Poetry and Posterity II
Circumstance Considered Further
This article is a follow-up to my piece A Rhymer’s Lament published on Silver Door. In it, I framed contemporary poetry in a rather unfavorable light and made some incipient suggestions for the future. This current piece, however, aims to investigate contemporary poetry in a broader context while narrowing the scope to be, primarily, descriptive.
The other parts of the series can be found here: Part I, Part III, Part IV, Part V
Current poetic taste is enraptured by annihilation. However, since annihilation is beyond mortal control, a surrogate form must be pursued. Immolation, flagellation and vivisection are frequent substitutes. I mean this metaphorically, though materialization of these conjurations is not uncommon. Specifically, one of the main targets for destruction is the self. As we have seen, the self has become a burden on the soul of man. If the self can become scapegoat, the human can become free. The introduction of the radical self formulates salvation through annihilation—nothing can be saved, therefore everything must be destroyed. Having defeated the necessity of choice, the self pines for freedom from being free. At the end of things, the intra-historical hope of mankind is that annihilation will destroy death.
The self seems to be hunting for total disintegration. Through unconstrained freedom—that is licentiousness, the abuse of freedom—the self seeks to fundamentally dismantle categories or the ability to distinguish. This attitude continually appears in the workaday poetry of our time. I believe this is a concerning development. On the surface, annihilation expresses itself through total lack of concern for form. This includes conventional form, logical form and even grammatical form. In rejecting grammatical form, poetry can express non-sense, properly speaking. Poetry is being used as a vehicle to indulge in the utmost amount of non-sense tolerable by the human being.
If you go to the bookstore and pick up a volume of contemporary poetry, you may notice the astounding amount of white space on the page. That open space is reflective of the taste for annihilation. The empty space represents limitless possibility. The perfect expression of contemporary taste would be the totally blank book. The blank volume of poetry could succeed in freeing poetry from being poetry. The first edition would merely state “Poetry” on its cover, and the second edition would do away with a title completely. The dialectic that produces the blank book is the postulate that absence defines presence. It’s not essence that distinguishes existence; Instead, existence is given validity only by reference to nothingness.
Now, these are ideological positions, and these positions can express themselves politically, socially and aesthetically. Also, as it is tantamount, they express themselves poetically. The translation of ideology into poetry is an example of the production of motivation. It is a special type of motivation and it is unlike other rudimentary, immediate motivations such as the ones that forcefully influence politics. However, since it is indeed a motivation, it can be deliberated about, and in the poetic context, to be criticized. The deliberative-critical question is: What is the best thing to be done?
Within the activity of deliberation, motivations will emerge that are contrary to one another. The conflict of motivations conceives necessity; And necessity is a harbinger for the crimson horse of war. To consider Poetry is to consider the human soul. To consider Poetry and Posterity is to consider History, which is to say motivation and circumstance. Therefore an adequate examination of Poetry and Posterity ought exhibit a sensitivity to not only the soul, but to the motivations that drive human action and to the circumstances which allow and restrict the substantiations of motivation. When circumstance that is caused by one motivation restricts the necessary substantiation of another motivation, war results.
The admission of war and death into human activity is absolutely intolerable to a certain predisposition of mind. Specifically, a mind which holds ideological positions that seek annihilation and one which finds purchase in contemporary poetry. It is intolerable because the admission of death, particularly the permanence of death, demands consideration of the transcendent. Transcendence, rightly understood, is beyond the powers of will and consequentially implores submission. The ontological impingement of the will is unacceptable. Therefore, a great sabotage of human deliberation must be undertaken to prevent consideration of human activity, motivation, soul, nature, and death. For if we begin to deliberate on death, we may deliberate on life, and also on Poetry.
It should be noted, at this juncture, that literature as religion has already been tried and found wanting. Though of course it still has its adherents and attempted revivals. However, of much greater importance is that poetry, at present, is serving as liturgy for the religion of humanity. In and of itself, this liturgy is incredibly fragile since deliberation is a constant threat to its survival and success. How then, does one protect this liturgy? Through the production of façade, counterfeit and falsity. Nevertheless, a deeper truth needs to be revealed. The liturgy’s fragility is in fact its strength. As I said, this liturgy requires protection in the form of counterfeit production, but what is occurring is the production of counterfeits to hide other counterfeits. Poetry-as-liturgy of the religion of humanity is in fact, façade. Alternatively, stated in the offensive mode, as opposed to defensive, it serves as a decoy.
The purpose of poetry is not to make poetry, it is to produce the façade poem. The façade poem, or dummy poem, distracts from true weakness and attracts genuine, offensive energy which the dummy poem transmutes into ineffectual, surrogate action. Just as a pretender king obscures and mediates true power, the dummy poem provides pretend authority. This is how human deliberation is sabotaged. By encouraging surrogate deliberation about pretend power, the religion of humanity ensures its own safety; Because human activity which could cause mortal wounds is absorbed by the dummy power, or in this case the dummy poem.
It is not surprising that poetry is a premier weapon in defense of dogma. It is mechanically sound. Within the framework of annihilation, the soul is referenced by its relationship with nothingness. The soul is real because nothingness is more real. However, since this predicament is increasingly destructive to the human being, poetry is required to provide the massage. The flexible and lubricative qualities of poetic expression allow the smooth operation of ruinous apparatus. When warfare is pushed into the symbolic, poetry becomes a potent munition. As a literary form, poetry is incredibly exhaustive of language itself. This means that poetry is an excellent focal point for the production and domination of non-sense. On one hand, poetry can apply itself to the crafty production of non-sense; While on the other, poetry being used for non-sense shuts out the possibility of poetry expressing exhaustive meaning. A triumph of a deadly scenario.
I must express my apologies to the reader. I can imagine that he has received this piece with frustrated sighs, eye-rolls and exasperated interjections. For these flaws, I entreat his pardon. “I labor to be concise, I become obscure.” The purpose of considering Poetry is to leave it better than when we received it. At least that is our intention and hope. The purpose of this article has been to begin to develop the ability to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit; And to recognize the concomitant conditions when engaging with the counterfeit. Deliberating about the counterfeit is a precarious enterprise. The danger of slipping into surrogate activity is ever present. That is precisely what I wish to avoid.