>
> I woke up this morning with something from Doug Holder's Ibbbetson
> Update yesterday or the day before (I didn't keep the digest) ringing in
> my (vibrating) skull-bone. He quoted Bob Creeley saying "...poetry can't
> be defined...." I'm more comfortable with something like this, rather
> than somebody's poem, to poke at to waken an inquisitive spirit, to
> force questioning, exploring, ...questing....
>
> And I react viscerally to "...can't...". But among poets (or non-poets)
> there's something deeper in the cognitive innards to react to
> viscerally. In the cliques, hierarchies, "movements" or other gathers,
> you are less likely to hear "he or she is a bad poet" (whatever that
> might mean) than "he or she isn't a poet" or "...is a fake poet, faking
> it, no poet at all...". Folks saying that sort of thing seem to have "a
> definition" in mind whether or not it's more articulate than the gibbet
> planted at a crossroads.
>
> I wouldn't want to add to that not-very-friendly nonsense, but I don't
> think closing off thinking, imagining, managing the three-minute mile,
> or anything else ...in the name of profundity... is any fun at all. Or
> very friendly....
>
> If you want to "essay" a definition, something to enter into a
> dictionary, you might have trouble. Creeley may have attempted that now
> and again, in conversations at least, to get to where he said what he
> said when guest speaking.... But look at it this way. When you attempt a
> poem, beyond just hoping one will come, if you even attempt to "fake" a
> poem, you have to feel your way into a framework that's something of a
> definition of poetry. And, as a poet (or non-poet or fake poet), you
> don't have to formulate that definition, but just work it. You have to
> *do* something, begin working some "materials", and keep on doing
> things, maybe things that just seem to follow upon one another, but....
> You've got to at least steer, make some decisions as you go, grab this
> instead of that, break (and that's an active verb) the line here, not
> there, and ...where do you leave your voice at that break, is it an end,
> or a suspension...? Do you punctuate one way with the familiar marks and
> another with the "white space"? And so you're going, and defining,
> shaping, birthing as you go. later, you can think about it, imagine
> around it, listen back. You can generalize, too. Because that's how you
> get "talk about" definitions.
>
> That much gets you thinking about the how of what you're doing, but
> you've got to sense the why, ...why do you break the line where you do
> and how you do? When it's poetry, it goes beyond what you're saying,
> too, into how you're saying it, why you're saying it and into the
> disguising of your "saying" it.... What you're doing, what you're making
> and where you're making, creating, doing it.... Keep in mind Nicoleides
> ("The Natural Way to Draw") reminder that learning to see involves not
> just looking through your eyes, but looking *with* all your sense (by
> which, he said the five familiar ones and likely meant six to eight if
> you add in the proprietary senses), which is why I added into one of my
> recent notes on cleaning out my closet full of books that a poet's
> learning to hear involves the more complex senses, the human ones, as
> well, such as senses of time and timing, of relative motion, of shifting
> felt or seen "feelings", all the way up to "making sense"....
>
> Sometimes, you'll even get to writing "about" defining, even as you
> define. Here...
>
> THE DRAUGHTSMAN
>
> A thread pulled loose
> & resewn,
>
> the line -
>
> to figure out is to make
> the figure
>
> contoured, contrailed
>
> in coriolis wisdom, hunkered down
> under the tree
> hearing
> its birds & winds
> its play
>
> & leaves.
>
> To draw
> is to pull forth
>
> the "empty" line -
>
> Catch Rembrandt in a definition
> a rule
> ?
>
> He wanted to eat
> & he had seen, seen through thoughts
> of eating, but
> wanted
> to eat
> & his hand took off
> a caressing
> flight
>
> & birds
> represent inspired
> thoughts.
>
>
> It's likely (I haven't the education to be sure) that most anything you
> can dig up and read, any literature on the business of creating definitions,
> won't help. When you're aware of driving, sensing what you're doing,
> even when you do it more or less by training, freeing up the mind
> for where you're going, you're *defining* - and when you're "riding the
> wave" of what your cognitive innards are doing, as you drive, you're
> *divining*.... Tools. It helps to think of "edges" and "contours". In
> realms of a larger consciousness, you c'n explore the growing awareness
> that an *edge* is always an *interface*, but that's just another path
> you can take. Edges and contours. The horizon disc is an edge that
> circles you. You can sense an edge to it. If you're a flat-Earther, and
> the seen disc, say from out on open water, suggests a flat Earth, you
> can imagine stranger and stranger beasts out near Earth's edge and a
> falling off - if you go past those demonic fear-beasts.
>
> You watch the "tall ship" sailing into the distance. Climb up your own
> mast with a good glass (for viewing, not sipping) and watch. The other
> doesn't fall, but ...sinks slowly, the mast tip finally "gone under".
> We've been told why ...by people who figured they'd go look into what
> was out there. No complacent "...can't be known..." (or "...can't be
> done...") from these devilish men and, more recently, women. If you're
> going to create definitions, particularly of *poetry,* you've got to
> reach out...
>
> You watch that far ship sink and you *think* and you tell others, or
> those who come after you do, that we live on a ball and your horizon
> disc, which defines your *here,* hasn't an edge, but a contour. And it
> moves with you, as mystifying as the little patches of light from spots
> the clown in the circus ring attempts to "sweep" up and remove..
>
> Wallace Stevens knew about contours...
>
> "When the blackbird flew out of sight,
> It marked the edge
> Of one of many circles."
>
> Seeing contours in bird flight? Sure, you can see this defining
> *every*where.... Consider the horizon disc that scribes your *here*
> (and, more complexly, involves your *now* as well). Have we always
> mapped this? Sure. Look at the palm of your hand. Forget looking at the
> crease lines to figure length (whatever that means) of your life
>
> Your palm just might map the *here.* Humans c'n point (or point out,
> make a point).... You point with the first finger and lose the sense of
> from where (wha here, what here) you are pointing. Another's attending
> shoots out beyond the finger tip...
> in a "straight" line and hits something out there. The Arabs  brought
> numerals to Majorca and Spain and so to Europe.  The 1 was horizontal, a
> line and a hook. No hint of a base, a palm, in that first "font". What a
> different pointing in the 6 glyph. The finger is no more curved than
> in the 1 until decoration enters to disguise the point, though in a long
> point coriolis forces might be thought about. To map that pointing, fold
> the thumb so it's tip is in the center of the palm. I can no longer do
> that very well or, for that matter, fold down those extra fingers.
> Anyway, you draw your line from that thumb-tip along the thumb length
> and around the ball and on out along the finger. Now, you're pointing
> (or pointing out) from the center of your here. What's 2? Two fingers,
> connected by the palm, though not yet involving it, You can point at two
> things and consider the angle between them and so the "out there"
> distance between them. You can point both fingers at the headland and
> rotate one to point at the reef. Trigonometry. And, with a turn of the
> wrist, a sextant and clock. Of course, we know time and periodicity
> originally because women, through menses, are mark and map the moon's
> orbiting and use that to know time and, later, the working of
> universe....
>
> In Creeley's head?
>
> I imagine something quite different going on in Creeley's head than what
> he ended up saying, though I don't have even more of the conversation at
> hand. Something came into the conversation that, directly or indirectly,
> suggested saying something about defining poetry. Decades of
> involvement. Some inner speaker might have intended to say: "I can't
> describe all that wells up for describing, defining, when 'poetry'
> reverberates in my ear...". A kind of despair and a tossing away of,
> perhaps, "mere" words....
>
> A definition:
>
> POWER SPOT
>
> Cafe
> coffee house
> tea house
> tavern -
> in exotic places out along
> the caravan trails.
> These are schools, locations
> for wandering
> teachers, scholars, seekers;
> nexi,
> the watering hole,
> the two ends of the log made
> one, and the
> teas, coffees, are herbal
> wonders to waken...
> to stretch and hold taut...
> the meditation.
> The wines and mushroom juices
> and chewed things
> bring the wild vision, the
> untamed knowing,
> into that singing field, that
> fine mesh of silence,
> the catcher.
> And here we share, again
> and again,
> the news that stays
> news, the song whose familiar
> lyric is never
> twice the same.
> And here the quiet, private voices
> merge and swell.
> And here, in this desert oasis
> the sea gathers,
> a roar of whispering voices
> gathers,
> and this sea, stained
> to dark umbers
> and bright ambers
> and soft bloods
> by teas, coffees and wines
> rolls out to soothe
> parched lands.
>
>
> Even in the "everyday", the seemingly trivial, the hour at Starbuck's or
> over a cup of bad field-coffee if the sun goes down and you figure you
> might as well stay in the field until daybreak and more work ...so much
> more is welling up...,
>
> Gene
>
> Gene Fowler
> (April of ret. @ddress is m'wyf)
> acorioso@earthlink.net
> Poetry, Archives:
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/fires.htm
> 21st century e-typewriter (homemade):
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/ew_main.htm
>
>

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