
          institutions
gave a rat's ***
what woes I be asphyxiated by
or that                 Farmquiet two lane
                                 tarnished path
In the country                       (in May)
      seemed fine a place as any
to     step a few feet to the          
                                               right
                            and
      left

of me and
                         .......DIZZY.......
by death traffic
old Buick polish
(Tragedy they'd say!)

While there midway in the firing line
I felt like
the wackos in      l o o s e
stone COLISEUM daisy cages
               Empty lots,
       Place where the beast of
  Emptiness cuffs to your sleeve
             and weeps
                      All over itself
                      that Sarte was right all along!
(No Exit! No exit!)

Autumn quartz moonlight                        O
Illuminated headstone repetition
circling musk fields.
  Skeleton wings
Of preceded seasons' timbers
Caught muttering the
Corpseconvo
as the               tumblecar
trembling             hot in
                           Music sauna HUM
Approaches life,
to the
                       paralyzed November air
of
Coffin bodies insulated
By roots N' six feet of terrestrial barrier.



Faces disappearing now
to Heavenly chandeliers of time
offering distant light future
and above my ponderous skull presently
                 dancing riverside to situations
                                                  and newness
                           (2016)
                  enigmatic spiral
  every                 color             every
                        possibility
every                rainbow          or
                      non-rainbow chromatically
                           webbed in Attic
                                          of secluded
                                Quantum Dimensions-

The big blue doors are opening to cosmic entirety,
cats everywhere are purring in their sleep,
somebody reads                          Murakami,
                                                      Picabia,
                                                      Joyce,
   ­                                                   W.C Williams,
                                                      B­erryman & Brainard too.
Big blue doors, rites of passage,
Aarti Varanasi twenty-seventeen,
             joyride to San Francisco (I wrote a poem on that once!)
Continuing self-exploration,
            reminding that soul to stay awake,
            the search for love-
Warmth when the year is
metamorphosed to cardinal leaves
       Sunset Summer!
      Autumnal transfiguration
      spiritual!
      Rearrangement of the concurrent reality!

I turn 19 in October and
a procession of kind-eyed children
will be born in the moments
I blow the cake candles.
Light goes out!
light comes in!
Hanoi expects me still.

This old man looks so sad
The hollow glance at the floor
Hands shaking
The lack of sense
Pain of conscience
Rude awakening
Who could imagine that
He did something bad

Slowly he approaches the door
City folks lore
Deeper than Hollywood
Cheap drama store

The wind takes his hat
The rush makes he look like a rat
Tired, lonely
Trapped in rusted cage bars

Sour taste of the gift of life
Anxiety, the most faithful wife
For a bottle of *****
He strives
Amidst sands of despair
In the desert of remorse

The subway of broken dreams
Like a purgatory it seems
To make people face
Their innermost sins...

Maybe this is just a big lie
But the old man exists
And the image of hands shaking
Insists.

"my identification lies in the hopeless psychedelic absurdities of ninety year old existentialists and the macabre **** trails of industrialized ghosts

Slaying scissor handed dragons of whirlwind dimensions from plain abject boredom
Smashed with broken Knuckled collisions against walls of mimetic iron and steel
as territorial **** measuring fanatics play out semiotic fantasies of heroic rigor mortis but i don't want to get political
because the cosmic play is of the ancient masters repeatedly tripping over each other
and i don't claim to know the rules if there are any
So for now i will bash my brains and hair against this black holed vacuum of being in itself
and try to remember that the uncertainty principle doesn't allow us to know position and velocity simultaneously
and that by observing the world it is irrevocably changed by the power of Schrodinger's Cat

I would tear that ******* ******* to shreds if I looked in the box

So next time around i'll mechanically saw off my arms and see if they will grow back
and burn gasoline in a shovel mesmerized by the blue flames and melted animal ecstasies connecting all to the light of infinite unknowing"

Said the dog with the bone in his mouth. I asked him

"how can you talk with food in your mouth like that? it's dreadful"

He did not reply.

I pondered his speech on the train home and filled a balloon with nitrous,
tide it off and began to punch it while holding the rubber band attached.
a man with knuckle tattoos next to me popped it with a pen

I miss my nitrous balloon

But i didn't have time to think about it because a Hottentot venus in yoga pants with that *** like bow! just walked past

You may not entirely understand the reality of a 'dank existence,'
As the ranks of society have used interpretive dance as resistance
To the lime-green light that illuminates that room in the brain,
Where interpretation of thought drives explanation insane.

You may not entirely understand what is real;
From the epilogue clearing fictions fog to what makes an orange peel,
As it's not a simple way to live every day,
But it's found that, quite obviously, it is the best way,
Lacking the patch of reality's seal,
It truly is the only real way to feel.

To say that my mind has gone mad without power,
Is like saying pop-rocks from '67 aren't sour,
Or a Peoples Republic won't rise like a tower,
Over Western metropolis, and the President's glower.

And to say that my brain is subdued within chains,
Is like claiming humanity never made it to space.
It's a possibility, but from any value of face,
The assumption is old, and conservingly fake.

Lets say we randomize all events in our lives;
From the time we wake up, to where we close our eyes,
And the constant adventure, as to 'where to go next,'
Finds that our past is quite static once the next second is vexed
And the constant thieving of the ideas that we steal,

Makes life an existentialists ideal meal,

With the past, and the present, and the future entwined,
It's a smorgasbord of endeavor drawn outside the lines,
And we love it.

,;.;.;.;.;
spasms
.;.;.;.;.;
spasms
.;.;.;.;.;
spasms
-----------­----------------

---------------------------

divisions
creation­s
incantations

So where do we begin?
Well, of course, indeed, rather undeniably
there first comes the identification of a form
(existentialists label this essence)
then certainly some consummation of labour
under out dated regulations is carried out -
then perhaps some degree of manipulation
‘culturally, economically, politically, psychologically’
are some of the common ones to reference...
but then lastly - realisation and overcoming.
The discovery of some truth
in the illusion of this thing.
And finally there, in that vector of chaotic surfaces, that
change and ameliorate, painting life
into this picture to be hung in the Luve ,
emerges a new thing,
something entirely distinct and precise
and we ask the masses of peasants
“what shall we call it?”
and they say
“the ubermensch or some *******”
but don’t really care until they realise
it is invisible, and they cannot touch it
so it scares them into insomnia,
paralysis
and involuntary thoughts
like ‘is it real? god, enlighten me’
and most who have seen it
in full form
lie awake at night

rupturing like tissue paper,
into two soft scars
motioning towards something
in the uncertain wind,
absorbing everything fluid and free
and still of course rather insoluble,
and permeating.

If you're exempt from gravity
then who condemns you?
Tell me again how the rules don't apply
to existentialists like yourself
To those who find laws trifling
and to those who ****** ideas
with greedy minds
Please enlighten me
What is it you hope to uncover?

We pick and choose
What to believe
What hurts us most
Is released
Before the tears
And suffering
Old cherished myths
Our self deceit
The center of
Our universe
Revolves around
A different sun
The meaning
That we give to life
In a flash is
All undone
So then we tremble
On our beds
And pause
In silent
Humble prayer
The fear is of
The unknown God
The search for guidance
Anywhere
It’s hard to even understand
The layers of pain
That we meet
It seems cruel to keep us
From the truth
Deny the food
That we need
Yet we keep our faith
And we resist
We’re not closet
Existentialists
We may cry in pain
We may question why
But our hope in God
Just never dies

snip me into strips.
re-arrange my lines and
diction into one of your
manic-pixie-found-poems.
black out the most important
parts of me with messy sharpie
and paste me onto some photo,
whose irrelevancy adds to the
romantic air you were trying
to achieve.

then read me to glassy-eyed
existentialists looking for life-meaning,
and display me on your wall
affixed with haphazard masking tape.
love me like this.

turn me into a forgotten love poem.