The Metaphysics of Poetry

Nice question. I still must absorb it well. Somehow it reminds of Jalal ad-Din Rumi.

Poetry is to thought as makeup is to a woman. A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness. The metaphysics of beauty is simply our dissatisfaction (dukkha) with reality and thus our obsession with illusion (maya). Turns Buddhism which believes maya is dukkha on its head.

Quoting TheMadFool

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness.

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate.

Quoting Janus

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness.
— TheMadFool

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate.

Why? Show me a right poet and a wrong poet and maybe there's something worth discussing.

Reply to Gus Lamarch
I think that poetry, or poesis, is a different way of viewing the world and, in many ways, is more about intuition than logic. It also is about language to capture images and it could be seen like painting In words. It does involve subjective expression more than reason, but it can touch and grasp higher, 'truths' as well. I think that some of the poets, including William Blake, and W B Yeats, stand out as such important thinkers in their own right. But, seeing their ideas as objective is questionable, but they did create worldviews, like many novelists and romantic philosophers.

There was, of course, the tradition of metaphysical poets, such as John Donne, but it was a very specific worldview and probably not one which could be seen as truly objective.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Therefore, poetic metaphysics is something that can only be conceived through the incomplete visualization - not absolute but subjective - of concepts.

There is a poetry movement called "Imagism" where the poets pursue "Part of the figurative language in a literary work, whereby the author uses vivid images to describe a phenomenon" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagism

Quoting Jack Cummins

I think that poetry, or poesis, is a different way of viewing the world

:fire:

Quoting Jack Cummins

painting In words

:up:

Quoting Jack Cummins

touch and grasp higher, 'truths' as well

:ok:

Quoting Jack Cummins

seeing their ideas as objective is questionable

:chin:

In poetry, words come alive; words are the medium for a specific message, yes, but unlike prose where we're simply interested in the message, in poesis, as you put it, the medium itself, the words themselves, play a vital role.

Poetry, in a sense, is just a form of rhetoric - sometimes empty and sometimes dripping with wisdom. That's a clear sign that the medium (words) has broken free of the message (information): before poetry, words had to make sense; after poetry, words could be nonsense. Many, even poets, don't realize this simple truth.

He took
She look
They forsook
It was by the book
At the bottom of a brook
All the deed of an unscrupulous crook
Said the rather sheepish looking duke
All eyes were on the cook
The cooks eyes were on the rook
The wee babe hiding in the nook
Oh, the Jedi Master Luke
Was a disguised gook
Zook
Pook
Jook
Wook
Yook
.
.
.

Reply to TheMadFool
I think that you underplay the importance and significance of poetry, as a source of expression and its power. We only have to think of the writings of Homer and Shakespeare to see how they played a vital role. Perhaps, poetry can be seen as one of the main ways in which symbolic and metaphorical constructs can be depicted. Personally, my own approach and interpretation of Nietzsche's writings is on the symbolic level and I think that in some ways he can be seen as a poet rather than simply as a philosopher.

Quoting Jack Cummins

underplay

downplay?

I don't mean to contradict you but, for me, poetry is more about language itself (the medium) rather than what is conveyed (the message). True that if both could be had i.e. an important message poeticized, it would be the stuff of dreams but, the emphasis on linguistic elements - rhyme, meter, whatnot - rather than meaning or, more accurately, that rhyme, meter, etc. are a must for a piece of written work to qualify as poetry suggests to me that language is the, in a sense, be all and end all of poems.

For no rhyme or reason... :chin:

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Reply to TheMadFool
I think that the way in which you describe poetry is connected to the way in which we are becoming accustomed to think and, how indeed philosophy itself has become more concerned with language.

Quoting Jack Cummins

I think that poetry, or poesis, is a different way of viewing the world and, in many ways, is more about intuition than logic. It also is about language to capture images and it could be seen like painting In words. It does involve subjective expression more than reason, but it can touch and grasp higher, 'truths' as well. I think that some of the poets, including William Blake, and W B Yeats, stand out as such important thinkers in their own right. But, seeing their ideas as objective is questionable, but they did create worldviews, like many novelists and romantic philosophers.

Good post. Well expressed and I agree with you thoughts.

Reply to Gus Lamarch

Perhaps the poem examples you provided would read as more poetic in Persian, but in English they're pretty prosy. So I'm not sure they're very good examples.

Poetry is not generally somewhere I go for metaphysics. It kind of misses the point. There are some philosophical poets I love, in particular Robert Frost. It feels like poetry uses a different part of my mind than prose does. It goes down different pathways. I think it's more like music or visual art than it is like prose.

Serious question - Do music and visual art "support an independent metaphysics?"

Quoting Gus Lamarch

However, its "projections" - understand "projection" as what one wants to make explicit in an implicit way through poetic writing - do not allow the "substance" - understand "substance" as what even implicitly, does not become projectable because it is the fundamental basis of thought transformed into writing - of the concept itself to be perceived - external to individual interpretation

I'm not sure exactly what this means, but I think you are getting at something basic about poetry (and music and visual art). It seems similar to how I describe them - I say they don't mean anything beyond the experience of reading, listening to, or looking at them. Does that ring a bell?

Quoting Jack Cummins

I think that poetry, or poesis, is a different way of viewing the world and, in many ways, is more about intuition than logic. It also is about language to capture images and it could be seen like painting In words.

The point precisely quoted in your passage, and which is the same subject of my inquiry, is "if poetry contains an authentic metaphysics, how can it be evidenced?", since, if the argument that "yes , the concept of "Poetry" includes a metaphysical substance", why the "method" by which the substance is evidenced, becomes indifferent to the analysis of the poetic text itself - if done through mystic language, such as Ismail I, Selim I, etc... -?

"Poetry" and its "individual metaphysical ideal", in a way, can only be discovered through the indirect and non-objective analysis of it, since, being a concept completely supported by the subjectivity of human emotions - in this regard, " aesthetics" -, a scientific and "mathematical" analysis would not result in absolute results, as there are none.

Quoting tim wood

What is metaphysics in this context? If the discussion is to be whether poetry have it or not, then we - I - need to know. Anyone?

"The world of the hidden ideas of poetry"

Quoting T Clark

erious question - Do music and visual art "support an independent metaphysics?"

Maybe yes, maybe not, it is difficult to say, because a concept like "metaphysics" which encompasses many other ideas, to be authentic, would need to contain some ideal that is no longer found in the generic metaphysical perception.

Personally, I believe that every essence that constitutes "aesthetic perception" and "art", is nothing more than the method that we - beings in a conscious existence - find to project unto this existence, something that is still not comprehended - emotions.

What is "beautiful" is only "beautiful" because such an object of worship projects into existence, the substance of the concept of aesthetics - like music, poetry and visual art, for example -.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Quoting tim wood

Now what exactly do you suppose it means?

"Poetry" as described by Khata'i is "composed of explicit and implicit meanings, and both are composed of a third - and fundamental - sense, which is hidden, and can only be discovered if the concept of "poetry" have an autenthic - exclusive to substantial poetic concepts - metaphysics - therefore, a world composed of ideas -".

In a more basic language:

"Imagine the generic metaphysical world of ideas; now exclude all concepts that are not the hidden substance of poetic language. If they exist - the hidden substances -, this authentic 'bubble' of the metaphysical world is the metaphysics of poetry."

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Personally, I believe that every essence that constitutes "aesthetic perception" and "art", is nothing more than the method that we - beings in a conscious existence - find to project unto this existence, something that is still not comprehended - emotions.

What is "beautiful" is only "beautiful" because such an object of worship projects into existence, the substance of the concept of aesthetics - like music, poetry and visual art, for example -.

I think you and I are talking about something similar, but the language we use is too different for us to make a connection. And I don't think art - poetry, music, visual art - are about emotions in particular. At least not just emotions. I think they're about something that can't be explained or understood, only expressed and experienced.

Reply to Gus Lamarch

It's unclear to me whether there's any traceable metaphysic to Poetry, capital P, because the two main components of poetry, 1) words (and any potential meaning ascribed to them) and 2) any given poetic structure, both change constantly over time. Even when we read the Sufis, we're reading an interpretation (to say the least); we're not reading the poetry as it was written. We're looking at JPEG's of Mona Lisa.

None of this is to say that some metaphysic of Poetry doesn't exist, but if it does, it's at best apprehended by the poet at the time of writing and possibly at no other time, but probably not by readers, and certainly not by dilettante philosophers hundreds of years later. Just off the top of my head; I probably missed some things.

Quoting Noble Dust

Even when we read the Sufis, we're reading an interpretation (to say the least); we're not reading the poetry as it was written. We're looking at JPEG's of Mona Lisa.

None of this is to say that some metaphysic of Poetry doesn't exist, but if it does, it's at best apprehended by the poet at the time of writing and possibly at no other time, but probably not by readers, and certainly not by dilettante philosophers hundreds of years later.

Sounds like you're saying art is impossible or useless. Given your history, I know that's not what you mean.

Reply to T Clark

Right you are, I don't mean that. Per the OP topic, I'm suggesting that what and how poetry expresses changes over time. Because "what" indicates "meaning, structure" and "how" indicates "words", this means everything that constitutes poetry (and any art form) is always in flux, which prevents any grandiose attempts by philosophy to pin the caterpillar under the glass. Again, I'm just typing while I watch baseball; I can sit down and compose something more coherent later, maybe.

Reply to T Clark

Quoting Noble Dust

this means everything that constitutes poetry (and any art form) is always in flux, which prevents any grandiose attempts by philosophy to pin the caterpillar under the glass.

But I think pinning the caterpillar is the whole point of art. By which I mean that, when I read Lao Tzu, I am trying to receive the message he sent 2,500 years ago. A message intended to transmit an experience from his mind into mine.

Reply to Noble Dust

This is not a scientifically accurate depiction.

Reply to T Clark

I'll take your professional word for it; I'll trade you my layman-poet word. :joke:

Quoting T Clark

when I read Lao Tzu, I am trying to receive the message he sent 2,500 years ago. A message intended to transmit an experience from his mind into mine.

As an appreciator of the Tao Te Ching, I'll mention 1) the line between poetry and philosophy for the ancients is more blurred than now, as I know you know. and 2) (as I'm sure you know) translating ancient Chinese to English with any semblance of coherency is no small task. So, already, the odds are against you receiving what the author of the Tao Te Ching might have intended (assuming they intended any single, cogent meaning). There are just so many factors, even just within the interpretation of current English poetry, for instance. I'm not highlighting all of this confusion for the sake of confusion, but just for the sake of an ironic clarity; the clarity that poetry doesn't work clearly. And the Tao Te Ching can't be classified as poetry in the same way that modern English poetry is classified, for us modern English speakers. All we can do is appropriate it to our way of reading what we think of as poetry.

So, in my view, it doesn't matter if we think we're here to pin the caterpillar. We won't do it, regardless of what we think we can do. This isn't nihilistic, or "anti-art"; it actually frees us artists to explore. Now, as to what it is we're exploring...we could begin that conversation once we establish that we can't establish anything concrete, at least not yet...

Quoting Jack Cummins

I think that the way in which you describe poetry is connected to the way in which we are becoming accustomed to think and, how indeed philosophy itself has become more concerned with language.

One of my biggest fears: "...becoming accustomed to think..." There are many ways to think, false that one is any better than the other, and I'd like to check them all out, keep an open mind you know. I don't want the baggage that comes with adopting any particular "ism", becoming a this-ist or that-ist is not my idea of good philosoply; if forced, however, I'd choose to be an "ic" - skeptic/agnostic.

That was an aside; picking up where we left off, I wonder what the deal is with blank verse. This particular strain of poetry is about rhythm and not rhyme. Rhythm is, bottom line, just another way of keeping time, no? So, metaphysically speaking, poems, whether rhythm/rhyme, are clocks, linguistic clocks. :chin: What say you?

Reply to TheMadFool

Blank verse is incredible. The rhythm of words freed from the distraction of rhyme allows the poet to explore overlooked corners of language.

Quoting Noble Dust

All we can do is appropriate it to our way of reading what we think of as poetry.

Can we receive the message sent to us by Mozart? By the cave painters in Lascaux? By the guys who built fucking Machu Picchu? By the guys who built this 5,000 years ago?



Quoting Noble Dust

There are just so many factors, even just within the interpretation of current English poetry, for instance.

The messages of art, including poetry, are not received by interpreting it. They are received by experiencing it.

Quoting Noble Dust

Blank verse is incredible. The rhythm of words freed from the distraction of rhyme allows the poet to explore overlooked corners of language.

Poets are clockmakers but their clocks are, let's just say, of a different kind.

Quoting T Clark

Can we receive the message sent to us by Mozart? By the cave painters in Lascaux? By the guys who built fucking Machu Picchu? By the guys who built this 5,000 years ago?

We receive each form of art with different senses, and so presumably with different parts of our brains.

Poetry uses words, which is really problematic because it uses the same vehicles we use in our every day conversations, like the one we're having here. So it's not correct to compare poetry to music, cave paintings, or whatever the fuck Machu Picchu is. If you can speak in music or painting right now, do so; I'll concede the point.

Reply to TheMadFool

I'm a poet.

Quoting Noble Dust

I'm a poet.

You know what I'd like to see. Poetry battles like Rap battles unless the former is what the latter is.

Quoting Noble Dust

Poetry uses words, which is really problematic because it uses the same vehicles we use in our every day conversations, like the one we're having here. So it's not correct to compare poetry to music, cave paintings, or whatever the fuck Machu Picchu is. If you can speak in music or painting right now, do so; and I'll concede the point.

Disagree strongly. Poetry uses words, but is not like our other uses. I know that because I feel it. Poetry feels like music. It feels like visual art. It goes to the same place inside. Poetry doesn't mean anything the same way art and music don't mean anything. This is Machu Picchu:

Quoting tim wood

What is metaphysics in this context? If the discussion is to be whether poetry have it or not, then we - I - need to know. Anyone?

I suppose the metaphysics of poetry is any topic of metaphysical concern that poetry deals with or is implied in its structure, form, or essence.

The most popular view of poetry has always been, as far as I can tell, rhymes, the use of homphones, usually at the end of sentences/phrases but that it seems is incidental to what poetry really is; poetry is about, first and foremost, rhythm, phonic rhythm as it were. Rhythm boils down to time, keeping time to be precise and thus, my intuitive reaction to the metaphysics of poetry is that it (poetry) is about time, and poems are simply linguistic clocks.

Quoting T Clark

Poetry uses words, but is not like our other uses. I know that because I feel it. Poetry feels like music. It feels like visual art. It goes to the same place inside

Sure, good poetry makes us feel it in ways that evoke music, visual art, etc. Of course I agree with you there. I also write music (that's my main creative outlet); I get that. The words of good poetry evoke these images. That's not an argument against my argument. Poetry is fated against it's own time because it's language. It will always fade because of it's stuff. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value. But it does mean that there's no "metaphysic" of poetry as such. I'm familiar with Machu Picchu, btw.

Quoting TheMadFool

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness.
— TheMadFool

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate. — Janus


Why? Show me a right poet and a wrong poet and maybe there's something worth discussing.

The best poets do not "conceal ugliness" or 'enhance beauty". Life is both ugly and beautiful, both heaven and hell and the good poets tell it like it is.

Reply to Janus

:fire:

.

Quoting Janus

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness.
— TheMadFool

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate. — Janus


Why? Show me a right poet and a wrong poet and maybe there's something worth discussing.
— TheMadFool
The best poets do not "conceal ugliness" or 'enhance beauty". Life is both ugly and beautiful, both heaven and hell and the good poets tell it like it is.

Can you give me an instance of poetry on the ugliness of life? Thanks in advance.

Quoting TheMadFool

Can you give me an instance of poetry on the ugliness of life?

I didn't say good poets focus on the ugliness of life; that would be to enhance ugliness and conceal beauty. Good poets neither enhance nor conceal either beauty or ugliness, they reveal both and allow both to stand.

Quoting Janus

I didn't say good poets focus on the ugliness of life; that would be to enhance ugliness and conceal beauty. Good poets neither enhance nor conceal either beauty or ugliness, they reveal both and allow both to stand.

Quoting Janus

Life is both ugly and beautiful, both heaven and hell and the good poets tell it like it is.

:chin: Give me an example of "life is [both] ugly...good poets tell it like it is"

Quoting Noble Dust

Blank verse is incredible. The rhythm of words freed from the distraction of rhyme allows the poet to explore overlooked corners of language.

Thanks.
I learn something new every day. I don't think I ever heard of 'blank verse' but probably met it.

https://literarydevices.net/blank-verse/

***

Quoting TheMadFool

Give me an example of "life is [both] ugly...good poets tell it like it is"

One short example from website:
Quoting Literary devices: blank verse

The buds luminous in white sway happily,
and sparkling valleys darkened by angst.

Doesn't have to be a 'good poet telling it like it is' - just someone who can show both sides of life experience; the light and dark. You really don't know this ? :roll:

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dark/

Quoting Poem: Dark

The Dark - by Carol Ann Duffy

If you think of the dark
as a black park
and the moon as a bounced ball,
then there’s nothing to be frightened of
at all.

(Except for aliens…)

***
From same website:

In the Dark - by Robin Fulton Macpherson

God said: Let the dark be dark.
Let the stars shine properly.
And let darkness with no stars
heal the damage caused by light.

Men said: Let there be light all
night through, where there is no-one
much or no-one at all, let
the gathered haze from street-lamps,
undying brand-names, full-blaze
unpopulated windows
stain the undersides of clouds
even when nights are cloudless.

God said: Light itself needs rest.
Some things are best seen, unseen,
in darkness unhindered by
Great Light. Me, for example.

Quoting T Clark

The messages of art, including poetry, are not received by interpreting it. They are received by experiencing it.

I think both.
Here's an example of how to understand a poem and its message.

Assissi - by Norman MacCaig

The dwarf with his hands on backwards
sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
on tiny twisted legs from which
sawdust might run,
outside the three tiers of churches built
in honour of St Francis, brother
of the poor, talker with birds, over whom
he had the advantage
of not being dead yet.

A priest explained
how clever it was of Giotto
to make his frescoes tell stories
that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
of God and the suffering
of His Son. I understood
the explanation and
the cleverness.

A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered
the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed
the ruined temple outside, whose eyes
wept pus, whose back was higher
than his head, whose lopsided mouth
said Grazie in a voice as sweet
as a child’s when she speaks to her mother
or a bird’s when it spoke
to St Francis.

***

Quoting Poem: Assissi by Norman MacCaig - Teaching notes

ASSISI by Norman McCaig
Resource by Jane Cooper.

Getting In

Before you read the poem, think about these questions:
1. If you see someone begging in a public place, what do you feel?
2. And, if you see someone begging in a public place, what do you do? Give them
money? Buy them food? Stop to talk to them? Walk away? Something else?

Meeting The Text

You are about to read the Norman MacCaig poem ‘Assisi’. As you read it for the first
time, work out the answers to these questions.
1. Where does the speaker seem to be in this poem? Be as exact as you can.
2. Which two different individual people does he notice? What are these people
doing?
3. Which group of people does he notice? What are these people doing

From a 10 page pdf.
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Assisi-by-Norman-MacCaig-Teaching-Notes.pdf?

Reply to Gus Lamarch thank you for this. It is much needed by myself: lover of poetry, poetical philistine.

Quoting Michael Zwingli

?Gus Lamarch thank you for this. It is much needed by myself: lover of poetry, poetical philistine.

Yes. I appreciate this thread too.
However, I have read the OP a few times now. I still don't fully understand. So unable to respond properly to the conclusion:

Quoting Gus Lamarch

The conclusion reached by Ismail, and by other poets and philosophers, was that:

"Poetry comprises only an authentic metaphysics, from the moment on that its analysis is done in such a way that the linguistic poetic basis is also its development and conclusion."

Therefore, poetic metaphysics is something that can only be conceived through the incomplete visualization - not absolute but subjective - of concepts.

@Gus Lamarch I don't know if that has been explained elsewhere - I kinda just jumped in :yikes:

Apologies if I've taken the thread off-topic. However, it is fascinating to consider.

Quoting Poetry foundation: Glossary of terms

Metaphysical poets
A group of 17th-century poets whose works are marked by philosophical exploration, colloquial diction, ingenious conceits, irony, and metrically flexible lines. Topics of interest often included love, religion, and morality, which the metaphysical poets considered through unusual comparisons, frequently employing unexpected similes and metaphors in displays of wit. The inclusion of contemporary scientific advancements were also typical. John Donne is the foremost figure, along with George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley, Richard Crashaw, and Henry Vaughan. For more on metaphysical poetry, see Stephen Burt’s poem guide on John Donne's “The Sun Rising.”

Quoting What is Metaphysical Poetry

The word ‘Metaphysical Poetry’ is a philosophical concept used in literature where poets portray the things/ideas that are beyond the depiction of physical existence. Etymologically, there is a combination of two words ‘meta’ and ‘physical in word “metaphysical”.’ The first word “Meta” means beyond. So metaphysical means beyond physical, beyond the normal and ordinary. The meanings are clear here that it deals with the objects/ideas that are beyond the existence of this physical world. Let us look at the origin of word metaphysical poetry in more detail.

Quoting TheMadFool

You know what I'd like to see. Poetry battles like Rap battles unless the former is what the latter is.
8h

These exist. They are called "poetry slams", to be found within most conurbations of any significant size. Generally, most of the poetry is original, and poor (a subjective estimation, if there ever was one), but occasionally something inspiring happens.

Indeed, "rap" can be viewed as a type of poetry, albeit exceedingly simple in it's metrical schemata, and exceedingly monotonous by endless repetition. In this, rap has always seemed to myself the application of poetic device to the shamanistic enterprise, the latter-day repetitious use of rhyme and meter in the pursuit of ecstatic states of mind. Rap music is only "good" for those seeking such a state. For others, such as myself, it's essential qualities remain ineffective.

Reply to Amity yeah, I think that Gus is using the term "metaphysics" in a differing sense than that applied to the historical phenomenon.

Quoting Michael Zwingli

yeah, I think that Gus is using the term "metaphysics" in a differing sense than that applied to the historical phenomenon.

How so ? And do you understand the OP's Conclusion ?

Reply to Amity what I mean by that, is that the OP is not restricting the term "metaphysics"/"metaphysical" to a school or period of English poetry, as Sam Johnson did. Rather, he appears to be using those terms to describe the commonalities of all poerty, the purpose and intent behind the "poetic enterprise". In this, Gus seems to be suggesting that the impulse behind the poetic undertaking is the elucidation of fundamental truths of the human experience of life. I tend to agree with this estimation. Indeed, this in my opinion, is what distinguishes "poetry" from "rap music", to which I alluded above. While the purpose of poetical enterprise seems to be the elucidation of evasive, fundamental truth regarding subjective human experience, the purpose of rap music seems to myself, to be in line with the shamanistic enterprise: in particular, the use of poetic devices, particularly rhyme and meter, in the production of altered states of mind: ecstatic, sexual, and often antagonistic. What I am especially gaining from the comments that I have read here, is a greater appreciation for the merits of blank verse, which I must admit to having ever derided as being "lazy poetry" compared to lyric verse (thank you for your comments regarding that, Noble Dust). The comments thus far have altered my conception of differing expressions of the poetic undertaking. If this thread continues long enough, I may even be able to gain an appreciation for "free verse" (poetry without rhyme or meter).

Quoting Michael Zwingli

what I mean by that, is that the OP is not restricting the term "metaphysics"/"metaphysical" to a school or period of English poetry, as Sam Johnson did

Ah. I see you edited your original post to include the word 'poetic' so that now makes sense.

Quoting Michael Zwingli

...terms to describe the commonalities of all poerty, the purpose and intent behind the "poetic enterprise"

Well, what else would be behind the 'poetic enterprise' but purpose and intent of the poet ?
Expressing a message relating to the human condition - both subjective and objective. A personal view and expression of what is perceived. And sharing that view, that sense, with others.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

"Poetry comprises only an authentic metaphysics, from the moment on that its analysis is done in such a way that the linguistic poetic basis is also its development and conclusion."

Therefore, poetic metaphysics is something that can only be conceived through the incomplete visualization - not absolute but subjective - of concepts.

I doubt whether poetry has ever been about an 'absolute' visualisation.
What is meant by an 'authentic metaphysics' ?

Quoting Amity

What is meant by an 'authentic' metaphysics' ?

That is a bit semantically obscure. Gus himself would have to address that question.

Quoting Michael Zwingli

In this, Gus seems to be suggesting that the impulse behind the poetic undertaking is the elucidation of fundamental truths of the human experience of life.

I didn't see this before.
Perhaps that is the case.
However, it seems too technical and theoretical re 'fundamental truths'.
It is a bit more or less than that, I think...

Are you still editing your post ? I think I'll leave it there...
Until @Gus Lamarch responds.

Quoting Amity

I didn't see this before.
Perhaps that is the case.
However, it seems too technical and theoretical re 'fundamental truths'.

Of course, I am assuming that by Gus' use of the term "metaphysics" he means the search for first principles/fundamental truths (ens in quantum ens).

Quoting Noble Dust

Poetry is fated against it's own time because it's language. It will always fade because of it's stuff.

My only real experience with poetry from a significantly foreign time and place is the Tao Te Ching. I've received much more from that than I ever have from all but a very few modern poets who write in English. The minute I first read it it grabbed me. Since then, I've read parts of at least 15 translations. Each helps me build up a more complete experience.

Quoting Noble Dust

But it does mean that there's no "metaphysic" of poetry as such.

I'll ask you the same question I asked @Gus Lamarch, do music and visual art have a metaphysics? If so, please explain.

Quoting Noble Dust

I'm familiar with Machu Picchu, btw.

I assumed you would be, but then you indicated you didn't. [joke]I thought maybe you were joking, but then I remembered you are from Ohio. [/joke]

Quoting Michael Zwingli

These exist. They are called "poetry slams", to be found within most conurbations of any significant size. Generally, most of the poetry is original, and poor (a subjective estimation, if there ever was one), but occasionally something inspiring happens.

Indeed, "rap" can be viewed as a type of poetry, albeit exceedingly simple in it's metrical schemata, and exceedingly monotonous by endless repetition. In this, rap has always seemed to myself the application of poetic device to the shamanistic enterprise, the latter-day repetitious use of rhyme and meter in the pursuit of ecstatic states of mind. Rap music is only "good" for those seeking such a state. For others, such as myself, it's essential qualities remain ineffective.

"Poetry slams"! Noted for future reference. Thanks!

Quoting Michael Zwingli

I am assuming that by Gus' use of the term "metaphysics" he means the search for first principles/fundamental truths (ens in quantum ens).

Ah, OK.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/metaphysics

But that isn't what 'the impulse behind the poetic undertaking' - in general - is all about, is it ?
It's not necessarily related to a study of. or a search for. a supersensual realm or of phenomena which transcend the physical world.

However, it might be and I think I might be making progress.
Again, from wiki.
'supersensual '(comparative more supersensual, superlative most supersensual)

1.Beyond the range of what is perceptible by the senses; not belonging to the experienceable physical world.
Heaven is a supersensual realm.

2. Provoking or exciting an extremely strong response in the senses; sensual.

***

So, looking at these quotes:

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Core explicit concept = I am that which brings me joy and sorrow
Core implicit concept = I am that which brings me joy and sorrow as I am a servant of God
Substance = Faith

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Core explicit concept = I am the heir of holy glories long past
Core implicit concept = I am the heir of holy glories long past as I am the heir of my own glories
Substance = Heredity/Glory

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Realize that even mystical Sufi poetry is sometimes incapable of sufficiently deconstructing the meaning of poetry so that its metaphysical essence is fully understood -

So, poetry itself is supposed to be able to deconstruct its meaning to enable an understanding of its 'metaphysical essence' ? Or a 'substance' such as 'Faith' or 'Heredity/Glory' ?
What is 'substantial', in 'metaphysical essence', about 'Faith' and how can it be said that:

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Poetry comprises only an authentic metaphysics, from the moment on that its analysis is done in such a way that the linguistic poetic basis is also its development and conclusion

What on earth does this mean ? :chin:

[quote=Robert Graves]In Broken Images

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.[/quote]

I'd say Graves' "The White Goddess" gives a fairly thorough philosophy of poetry from metaphysics to politics.

Reply to Amity
I don't really write poetry but do play around writing with a magnetic poetry kit at times and I find that it is a way of accessing what Jung describes as 'active imagination'. I believe that poetry writing, like some forms of art is a way of accessing deeper levels of the subconscious.
I used to illustrate a poetry magazine and did discuss poetry with many of the people who contributed to it and it did appear that some of them saw it in this way.

During that time, I got to know a fairly well known poet in England, UA Fanthorpe, who has died since, and, it was during the phase where I was really reading Immanuel Kant, and she said to me that she just couldn't see why I needed to and I think that she was dismissive of the larger framework of metaphysics. She was a Quaker and she took me to a meeting. What was interesting is that people sat in silence, only speaking when inspired to do so. The idea of uttering words from within a background of silence seems important.

Recently, I was discussing philosophy with a man working in a bookshop and he was telling me that he wrote poetry and how he saw the writing of poetry as being influenced by his own understanding of Wittgenstein on language. It does appear that playing with language is central to poetry, and, perhaps, it is about the juxtaposition of ideas, as well as images, which makes it such a creative process.

Quoting Jack Cummins

I don't really write poetry but do play around writing with a magnetic poetry kit

You have so many toys Jack, I'm green with envy.

Quoting Jack Cummins

I used to illustrate a poetry magazine

Jack, a man of many talents. We're lucky you're not on some other planet.

Quoting Jack Cummins

Wittgenstein

I don't get him but that's because I haven't read him according to @Banno & @180 Proof. There's still hope for me it seems. :smile:

Quoting Jack Cummins

playing with language is central to poetry

[quote=Friedrich Nietzsche]A man's maturity is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play.[/quote]

"Play" is too frivolous; "Study" is too sedate. What's the right word, in your esteemed opinion, for playful study? "Experiment"? I dunno.

Reply to Gus Lamarch Quoting Gus Lamarch

if poetry contains an authentic metaphysics, how can it be evidenced?"

If poetry contains a metaphysics , then do prose literature, visual art, music ,scientific and political
discourse also contain their own authentic metaphysics? If not, then what is it about poetry that distinguishes it from all other modes of creative expression?

Isnt it the case that it is the particular CONTENT conveyed by any of the innumerable modes of cultural expression within an era ( including poetry) that manifests a mataphysics? For instance , if one were to delimit a cultural history of poetry in the West, would one not be able to correlate the changes in the way poets considered their craft over the centuries with changes in metaphysical outlook? Doesn’t classical Greek poetry reflect a different metaphysical thinking than the poetry of the Renaissance or the Modern or postmodern eras?

Reply to TheMadFool

Reading Wittgenstein has been on my 'to do' list for a long time, but, somehow, other writers seem to keep winning my attention first. Often, I am drawn to the more obscure writers rather than those that everyone reads.

I think that we all need more play, fantasy and toys. The psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, spoke of teddy bears as an important aspect in play as 'transitional objects' in forming symbolic ideas and the sharing of ideas with others. My mother has about 100 and they all have names and wear clothes. She used to act in theatre, so she encouraged me to play a lot. You may not have so many toys, but you have an office, which is what I probably need more than any new toys.

But, I do believe that playfulness and fantasy is essential to the creative process in art and poetry. This is especially true in art therapy. I believe that writing, including poetry and philosophy can be so therapeutic. There is the issue of metaphysics of poetry but there is also philosophy as a form of creative writing.

Reply to Amity

This is a really good post about something I've been thinking about for a while. I need to put some thought into my response. I'll be back.

Reply to Gus Lamarch I reckon the link between metaphysics and poetry can be found in the urge to be, well, poetic. Under what circumstances, sensing which emotions, thinking which thoughts, being in whose presence or sensing whose absence, and so on, does one feel an urgent need to compose poems? The answer to this question might furnish vital clues as to which metaphysical concern is poetic in quality.

From the few poems I've read - quite a long time ago I'm afraid - there doesn't seem to be any domain of human experience that strongly correlates with the wish to pen poems, long or short. Any topic is game for a bard.

Ergo, likely that poets don't have an agenda i.e. they aren't confined to a specific topic, metaphysical or otherwise.

Nevertheless, though the metaphysics of poetry is not to be found in its contents, it can be found in the irresistable desire to poeticize. To want to express oneself in verse rather than prose, in a certain sense, at some level, is actually a sign that the person (the poet) wishes to break free from the shackles of reason, its unforgiving rigor, and enter a world of fuzzy and yet relatable imagery, a world where the goal is to make you feel (heart) the truth rather than comprehend (mind) it.

It's obvious then that as the subject of interest is as fundamental and obscure as metaphysics, the poetic instinct should peak/max out. Is it that metaphysics is poetry?

Is God a mathematician?

Is God a poet?

I'll leave you to connect the dots.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

This seems to be relevant. Only skimmed over but eyes opened a bit wide.
Too tired to pick out nuggets and comment. Perhaps others who are more awake...

Quoting Stylistics and the Metaphysics of Poetry

Abstract
In order to better understand the worth of aesthetic experience in encountering poetry, fresh perspectives are helpful. This paper introduces the reader to modern stylistics: that is linguistic examinations of the 'speaker's meaning' in literature and notes such 'scientific' approaches to poetry do find common metaphysical ground with leading cultural figures such as theatre director Peter Brook, philosopher critic Martha C. Nussbaum and poet critic Seamus Heaney.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235918964_Stylistics_and_the_Metaphysics_of_Poetry

Quoting TheMadFool

Give me an example of "life is [both] ugly...good poets tell it like it is"

Out Out by Robert Frost

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

You wouldn't be asking for examples if you had read much good poetry.

Reply to Gus Lamarch I would say there is no particular metaphysics of poetry, although poetry may have its metaphysical musings and allusions no doubt.

And there I was,
without a net or a circus.

Confident in the findings,
like grasping an old spoon to manage soup that was not served.

The banquet will begin, with or without me.

Quoting Janus

You wouldn't be asking for examples if you had read much good poetry.

I wouldn't say the poem you posted is great but it does get your point across. I read only one poem by Robert Frost - Stopping by woods on a snowy evening - and it really resonated with me at a deep level, I can still recall, albeit only vaguely now, the vivid images of evergreen pines and whitest snow it used to evoke in my young mind.

I stand corrected!

That said, the poem you were so kind to post romanticizes death, no? Its words tend to soften the blow of quietus and makes it more bearable i.e. Robert Frost beautifies grim death and makes it more palatable to our sensibilities. Hence, my statement that poetry is like cosmetics - it, whatever else it does, gives ugliness (here death) a makeover, the horrific becomes less horrific.

Reply to TheMadFool I'd call it a good poem if not a great one. I wouldn't say it romanticizes death; I'd say it describes the death of the young man and the indifference of the living dispassionately.

How about this poem by Robinson Jeffers:

SALMON-FISHING
The days shorten, the south blows wide for showers now,
The south wind shouts to the rivers,
The rivers open their mouths and the salt salmon
Race up into the freshet.
In Christmas month against the smoulder and menace
Of a long angry sundown,
Red ash of the dark solstice, you see the anglers,
Pitiful, cruel, primeval,
Like the priests of the people that built Stonehenge,
Dark silent forms, performing
Remote solemnities in the red shallows
Of the river’s mouth at the year’s turn,
Drawing landward their live bullion, the bloody mouths
And scales full of the sunset
Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will
The wild Pacific pasture nor wanton and spawning
Race up into fresh water.

Quoting T Clark

My only real experience with poetry from a significantly foreign time and place is the Tao Te Ching. I've received much more from that than I ever have from all but a very few modern poets who write in English. The minute I first read it it grabbed me. Since then, I've read parts of at least 15 translations. Each helps me build up a more complete experience.

I won't argue with your personal experience with the Tao Te Ching.

Quoting T Clark

I'll ask you the same question I asked Gus Lamarch, do music and visual art have a metaphysics? If so, please explain.

I'm just not even sure it's the right question to be asking. I don't get it. As a composer of music, I think I have a personal, private musical metaphysic. But I think it would be hubristic to project that unto other artists and other musics. I'm not sure how, if at all, there can be any bridge from a personal to a universal musical metaphysic.

Quoting Janus

I'd call it a good poem if not a great one. I wouldn't say it romanticizes death; I'd say it describes the death of the young man and the indifference of the living dispassionately.

How about this poem by Robinson Jeffers:

SALMON-FISHING
The days shorten, the south blows wide for showers now,
The south wind shouts to the rivers,
The rivers open their mouths and the salt salmon
Race up into the freshet.
In Christmas month against the smoulder and menace
Of a long angry sundown,
Red ash of the dark solstice, you see the anglers,
Pitiful, cruel, primeval,
Like the priests of the people that built Stonehenge,
Dark silent forms, performing
Remote solemnities in the red shallows
Of the river’s mouth at the year’s turn,
Drawing landward their live bullion, the bloody mouths
And scales full of the sunset
Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will
The wild Pacific pasture nor wanton and spawning
Race up into fresh water.

Poems about the dark side of reality are oxymorons: they're good poems about bad stuff that happen to life. The question is, if poetry doesn't do what I said it does - beautify the ugly - why are poems good even though their contents may be explicit on the horrors of life? How is that a good peom can be written about the bad?

Quoting Noble Dust

I'm just not even sure it's the right question to be asking. I don't get it. As a composer of music, I think I have a personal, private musical metaphysic. But I think it would be hubristic to project that unto other artists and other musics. I'm not sure how, if at all, there can be any bridge from a personal to a universal musical metaphysic.

I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot.

Quoting TheMadFool

Poems about the dark side of reality are oxymorons: they're good poems about bad stuff that happen to life. The question is, if poetry doesn't do what I said it does - beautify the ugly - why are poems good even though their contents may be explicit on the horrors of life?

I'm not saying there are no dark poems; would anyone read them, though if there were no beauty in them? My point was that they do not conceal, by glossing over or sugar-coating, the ugly side of life; instead they reveal the beauty that hides in the darkness.

Quoting Janus

I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot.

At the risk of disagreeing with myself, I would suggest that those feelings are what constitute a musical metaphysic. This is something that bothers me a lot; why assume that emotions are inferior? The emotions you feel when listening to music are the real deal; those feelings constitute the metaphysic. You don't build a musical metaphysic from cold logic; you build it from the stuff of music; namely, from emotion. The problem I'm trying to highlight is that this is so personal by nature; my personal metaphysic as an artist is related to how specific musical items elicit certain emotions in me, thus creating my metaphysic. It's crude language I'm using, to be sure. But, the feelings create the metaphysic. But how can I share that with you? I can't. Unless I can...you would have to "identify" with my metaphysic; when I show you a piece you would have to say "yup" without any further questions. And yes, "church" may have something to do with it indeed.

Quoting Noble Dust

At the risk of disagreeing with myself, I would suggest that those feelings are what constitute a musical metaphysic. This is something that bothers me a lot; why assume that emotions are inferior? The emotions you feel when listening to music are the real deal; those feelings constitute the metaphysic.

I agree that metaphysical perspectives are not rationally, but affectively motivated. I also understand that it is pretty normal for people to entertain some metaphysics or other on account of their intuitions; and intuitions are certainly fed by aesthetic experience(s).

I guess I'm just saying I don't think there is any necessary connection between music and any particular metaphysical conjectures.

Quoting Janus

I agree that metaphysical perspectives are not rationally, but affectively motivated. I also understand that it is pretty normal for people to entertain some metaphysics or other on account of their intuitions; and intuitions are certainly fed by aesthetic experience(s).

So why begin with the assumption that all of this is false?

EDIT: or rather, the way you phrase your response here seems to rely on the assumption that 1) non-rationality, 2) affectivity, 3) intuition and 4) aesthetic experience are all unreliable "curiosities" of the human experience, rather than reliable sources of information on par with, for instance, logic. What's up with that?

Quoting Janus

I'm not saying there are no dark poems; would anyone read them, though if there were no beauty in them? My point was that they do not conceal, by glossing over or sugar-coating, the ugly side of life; instead they reveal the beauty that hides in the darkness.

I'm only surprised by the fact that dark poems (thanks for updating my vocab) can be considered good. The "beauty" that "hides in the darkness"; exactly what I was trying to get at - poetry has managed to, like a good PRO, put a positive spin (beautify) on even the most horrifying and disgusting side to reality. It's a form of self-delusion involving the poet and faer audience.

Quoting Noble Dust

So why begin with the assumption that all of this is false?

Why all of what is false?

Reply to TheMadFool It's not a "spin" though, it is an aesthethic response.

Reply to Janus

Did you see my edit?

Quoting Janus

t's not a "spin" though, it is an aesthethic response.

...said the PRO for poets. Good one!

Reply to Noble Dust No, it looks the same. All I can see is you quoting a passage that affirms a couple of things and then a question as to why I think all of "this" is false. Surely you can't be referring to what the passage affirms? But if not, then what?

Reply to Janus

Hmmm, maybe refresh your browser, but I'll copy and paste the edit I made to my post here:

EDIT: or rather, the way you phrase your response here seems to rely on the assumption that 1) non-rationality, 2) affectivity, 3) intuition and 4) aesthetic experience are all unreliable "curiosities" of the human experience, rather than reliable sources of information on par with, for instance, logic. What's up with that?

Reply to TheMadFool If you don't like poetry if you see it as merely "spin" then that's your right. But if you don't like it, why talk about it? Surely if it is all spin for you, then it should have no interest for you?

Quoting Janus

If you don't like poetry if you see it as merely "spin" then that's your right. But if you don't like it, why talk about it? Surely if it is all spin for you, then it should have no interest for you?

I do enjoy poetry, I have a very poetic personality, sometimes but, that doesn't mean I should allow myself to be led down the garden path without even a modicum of resistance.

Reply to Noble Dust Well none of those, in contrast to logic, are discursive phenomena. They are phenomenological phenomena in that to speak about them is to speak about, or more aptly evoke, what the affective side of the mind is like. But phenomenology, like the arts, is not necessarily related to any particular metaphysics (you know the epoche; "bracket the world" and all that). And neither is logic for that matter.

Reply to TheMadFool If you think there is a danger that poetry will "lead you down the garden Path" then I think I'll leave you to it.

Quoting Noble Dust

I won't argue with your personal experience with the Tao Te Ching.

For what it's worth, when the "My Favorite Verses from the Tao Te Ching" discussion was active, some people made the same sorts of comments as you are about whether it is possible to really get what Lao Tzu was saying.

Quoting Janus

I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot.

This matches the thoughts I had when I read the OP. Not to get into an infinite loop, but is the claim that metaphysics is not applicable to music and other art a metaphysical statement.

Reply to Amity

As I promised, here is my more complete response to your post.

As I noted before, I really enjoyed this post. It gave me a challenge to get off my butt and try to articulate my feelings about what poetry, and by extension, other art means. My position - poetry doesn’t mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. It doesn’t point to anything else, which is my understanding of what meaning means. It is only about itself.

In the end, the only thing I can tell you about a poem is what it made me think, feel, see, hear, remember…Much analysis, explication, criticism of literature describes definitively what the written work means. If you read more than one analysis, you often find that it definitively means different things to different people, which defeats the purpose of the analysis.

That’s not quite right. I’ve read discussions of a poem that I found really helpful, including a particular one for lines in Frost’s “Wild Grapes.” To begin with:

[i]Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.
One bunch of them, and there began to be
Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German;[/i]

Every time I read the poem, I wondered who Leif the Lucky’s German was. I knew that Leif the Lucky was Leif Erickson, who is supposed to have been the first European to discover the new world, which he called Vineland because of all the grapes. I searched the web and found an analysis that indicates the German refers to was Erickson’s foster father. I still am not sure what his foster father’s role was in the discovery. The analysis also includes explanations of several allusions to Greek mythology that were helpful. This information didn’t change how I experienced the poem dramatically, but the additional context added color, dimension, and satisfaction.

That analysis didn’t tell me what the poem meant. It wasn’t an explication. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite “interpretations” - It’s a god-awful analysis of Frost’s “A Dust of Snow.”

There is one word that Frost uses that pervades a certain meaning throughout the rest of the poem: hemlock. We associate hemlock poison with death, specifically the Socrates’s proverbial willful death. In the Phaedo, Socrates claims philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom) is ultimately a preparation for death. It is this recognition of death that inspires the narrator to have a change of heart: once he realizes he is condemned to death, his day takes on a whole new meaning.

The connection between hemlock and death in this poem is one I’ve come across in several analyses. The problem, of course, is that the hemlock that killed Socrates is a completely different plant than the hemlock tree, which is a relative of the pine tree common in New England. I have one in my yard.

As for the analysis of “Assasi” you included in your post… I didn’t read it all, but some of it I liked. In particular the upfront questions were useful. They could help a reader pay attention more carefully to aspects of the poem the reviewer found important. Not to tell the reader how to experience the poem, but to guide her through it in a way that the reviewer found helpful personally. That’s what a good critic, or disk jockey, does - guides you through their experience of a piece. Gives you a taste of their taste, if you will. That can help a reader explore the poem. It gives some structure to the experience without telling them what it really means.

For example, from the analysis you linked to:

The opening stanza begins by introducing the first character, describing him in some detail: “The dwarf with his hands on backwards sat, slumped like a half-filled sack on tiny twisted legs from which sawdust might run,” That first phrase, “The dwarf” immediately makes the man seem less than human. We know that dwarfism is a medical condition that causes disability, but the word “dwarf” has many other, perhaps more immediate, associations. It might make us think of characters from Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. These are fictional, mythical characters, which makes the disabled beggar seem not fully human.

This is not what came to mind when I read that stanza at all. When I read it, I got an effective visual image of the dwarf, but all that baloney about Harry Potter left me really cold. If the writer had just noted that this was what came to his mind when he read it, that would be fine, but that’s not generally how it’s done, as I think the “hemlock” example shows.

I’ll end there. I don’t think I’ve made my point as clearly as I would have liked, but at least it’s a start.

Reply to T Clark
Thanks for this; really appreciate it.
So much to be getting on with. This whole thread is thought-provoking.
I need time to read and digest.
In amongst all the other stuff that is filling my days/mind.
Dazed mind :scream:

Talk later :sparkle:

--------
Still waiting for @Gus Lamarch to respond to earlier posts and questions.

Reply to Amity
I can understand your questions around Gus's thread about the thread title and I am also aware of the problematic nature of metaphysics in relation to subjective experiences connected to poetry and other art forms. But, I do have my own question related to this, which is where does creativity come from?

I know that it is wired in the brain, and a many writers have suggested that it is connected to the left and right hemisphere. However, while we are moving on it does still leave the question of the underlying source of images and ideas which come into consciousness. We have the whole tradition of ideas as Forms which goes back to Plato and I believe that Jung draws upon this in his ideas about the collective unconscious and archetypes. However, I believe that many people find Jung's ideas as being outdated, so I would ask how people view the source of the flow of images. I know that in poetry there is a focus on language and sensory experiences, but it does still, from my point of view, have to be connected to underlying consciousness itself, because the writing of poetry is connected with conscious interpretation of experience, and, in general, imagination. In other words, I believe that it involves questions about imagination as a source for creativity.

Reply to Jack Cummins
Noted.

Quoting T Clark

This matches the thoughts I had when I read the OP. Not to get into an infinite loop, but is the claim that metaphysics is not applicable to music and other art a metaphysical statement.

I don't think the statement that the arts, and the various kinds of aesthetic experiences associated with them do not support any particular metaphysical viewpoint is a metaphysical statement. I think it is merely an expression of the understanding that no metaphysical position is entailed by the human experience of the arts. It seems to be more of a phenomenological statement than a metaphysical.

The arts might be more likely to lead to an intuition that there is something greater, a sublime or higher being or order, than they would be to lead to an intuition that there is nothing but the movements of atoms in the void, but there is no logical entailment there such that we could say that a higher or divine order is a rational inference from the arts.

I think the idealist/ materialist polarity is very naively stereotyped, and there is room for an infinite range of nuance with no need to commit to any propositionally determinate metaphysic.To me the arts are suggestive of the ineliminability of mystery, and the advantage of learning to live with uncertainty. Metaphysical ideas are to be played with, and inspired by, not to be clung to as Absolute Truths. That's my take anyway.

Quoting Janus

Metaphysical ideas are to be played with, and inspired by, not to be clung to as Absolute Truths.

I agree.

[ Thanks to everyone for the questions, answers and statements; I will try to settle all doubts about my initial writings, and in advance, I apologize if I forget to talk about any point already mentioned and that should be better discussed; it's great to know that interest in the "epistemology of poetry" doesn't just afflict me. ]

Quoting T Clark

And I don't think art - poetry, music, visual art - are about emotions in particular. At least not just emotions. I think they're about something that can't be explained or understood, only expressed and experienced.

And can "emotions" be understood and explained? In fact, if we are debating "instinctive and/or biological emotions", they can be objectively detailed so that in a basic research, all their causes and effects can have a rational and logical conclusion.

However, if we are discussing a philosophical concept of "emotion", which, as it is already a "concept in itself", includes metaphysics in itself, something that can be "experienced and expressed" being pre-mediated by an idealizing conception must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension, whether this understandness is subjective or not.

Quoting Noble Dust

None of this is to say that some metaphysic of Poetry doesn't exist, but if it does, it's at best apprehended by the poet at the time of writing and possibly at no other time, but probably not by readers, and certainly not by dilettante philosophers hundreds of years later. Just off the top of my head; I probably missed some things

Fact, it is very likely that (1) or the poetic metaphysical "substance" is something completely subjective, where only the creator and momentary projector of such writing is the only one able to "grasp" the true meaning and "essence" of the text, or (2) the poetic metaphysics is a "quasi-field of substances" from which ideas are drawn and put into existence through the human mind - and by the very end of the process: - the writing of such a concept -, which afterwards - and externally to the "creator of such sayings" - and subjectively, can be discovered through the linguistic analysis of such a poem - as, for example, the Sufis were able to do -.

Take, for example, Khatai's first poem which I quoted in my original post; in a deeper analysis of the linguistic means used there, we can, with certainty, affirm that the "ousia" of the first text is the concept of "Faith", so - through this interpretation of poetic metaphysics - the "world of ideas" of the concept of "Poetry" can be reached by others than the writer.

Quoting Michael Zwingli

the OP is not restricting the term "metaphysics"/"metaphysical" to a school or period of English poetry, as Sam Johnson did. Rather, he appears to be using those terms to describe the commonalities of all poerty, the purpose and intent behind the "poetic enterprise". In this, Gus seems to be suggesting that the impulse behind the poetic undertaking is the elucidation of fundamental truths of the human experience of life.

:100:

Quoting Amity

What is meant by an 'authentic metaphysics' ?

"A field of metaphysics distinct and unique to the imaginative world of general metaphysics"

Quoting Amity

So, poetry itself is supposed to be able to deconstruct its meaning to enable an understanding of its 'metaphysical essence' ? Or a 'substance' such as 'Faith' or 'Heredity/Glory' ?
What is 'substantial', in 'metaphysical essence', about 'Faith'

The thesis defended by me in my original publication is the Sufi linguistic-mystical analysis, which, through the use of tools used in the construction of language, during the development of such a text - poetry -, allows, after completion, with a deconstructive analysis of the tool used - linguistic - and with a "temporal" - mystical - analysis of the entire process of the production of the text - beginning, middle and end - the "substance" - idea - of such work to be understood.

Quoting Amity

What on earth does this mean ?

"Poetry" could only comprise an authentic metaphysics if the individual linguistic methods of each text produced were, not only its bases, but also its processes and conclusions.

In summary: - Khata'i, Muhibbi, etc... when searching for the essence of some work they had written, they looked only for those where they used only one method from beginning to end - not only materially, but also consciously - since conception of the idea with the same method - -.

Quoting Joshs

Isnt it the case that it is the particular CONTENT conveyed by any of the innumerable modes of cultural expression within an era ( including poetry) that manifests a mataphysics? For instance , if one were to delimit a cultural history of poetry in the West, would one not be able to correlate the changes in the way poets considered their craft over the centuries with changes in metaphysical outlook? Doesn’t classical Greek poetry reflect a different metaphysical thinking than the poetry of the Renaissance or the Modern or postmodern eras?

I personally believe not, because the idea presented here - in the original publication - does not defend a "plurality" of "metaphysical fields" that differ in culture, religion, geography, etc...

The point made is as follows:

"If the metaphysical field of the concept of "Poetry" exists and can be perceived - as evidenced by the Sufi poetry -, whether through language, mysticism, etc..., it is more than plausable that more fields of knowledge also contain their own individual metaphysics, which should be further researched and analysed."

[i]"Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful ...
My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf ...
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this room ...
My Istanbul, my karaman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan
My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of misery ...
I'll sing your praises always
I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy."[/i]

My favorite poem.

What makes me so fond of such writing is that, if we use the Sufi method of poetic analysis, its "substance" can be found even though its "core implicit concept" is completely unknowable - for whom I am in love? -, which makes it an "existential poem" - which exists, but without purpose, and which can be given purpose by the individual will of Man -:

Core explicit concept = I am in love
Core implicit concept = (?) - For whom I am in love? -
Substance = Love

"For whom I am in love?
[i]You may answer this question
But only do it mentally
Because the love of Poetry
Rages jealous deeply"[/i]

Quoting Gus Lamarch

And can "emotions" be understood and explained? In fact, if we are debating "instinctive and/or biological emotions", they can be objectively detailed so that in a basic research, all their causes and effects can have a rational and logical conclusion.

The sonics and harmonics of a piano, the anatomy and physiology of the ear, and the neurology and cognitive processing of the nervous system can be explained. Is that the same as the experience of music?

Quoting Gus Lamarch

However, if we are discussing a philosophical concept of "emotion", which, as it is already a "concept in itself", includes metaphysics in itself, something that can be "experienced and expressed" being pre-mediated by an idealizing conception must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension, whether this understandness is subjective or not.

I don't see any reason to believe that emotion is or must be "pre-mediated by an idealizing conception," or that it "must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension." That certainly is not the way I experience it.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful ...

While I was reading this, I thought of this:



Which you posted in the "Beautiful Things" thread a few months ago. I think I see a connection between the two. Am I wrong about that?

Quoting TheMadFool

Poetry is to thought as makeup is to a woman. A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness. The metaphysics of beauty is simply our dissatisfaction (dukkha) with reality and thus our obsession with illusion (maya). Turns Buddhism which believes maya is dukkha on its head.

I agree with the sentiment!

It's just that there are two large books of poems in Early Buddhist scriptures, Verses of the Elder Monks (Theragatha) and Verses of the Elder Nuns (Therigatha), and other poems in the scriptures.

Quoting TheMadFool

How is that a good peom can be written about the bad?

Such is the power of poetry. If you read the above mentioned poems, they still have that aspect of "beautifying the ugly" to them. The effort it takes to become enlightened is great, much hard work, and the poems afford a dignified distance toward it, or else one would be crushed by it.

As I’ve said in several recent posts, I think that poetry doesn’t mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. As an illustration, I’ll provide a description of my experience of a poem I really like. “Dust of Snow,” as always, Robert Frost.

[i]The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.[/i]

I really like this poem. First off - it’s really short. It was easy to memorize and when I quote it, people think I’m erudite. I tried to memorize “Two Tramps in Mud Time” once - nine stanzas, 72 lines. That didn’t turn out well. Also, it’s funny and Frost uses one of my favorite animals, no surprise, a crow. Not everyone sees the humor in the poem and I get that. I don’t know how idiosyncratic my reading is.

First stanza. Light, amusing. Very visual. I can see the man walking through the woods after a snow. That’s something that happens regularly in Frost poems. The snow is deep. He’s wearing boots. I can see the tree with the crow sitting at the top. Hemlocks are dark green with short needles ranked on many short branchlets. If that's a word. I’ve seen crows in the tops of trees plenty of times. Sometimes one, sometimes five, sometimes more. They’re usually noisy. Rambunctious. Very social. They’re really smart. It was clear to me the first time I read this poem that the crow shook the snow down on the man on purpose. That image always makes me smile. Having snow fall down on me from a tree branch has happened to me plenty of times. I can feel it going down my neck. Annoying.

Second stanza - More serious. Darker. It also makes me look back at the first stanza and think more about it. It seems like something has happened that the man regrets. So, he feels unhappy, sad, maybe guilty. It’s later in the day. Maybe he’s walking home afterwards or maybe he’s walking in the woods to think things over, brood, head down, not paying attention to where he’s going. And then the crow. He looks up. He sees the crow. He can see the crow looking down at him. He smiles. Maybe he laughs a little.

Why does this change his mood. I can think of a couple of reasons. First, it makes him break out of his introspection and look around at the day, the woods. That’s happened to me plenty of times. You just shake your head and get on with things. There’s another way to think about it that I really like. I like to think that at the moment the crow and the man are looking at each other, there’s a recognition. The crow made a joke. They both know it’s funny. Maybe the crow would cackle a little. I guess not. Frost would have mentioned that. The crow should have cackled. It’s hard to brood when your dignity has been tweaked. When someone has seen you for what you are.

As I said, this is not what the poem means. It is how it makes me feel. What it makes me see, think, feel. I don't expect anyone else to get the same things as I did or see it the same way.

Quoting T Clark

The sonics and harmonics of a piano, the anatomy and physiology of the ear, and the neurology and cognitive processing of the nervous system can be explained. Is that the same as the experience of music?

In a objective, scientific, logic way, it is the "meaning" of the word "Music", but if the specificity to be studied is found in the "concept" of such object of study - in this case, the "essence" of what is "music" -, philosophically, this is something we are still unable to answer.

However, under the Sufi poetic perspective, its method of analyzing the concept of "Poetry", it is evident that a "field of ideas" exists for every written poetic text, therefore, it is concluded - even if theoretically - that the "Philosophy of Arts" does imply something different from the scientific statements and methods.

Quoting T Clark

experience of music?

We differ on the point where you take any and all "art" to be merely the "experiential moment" of such art - be it Poetry, Music, Images, etc... - which I - and many other philosophers and artists - disagree, because an existential process needs a metaphysical starting point - in terms of something artistic, "any real process, initially needs to be ideal" - which, if it does not exist, cannot be projected by nature.

"That which is "Real", must be, necessarily, and beforehand, "Ideal".

Let's take as an example, the portrait of Shahanshah - King of Kings - aka, Emperor - Isma'il I - or as I have been referring him to, "Khata'i", his pen name -:


(Portrait of Isma'il I by Tiziano)

Isma'il lived, and died, and his features lived and died with him; what we have as a record - in the case of his portrait above - is an "idealization" of something that was once real, and which, through the reception to the painter's consciousness - Tiziano's -, goes through the process of being projected again to existence as something real, but totally different from its previous conception - what was once something real - a human being - became an idea, that then became real again - as a portrait - -.

Even though the painter had personally seen Isma'il, what we have - through the artistic metaphysics - from the concept of "Isma'il", is Titian's idea made real.

This can also be applied to another exemplary scenario - where the concept did not arise from something previously real -:


(Conquest of Shirvan by Isma'il in 1514 AD)

The difference between the image above, for the aforementioned portrait of Khata'i, is that this one was not based on any "previous realism", as its painter did not witness such an event - the "idea" was completely created and processed by the painter, independently of reality -.

A poem set to music:



Article on the poem:

https://slowlander.com/2019/09/10/split-the-lark-and-youll-find-the-music/

Quoting Gus Lamarch

We differ on the point where you take any and all "art" to be merely the "experiential moment" of such art - be it Poetry, Music, Images, etc... - which I - and many other philosophers and artists - disagree, because an existential process needs a metaphysical starting point - in terms of something artistic, "any real process, initially needs to be ideal" - which, if it does not exist, cannot be projected by nature.

You're right. We do disagree. I'm thinking now about whether the disagreement you and I are having is a metaphysical one. My understanding of metaphysical statements is that they are neither true nor false. If that's right, we don't have to resolve our differences, we just pick the meaning that works the best for each of us. I'll just say, to the extent I am an artist, my way of seeing things is consistent with my artistic process and experience

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Isma'il lived, and died, and his features lived and died with him; what we have as a record - in the case of his portrait above - is an "idealization" of something that was once real, and which, through the reception to the painter's consciousness - Tiziano's -, goes through the process of being projected again to existence as something real, but totally different from its previous conception - what was once something real - a human being - became an idea, that then became real again - as a portrait - -.

I guess I don't see the need to put an extra step, idealization. In my experience with writing poems, which is limited, they usually start out with a feeling, an unspoken experience. Often the poem comes to me as a visual image. It's a neat feeling. Once, after a period of anxiety, a sense of peace came over me and the image of a horse came into my mind. Then this poem wrote itself out onto the page:

[i]Peace, like a yoke on my neck
I feel the weight pulling me down,
The harness pulling me back
I feel my feet straining against the earth
Like a plow horse
Waiting to feel his master snap the reins.[/i]

I have no idea where that came from. From the sky I guess. I don't hang around horses or have any strong feelings about them. There was no in between step. Right from the unspoken feeling, to the image, to the page. Whether or not that's a good poem, I love it. It was magical.

Quoting T Clark

My understanding of metaphysical statements is that they are neither true nor false. If that's right, we don't have to resolve our differences, we just pick the meaning that works the best for each of us.

Metaphysics, regardless of the situation and context in which it is applied, completely depends on the idealization and subjective contemplation of existence - in the case of a painting, idealized, and which, later, will be projected to the world, for example -, therefore, metaphysical concepts, by themselves, do not contain an essence of "absoluteness" - true or false, 1 or 2, etc... -, however, when captured by human consciousness, and, through the understanding of such Being, this metaphysical concept comes to have a limiting and real - true or false/1 or 2 -, "essence".

Take Khata'i's painting as an example again:

While in the world of ideas - pure metaphysics -, the concept of "Isma'il" can be:

[i](1) or idea;
(2) or real;
(3) or idea and real.[/i]

When the idea is perceived by an existing consciousness, the first limitation is found for the concept:

[i](1) or idea;
(2) or real.[/i]

And when, finally projected to the world through the "physical", such a concept becomes self-limiting:

(1) Idea or Real.

A concept can only be understood from 2 or more truths or falsehoods within the pure metaphysical field - without the intervention of the physical/real -.

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality.

Quoting T Clark

In my experience with writing poems, which is limited, they usually start out with a feeling, an unspoken experience. Often the poem comes to me as a visual image. It's a neat feeling

You, without understanding, affirmed my previous argument with this passage.

The concept itself, without "idealization", cannot become "real"; you needed to capture it - idealization - so that you could project it to the "real" world.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

The concept itself, without "idealization", cannot become "real"; you needed to capture it - idealization - so that you could project it to the "real" world.

You think about art and the philosophy of art really differently that I do. I don't think that means either of us is wrong. My understanding of aesthetics goes along with the rest of my understanding of how the world works. I sometimes call that pragmatic. Yours seems more idealistic. But those are just labels. We are what we are; we see what we see, we feel what we feel.

I've enjoyed this discussion. You started a good thread.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Article on the poem:
https://slowlander.com/2019/09/10/split-the-lark-and-youll-find-the-music/

Thank you so much for the video clip with beautiful song to the poem.
And link to a fascinating and informative article.

I have a slim volume of selected poems by Emily Dickinson - Fall River Press, 2016.
My favourite. I love everything about it. I've hardly opened it. Until now.
To read 'Split the Lark'.

I would never have understood this fully without reading the article.

This part stood out as being particularly relevant to the thread:

Quoting slowlander - split the lark and you'll find the music

In other words she wants the song to be enjoyed for what it is, and that to look too far into it misses the whole point. The song is supposed to be beautiful. Yes, the song has meaning in that it calls out for a mate, but it also has its own beauty as separated from any further meaning. The song and the poem can be enjoyed just by listening to it. One doesn’t need to understand synesthesia to love how “Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled” sounds – it just rolls off the tongue, it’s pleasant to hear and to say. Yes, it carries a deeper meaning, but it first should be enjoyed at the most sensual level, it should speak directly to the heart before it speaks to the mind. The rainbow can just be a beautiful experience – the possibility that it also carries a more significant meaning is almost irrelevant.

This is how I feel about poetry. First, to enjoy it for the immediate effect.
By listening.
Then, a second closer look, to explore further...

***

The poem even mentions the lute.
An instrument I picked up on my travels; following Plato's Symposium and Ancient Greek poetry/music. *
How strange all the connections...

'Saved for your ear when lutes be old'.

:sparkle:


*
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/588297
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/588322

Quoting Gus Lamarch

What is meant by an 'authentic metaphysics' ?
— Amity

"A field of metaphysics distinct and unique to the imaginative world of general metaphysics"

Well, this just leads to more questions e.g. What is the 'imaginative world of general metaphysics' ?
Why should your definition be more 'authentic' than that of others who study metaphysics ?
What is it that makes it 'distinct and unique' ?

So, when you talk of 'metaphysics' this is an, arguably, narrow and perhaps 'superior' perspective ?

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Metaphysics, regardless of the situation and context in which it is applied, completely depends on the idealization and subjective contemplation of existence

I'm not sure that this is right. It is such a strong claim.
However, I have only looked at the subject of 'Metaphysics' lightly. *
There is so much to the history of theories and any practical 'applications'.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/#toc

***

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality.

Are you saying that 'existence is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics' ?
That doesn't seem right either -
Again, about 'Concepts' - more to consider...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/#toc

Are you saying that you need to perceive 'absoluteness' before the existence of concepts ?
Why ?
More questions but I think possibly enough - it would need another thread.

***

Upshot is, I still don't understand what you mean by 'Authentic Metaphysics' or its application with regard to poetry.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

he appears to be using those terms to describe the commonalities of all poerty, the purpose and intent behind the "poetic enterprise". In this, Gus seems to be suggesting that the impulse behind the poetic undertaking is the elucidation of fundamental truths of the human experience of life.
— Michael Zwingli

:100:

@Michael Zwingli seems to have a grasp. Perhaps you could both clarify by using Dickinson's poem as an example ? https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/589633
Can you say that what impels her - is to elucidate 'fundamental truths of the human experience of life' ?
@PoeticUniverse Your thoughts ?

***

* Quoting SEP - Metaphysics

Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions:[5]

What is there?
What is it like?
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.

My best guess is @Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms - faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so. Unfortunately or not, Plato had, so it's said, a very low opinion of art, it being an imitation of an imititation (the world we know being an imperfect instantiation of heaven). Sad that.

Quoting TheMadFool

My best guess is Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms - faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so.

Possibly so.
BTW, why do you use the word 'faer' ?

Quoting TheMadFool

Unfortunately or not, Plato had, so it's said, a very low opinion of art, it being an imitation of an imititation (the world we know being an imperfect instantiation of heaven). Sad that.

[ Again, that would be another thread on what Plato actually thought and how he expressed his thoughts. So very clever. Artful, even.
As can be seen from other TPF discussions on Plato's dialogues, there are many conflicting interpretations. See @Fooloso4's. ]

Quoting Amity

Possibly so.

Yes, possibly but something tells me I'm right - Gus Lamarch is trying to marry Platonism with art.

Quoting Amity

faer

Preferred Gender Pronoun

Quoting TheMadFool

My best guess is Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms -

Indeed, my position is very similar to that defended by Plato, however, I am against the hypothesis of a "world composed of forms", which Plato fervently defended.

Project into your mind, my vision of the "metaphysical field", as being a distinct field of that of existence, in which there are no forms, images, perceptions, etc...; it is an endless field and paradoxically with infinite borders, where any and all concepts that already exist, that never existed, and that will come to exist, are.

When a "Being" belonging to existence - a smaller and more limiting field than the metaphysical world - captures a concept through its subjective awareness, such "ideal" becomes "real", and a "movement" between both fields - metaphysical and existential - occur - as if two cubes, one immobile - existence - and the other mobile - metaphysics - suspended over the smaller cube, intertwined -.

"Something can only be real, if previously, it was ideal"

Quoting TheMadFool

faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so.

"His"

I would be very glad, if before deciding to categorize me with your preferred gender pronoun, you would ask my person first. Thank you.

Quoting Amity

it would need another thread.

Indeed.

Quoting Amity

Can you say that what impels her - is to elucidate 'fundamental truths of the human experience of life' ?

Yes:

A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.


Emily's poem was already lyrical and so it was all the more suitable for being sung with music in the and so it became doubly powerful:

Poetry makes clear what’s just barely heard,
For it translates soul-language into words,
Whereas, music plays right on the heartstrings;
Merged, they create song; heart and soul converge.


Yes, her poem was private and so we need the background of it to fully understand it, but it still works wonderfully on its surface:

A poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from one’s profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
It’s both the existence and the essence.

Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
The highest power of language and wit.
The reader then translates back to spirit;
If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!


To get the unity of the flow, music, as well as any happening, requires three stages for continuity:

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.


In the Poetic Universe…

We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
Ever unveiling our live’s deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentences—uni versed.

We have rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
Revealed through life’s participation,
From the latent whence into us hence.

The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights

Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.

In this concordance of literature,
We are the Cosmos’ book of adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.


In other more difficult words:

Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.

Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Within her requisite of ongoing change.

So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.

What remains unchanged over time are All’s
Properties that find expression, as laws,
Of the conservation of energy,
Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.


Emily, my 3rd or 4th cousin:

My great grandfather, Henry Johnson, famously captained schooners and steam ships to China and all over the world, somehow finding time to marry Henrietta Wood, who was related to Norcross somehow (my brother does the family tree, not me!), which was Emily's mother's maiden name.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Indeed, my position is very similar to that defended by Plato, however, I am against the hypothesis of a "world composed of forms", which Plato fervently defended.

Project into your mind, my vision of the "metaphysical field", as being a distinct field of that of existence, in which there are no forms, images, perceptions, etc...; it is an endless field and paradoxically with infinite borders, where any and all concepts that already exist, that never existed, and that will come to exist, are.

When a "Being" belonging to existence - a smaller and more limiting field than the metaphysical world - captures a concept through its subjective awareness, such "ideal" becomes "real", and a "movement" between both fields - metaphysical and existential - occur - as if two cubes, one immobile - existence - and the other mobile - metaphysics - suspended over the smaller cube, intertwined -.

"Something can only be real, if previously, it was ideal"

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done. The ideal guides the real i.e. first one must conceive of an ideal (object, event) and then the real must approximate that ideal as best as it can and, once in a blue moon, the real becomes the ideal.

Reply to PoeticUniverse
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/590426

Thanks for all of this. So much to think about. Here's a starter:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Can you say that what impels her - is to elucidate 'fundamental truths of the human experience of life' ?
— Amity

Yes:

A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'unapprehended proof'. Not perceived or understood. Proof: Evidence establishing a fact or truth. So, a poem might be 'a truth' showing 'hidden beauty' but not all poetry or poets are impelled to or can 'make something clear'. Sometimes, it's the very opposite.
Not all see human experience, in general or in particular, in terms of 'fundamental truths', whatever they are. What are they ?

As for 'eternal truth'...that sounds like an 'absolute truth' not a particular truth, relative to time, person or context.
Is that what you mean ? Is that your view of all kinds of poetry ?

***
The truth(s) of Poetry v the truth(s) of Reports. In war.
Similar scenes expressed in different ways. Powerful descriptions of a reality, from different perspectives. Our vision is not absolute. We hear sounds difficult to put in to words. We smell death.
Unimaginable for some; all too real for others.

***
Poetry and truth
Quoting new criterion: poetry-truth

The tension between poetry and truth gave Goethe the title of his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (“From My Life: Poetry and Truth”), written between 1811 and 1833. W. H. Auden borrowed Goethe’s title in 1959 for a prose sequence on love, and, in 1977, the poet Anthony Hecht (a great admirer of both poets) took the same title for a poem in which he considers, among other things, Goethe, the Second World War, and the thorny relationship between truth and art. Hecht conveyed the truth of his war experience as a poet not as a journalist or historian...

Poetry without music is a relatively recent development. A pronounced separation came around 1550, before which, Kirby-Smith notes, “the concept of a unified performance combining melody, words, and dance had never completely faded out.” The songlike cadence of poetry, in fact all of prosody, is in itself semantic and carries an emotional charge. Every syllable, every phoneme, is highly ordered in such a way as to communicate feeling...

What truths can poetry tell us and what could its real-world use possibly be? W. H. Auden wrote that “poetry makes nothing happen.” He understood that no poem had saved a single Jew from death at the hands of the Nazis. Still, he believed in the necessity of action. “Poetry is not concerned with telling people what to do,” he writes, “but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational moral choice.”

In this respect, the poet Anthony Hecht possessed one of the most compelling moral visions in late-twentieth-century American poetry. In “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” he juxtaposes a marble statue and a photo from World War II:

The Discus Thrower’s marble heave,

Captured in mid-career,

That polished poise, that Parian arm

Sleeved only in the air,

Vesalian musculature, white

As the mid-winter moon—

This, and the clumsy snapshot of

An infantry platoon,

Those grubby and indifferent men,

Lounging in bivouac,

Their rifles aimless in their laps,

Stop history in its tracks.


If the documentary evidence, the photograph, does not contain the whole truth of experience, where, then, does the truth lie?...

Hecht’s poetry about the war is filled with echoes of Shakespeare, including the poems in his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Hard Hours, which includes “More Light! More Light!” King Lear, in particular, recurs throughout the collection....

The second scene in the poem, quoted above, constitutes a tightly woven pattern of negatives. Goethe’s emphatic dying words become:

[i]Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared.[/i]

And, then, two stanzas later:
No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.

The final image, again with an echo of Lear, is of sightless eyes:

[i]and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.[/i]

The survivors of the camps, as Hecht himself witnessed, were naked, skeletal, their yellowed skin stretched over bony frames. As one soldier from C Company reported: “Many had died with their eyes wide open staring into space as if they were seeing over and over again all the torture the Germans had put them through—their mouths open, gasping for that last breath that might keep them alive.” When a prisoner died, one of his fellows would carry his body to the stack of bodies beside the incinerator. The smell, he added, was unimaginable...

If the poem has a “use” in the sense that Plato intends, then perhaps it is that those “mute ghosts from the ovens” are not entirely silenced.

Through Hecht’s poem, they instruct our emotions. To adopt Auden’s formulation, they extend our knowledge of good and evil, clarifying the nature of action, and leading us to a point where we can make a moral choice.

I agree that war poetry did so much to instruct emotions as opposed to the 'factual' ? propaganda-like media. It could even have led to a point of awakening of morals.
Thoughts moved.

I don't think we can make absolute generalisations from a particular poet or poem.
Sometimes, more important than the message communicated was the person's own need for expression and recording of memories - whether 'real' or 'false'.
It is their 'truth'.

!! ATTENTION all Physicists !!

An article re 'profound truths' about the universe and our place in it.

https://insidetheperimeter.ca/12-poignant-poems-and-one-bizarre-limerick-written-by-physicists-about-physics/

Quoting inside the perimeter - poems by physicists about physics

12 poignant poems (and one bizarre limerick) written by physicists about physics
Though they typically employ the language of mathematics to describe nature, physicists sometimes find ideas are better conveyed in verse.

It can be said that science and poetry share the common purpose of revealing profound truths about the universe and our place in it.

Physicist Paul Dirac, a known curmudgeon, would have dismissed that idea as hogwash.
“The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way,” Dirac grouched to a colleague. “The two are incompatible.”

The colleague to whom Dirac was grumbling, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a lover of poetry who dabbled in it himself — as did, it turns out, quite a few great physicists, past and present. Physicists have often turned to poetry to express ideas for which there are no equations...

Maxwell’s best-known poetic composition is “Rigid Body Sings,” a ditty he used to sing while playing guitar, which is based on the classic Robbie Burns poem “Comin’ Through the Rye” (the inspiration for the title of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye). In terms of melding poetry and physics, however, Maxwell’s geekiest composition might be “A Problem in Dynamics,” which shows both his brilliance and sense of humour.

***
https://www.newscientist.com/article/1966905-a-problem-in-dynamics/
Quoting New Scientist - A Problem in Dynamics

A Problem in Dynamics
By James Clerk Maxwell

An inextensible heavy chain
Lies on a smooth horizontal plane,
An impulsive force is applied at A,
Required the initial motion of K.

Let ds be the infinitesimal link,
Of which for the present we’ve only to think;
Let T be the tension, and T + dT
The same for the end that is nearest to B.
Let a be put, by a common convention,
For the angle at M ‘twixt OX and the tension;
Let Vt and Vn be ds‘s velocities,
Of which Vt along and Vn across it is;
Then Vn/Vt the tangent will equal,
Of the angle of starting worked out in the sequel.

In working the problem the first thing of course is
To equate the impressed and effectual forces.
K is tugged by two tensions, whose difference dT
Must equal the element’s mass into Vt.
Vn must be due to the force perpendicular
To ds‘s direction, which shows the particular
Advantage of using da to serve at your
Pleasure to estimate ds‘s curvature.
For Vn into mass of a unit of chain
Must equal the curvature into the strain.

Thus managing cause and effect to discriminate,
The student must fruitlessly try to eliminate,
And painfully learn, that in order to do it, he
Must find the Equation of Continuity.
The reason is this, that the tough little element,
Which the force of impulsion to beat to a jelly meant,
Was endowed with a property incomprehensible,
And was “given,” in the language of Shop, “inexten-sible.”
It therefore with such pertinacity odd defied
The force which the length of the chain should have modified,
That its stubborn example may possibly yet recall
These overgrown rhymes to their prosody metrical.
The condition is got by resolving again,
According to axes assumed in the plane.
If then you reduce to the tangent and normal,
You will find the equation more neat tho’ less formal.
The condition thus found after these preparations,
When duly combined with the former equations,
Will give you another, in which differentials
(When the chain forms a circle), become in essentials
No harder than those that we easily solve
In the time a T totum would take to revolve.

Now joyfully leaving ds to itself, a-
Ttend to the values of T and of a.
The chain undergoes a distorting convulsion,
Produced first at A by the force of impulsion.
In magnitude R, in direction tangential,
Equating this R to the form exponential,
Obtained for the tension when a is zero,
It will measure the tug, such a tug as the “hero
Plume-waving” experienced, tied to the chariot.
But when dragged by the heels his grim head could not carry aught,
So give a its due at the end of the chain,
And the tension ought there to be zero again.
From these two conditions we get three equations,
Which serve to determine the proper relations
Between the first impulse and each coefficient
In the form for the tension, and this is sufficient
To work out the problem, and then, if you choose,
You may turn it and twist it the Dons to amuse.

Read more: “Victorian scientists’ poetry: An anthology“

***

Marks out of 10 ?
For sense and sensibility...

Reply to Gus Lamarch

One aspect of this interesting area of thought, which goes beyond the search for objective reality beyond the human realm such as the Forms, is states of consciousness. I think that this was touched on briefly in the thread you had several months ago on Julian Jaynes's, 'The Origins of the Bicameral Mind.' It is interesting how he maintained that ancient people did not necessarily think in terms of the clear distinction between inner and outer reality which we have today.

I also think that there is the issue of stepping into altered states of consciousness. This is touched by in the anthropological understanding of shamanism, but it also linked to what dimensions are believed to exist beyond the three dimensions, including fourth and fifth dimensional reality, and even the idea of parallel universes.

It is possible that states of consciousness can involve stepping into unknown dimensions of consciousness. This is touched upon by Bucke in his, 'Cosmic Consciousness'. His description of the development of specific individuals includes the Buddha and Jesus Christ, but it does include a number of creatives, such as Dante and Walt Whitman.

Of course, we are talking of people who were beyond the experience of most individuals, and the majority can only touch upon such inspiration through the works of these creatives. However, I do believe that the process of creativity, including the writing of poetry relates mostly to subjective experiences but it is interconnected with states of consciousness. The link is probably in the realm of peak experiences, such as described by Abraham Maslow. Sometimes, I think creativity can become mystified through consideration of great works of art, but I believe that it is possible for most human beings to experience some creative 'inspiration', especially in the context of some kind of peak experiences amidst the mundane aspects of daily life.

Quoting Amity

!! ATTENTION all Physicists !!

Maxwell was OK, (7 out of ten) with good rhythm and rhyme, but some of the others stunk as poems and as also from being too technical. There are better ways to write philosophical scientific poems. I may have some myself.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Maxwell was OK, (7 out of ten) with good rhythm and rhyme, but some of the others stunk as poems and as also from being too technical.

I liked the Maxwell one best because it was technical. That's what I want from a physicist - poetic physics. But all of them stunk/stank as poems.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

I may have some myself.

Well, don't be shy. Sing us some with dance moves :cool:

Reply to T Clark

Did you understand it ?
What did it mean?
I didn't have a clue.
Too dense.
No marks.

Quoting Amity

Did you understand it ?
What did it mean?
I didn't have a clue.
Too dense.
No marks.

I sort of understood it. Not enough to want to finish reading the whole poem.

Reply to T Clark
:smile:

My eyes glazed over.
But gave me a bit of insight.
Into my mental capabilities.
No marks for physics.
It turns me off...
As you say, some things leave you cold.
Or are we cold to start with...
Hmmm.
Brain warmth.

I don't write poetry but sometimes if I'm lazy, I write short.

Quoting Amity

No marks for physics.
It turns me off...

Physics and "The Tao Te Ching" tell me everything about reality I need to know.

Reply to T Clark
:monkey:

Quoting Amity

Well, don't be shy. Sing us some with dance moves :cool:

I wish someone could sing some of my poems and accompany the songs with music, as there are no good apps for that yet… but they are trying to be.

Here's a dance only form a lady who I created. I haven't taught her to sing yet.



A philosophical science poem of mine on a rare subject (of a few that I found):

[b]AFTER THE STARS HAVE GONE—
THE FINAL, SILENT DARK[/b]

The Last Chance Saloon

[i]Entropy is always the winner in the end,
When there’s no more energy left to lend;
Meanwhile, we stabilize, in nature’s ways,
Rearranging resources temporarily.[/i]

Prelude

Going beyond our very old obsession so vast,
Of how it all began, back in the distant past,
Yet retaining our search for meaning, from that,
We now turn to how will it all end, this and that,
Whether becoming collapsed, expended, or flat.

Is there is some deep meaning in all that?

Yes, for it is there in that future distance,
We’ll find or not the end of our persistence,
Whether or not we are at all forever resistant,

Whether all that was and what was did and done
Will be of any long-lasting benefit to anyone—
Of what destiny awaits, if there ever was one.

Endings are important to us, of what we’re about,
Because we believe that how things turn out
Implies what the beginnings ultimately meant,
Of what or not is our place in the firmament.

As an ambitious species of nurture and nature
We now and have always pointed toward the future,
For, of the three forms of the chimpanzee:
The common chimp, the bonobo, and us, we
Are the only chimp who went beyond the trees…

And more importantly, ever out of Africa freed,
By that exodus, which laid down, indeed,
From that experience, the urge and the need
To move on, exploring, ever planting another seed.

The horizons on Earth sufficed us through time
For many millennia but now the horizons’ climes
Have broadened, through cosmology and physics,
And so they can well inform us of our prospects.

The future matters to us for very basic reasons:
We wish to offset our mortality, our pleasin’s,
To know if humanity’s works for every season
Will be remembered, or lost—all for nothing, even.

The Final, Silent Dark Marches On…

[i]Time hurls a million waves of its displacements
At us, yet we are still here—the replacements.

Time ever gray with age hurls its changes then,
‘Gainst existence’s rock, time and time again,
The entropic seas denuding the sands,
Yet energy is preserved via nature’s wands.[/i]

Reminiscence had weathered but could ne’er wither,
For in the mists of time yesteryear yet appeared,
Since, without future, ‘past’ is all they’d have.

[i]Would the prospect of a ‘Big Crunch’ bring on mania,
In an ever more confining claustrophobia?[/i]

Seems a better thought, somehow, though no picnic,
But more pleasing if the universe were to be cyclic,
Although then all would still be really crushed,
And forever lost, gone headlong into the rush.

We expect cycles, for all the days and seasons
Embedded this in our ancestors, into our reasons,
Since at least the periodic supplies some rhythm,
A pattern—the rolling hills of lives onward driven.

As for cyclic, endless repetitions, they too
Would seem to revolt more of us than just a few;
As too perhaps would some infinite abyss of time,
Which both grant us neither reason nor rhyme.

Does the drama go on forever, or does it end?
What do the visions of the future portend?
Doesn’t it all have some purpose meant—
A goodly end that all of it to us might it present?

[i]Is our higher mammal time certainly
But of such a short parentheses within eternity?[/i]

It’s only a finite time then, which too tends
To horrify so many, as the universe ends,
Such as told by Robert Frost, a name of chill:
In heat or in cold, known as fire or ice, still.

[i]Should we not believe in God since nothing lasts?

Well, if nothing lasts then of what our purpose past?

Is a purpose really required, so constructive,
Or would that really be quite restrictive?[/i]

No realm could really be special or sent,
Its becoming being of some specific intent,
For all has arrived as a causeless non-precedent.

[i]Is there anything wrong with the freedom to be,
Anywhere, any how, or any time during eternity?

Should we rail against the law of entropy—
The ‘heat death’ of thermodynamic energy,
The second of its final laws, you see,
Because it would destroy all of history?[/i]

There are so many ways for disorder to be
Than any one ordered state specifically.

[i]Would even a heaven on Earth become a misery
If as it might, contain no more novelty?

Must there be an end to our revelry?

Can’t we at least hibernate eternally?
Won’t all matter too last eternally?

Will Shakespeare’s works live on, paternally?[/i]

Is this not a Wagnerian struggle for eternity?

[b]Science Can Settle Whether a Last Day
Is Ever Going to Come this Way[/b]

Only a decade or so ago, with consternation,
We discovered the universe’s acceleration,
Its expansion even increasing, onto a thin disaster,
The galaxies getting further away ever faster—
Then one last snapshot taken, for all to remember.

The accelerating expansion of the universe’s rafters
Means that the universe will cool even ever faster;
So, any rare forms of the future’s life prolongers
Will have to keep themselves ever more cooler,
Think more slowly, and hibernate ever longer.

One day even the protons will fade away,
Leaving but dark matter, electrons, and positrons.

[b]The Waves of the Ancient Swells
Of Time’s Eroding Swells
Swept Ever On…[/b]
 
[i]As Time, now hoary with age,
Yet hurls forth its ashen change,
The charge ever san, pale and colorless,
That force born to summon decay, so endless,
‘Gainst Nature’s Universe, every day.
 
Time and time again, Time feeds all upon,
In its bloodless, white, and waxen way,
But our everlasting rose would not fade,

Its luster even brightening by the day,
Ever unsuccumbing to the sickly, peakèd
State draining drawn Earth’s life away.
 
Entropic seas yet denude the mountains,
Yet our enduring flower never-endingly
Has cast Deathly Time aside, as now,
Ceaselessly somehow thriving on
Toward the hope of the near imperishable,

As beauty’s flame e’er inextinguishable,
Forever celebrated as immutable,
Gaining a seemingly perpetual permanence
From the undying love of our glorious dance.[/i]

Yet, everything was moving apart, cooling off,
The big slowdown not really so very far off;
Ultimately, even the black holes of late
And the lightless planets would dissipate.

The primordial soup once so rich and hearty
Will become a thin gruel that can’t serve the party.

One day, every particle will be moving away
From every other particle, so much out of the way
That they won’t even be able to see one another;
Thus, for all intents motion will have ceased forever.

Our spurt of life followed by an infinite stretch
Of dark equilibrium was but the briefest sketch—
A warm and fuzzy stage, so interestingly active,
Whose time relatively was but infinitesimive.

Yet we were there in all our glory,
For whenever else could we have been?

…

In the future, uncounted societies of
Overlapping minds accumulate, with love,
In island redoubts, their preserved data burning

With a vital remembrance, in which, returning,
The past is the present and future, they all reliving
The data, even animating it, and ever altering.

Without any new enrichments, the present and future
Reprise the past in this retreat from external nature.
Their candles would have been near invisible to us—
They enduring by diminishing so as not to exhaust.

They made few new memories, a kind of blind sight,
For whatever realities had ever existed out of sight
Of their own mental structures were now fractured,
And thus not so different from those manufactured.

The Penultimate Part of the Final Dark

An Escalating One-Way Trip
From a Fluke to Oblivion

[i]The majority of the energy
Of the universe is dark today,
Although everything else passes
Through it in every way.

It’s everywhere,
Having a component
That repels its own state,
Which cause the expansion of
The universe to much accelerate.[/i]

Dark Energy Matters: The Escalation

[i]We’re on a one way trip from the quantum fluke,
That maximal energy within old Planck’s nook,
Heading toward the oblivion of sparse expansion—
All that we ever loved and knew going to extinction.[/i]

They sent message of early warnings to some,
In those castles of illusion, yes, many a one—
That they would face the decay, not so far away,
Of the heavy particles—the ‘proton pause’, one day.

No self-assembled granularity can endure
Forever but must return to the substructure,
And so the lives must all transition, it seems,
From heavier to much lighter regimes,

Although this too would not be permanent—
All destined to be swallowed by the firmament.

We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.

There were those who endlessly debated
Whether to live in their virtuals unabated
Or to press forwards and outwards, in delirium,
To seek out new localities in the mysterium,

But the pauses of the heavy particles continued,
And so there was nowhere to go for the retinued.

It was much simpler in those days of old
When we thought that universes didn’t go cold,
But that they expanded and then collapsed,
Still destroying all, yet ever giving more to last.

And well before that, once upon a storied time,
We simply made it all up, with tales and rhyme,
In place of any physical observations,
Such as through revealing experimentations.

The past was now a reef of dead accumulation,
A graveyard of various useless information,
Which despite its splendorous beauty
Could not provide for a novel futurity.

The last one of us, born of the sparkness,
Kept a window to the outer darkness…
She looked out from a once brightly
Colored and sparkling inner reality
Into the dark abyss…

There was nothing out there,
All being so lonely and bare—
No more singing of life’s song,
For now everything was gone.

The Final Epilog

There could not have been any specific time,
One that was privileged over any other chime,
Nor any special place, nor any certain form
Arising out of the necessarily causeless realm.

Even the locally specific dates and places past
Of the events’ novel memoirs couldn’t last,
They being writ on water, with no meaning vast,
Disappearing in significance so very fast,
Since it’s only the universals that last.

The protons were now gone from the show,
Having decayed so very long ago
Into positrons—ever canceling the electrons,

And emitting the fleeing light of photons,
There being of course an equal amount
Of protons and electrons in the count.

And of course along with all the protons
Went all of the atomic elements—the end,
All of their forms becoming myth and legend,
As they were still dreamt in night dreams,
Those forms that we once had, so it seemed.

She, as many of a luckily adaptable kind,
Had long since lightened and lighted her mind,
With the dwindling electrons and precious photons—
That beginning light of ancient times growing wan.

Ours had been the only line in the universe,
One that had become sentient, with proto-man first,
The rest of the Cosmos being but a colossal waste,
A foreboding, harsh, and very dangerous place.

She was now the only one left,
Having outlived all of the rest.
The universe was near crumbling away,
Having run out of space, time, and all its sway.

She was dispersing, melting, into the vacuum, lone,
But she held on for another thousand years, alone,
And then she too was gone,
Being the last of the hominid’s song,

Of all that was sapient: the Magnificat,
The composition of Earth’s sweet plot,
The greatest symphony that was ever sown,
It now having faded into the unknown.

From near nothingness our forms became,
And into the same must go our remains.

If the unknown be such, though it’s otherwise;
But if it’s yet called ‘unknown’ then the reply
Is still for sure that we’re free to be, anywise.

If you’ve shed a tear reading here
For both the far and the near and dear
It won’t make their graves green again,
But it’s possible that life could begin again…

Be of Good Cheer—the sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and by:
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan
With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky! (—Omar)

Our fruits are of a universal seed
As the yield of All possibility treed,
And siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Will also be born of such probability.

The Eternal Return

Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal IS has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to impart its Why.

Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how the bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some like universe,
As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

So, as thus, thou lives on yester’s credit line
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl your cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being that’s called “mine”.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Saki has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermore—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
Of those universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

When You and I behind the cloak are past
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure the All grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.

Seasonings

Nature springs from winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The trees within the acorns.

Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the summer flower.

Summer wakes from spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the spring’s running.

Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.

Autumn falls as summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of spring.

The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.

Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.

Winter is life cooled over;
Melting snows feed spring waters.

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.)

Reply to PoeticUniverse
Your wish to have your poems turned into songs and sung was one of my mum's biggest longings. When I was a child she used to answer ads in music magazines for composers seeking lyricists. She ended up with loads of cassettes full of songs. However, she would have loved for some group to record them and get them on the radio. I don't imagine that your poems would fit into the pop and rock genre, and I think that you prefer more classical music. But, what I am thinking is that rather than just looking for apps it may be more interesting to find some musicians to collaborate with. You don't know what may happen and you might end up creating a new 'Dark Side of the Moon', or some psyched out space rock opera.

Quoting TheMadFool

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done.

A perception like this, nowadays, is the virtue of the insane...

Quoting Jack Cummins

I also think that there is the issue of stepping into altered states of consciousness. This is touched by in the anthropological understanding of shamanism, but it also linked to what dimensions are believed to exist beyond the three dimensions, including fourth and fifth dimensional reality, and even the idea of parallel universes.

The idea that "concepts" are nothing more than "objects of greater dimensions than ours which we project unto our world, their imperfect forms through metaphysics" is a perception that attracted me a lot in the past, however, over time, I ended up by concluding that such hypotheses are nothing more than pure "conceptual structuring", as there is no way to actually affirm something that needs an episteme-physical theory to actually work, which, according to contemporary human knowledge, is something completely inconceivable.

Anyway, nothing prevents "Love"- the concept of Love - for example - - from being nothing more than a 5th dimensional "circle".

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done.
— TheMadFool

A perception like this, nowadays, is the virtue of the insane...

You disapprove. Why? What I said is congruent to what you've been saying, no? As an example, look at how civil engineers (I just met one outside my office) have a conception of an ideal house - structurally sound, oriented in a way that optimizes natural sunlight, prevailing winds, is aesthetic, and so on - and they use this model/ideal house as a template for all houses they help to design/build. In short, the ideal serves as a direction-finding beacon that guides civil engineers towards the best possible approximation of the perfect house and what comes out of all this is the real house.

Quoting tim wood

An unusually good book on poetry, Creating Poetry, John Drury.

Delivered today.
A quick overview and a Dickinson look-up in Index, already impressed. Thanks @tim wood :up: :100:
Drury is so engaging, informative with a great sense of humour.

An example, from Ch IV. Sound - Rhyme p57-59

Slant rhyme
Quoting John Drury

'Emily Dickinson was a pioneer of slant rhyme..." she intentionally avoided the smoother and more usual rhymes"... she pairs 'wake' and 'crack', 'Pearl' and 'School', 'Score' and 'Her'...
Wilfred Owen...in 'Strange Meeting', the story of two enemy soldiers meeting in the underworld rhymes 'escaped' and 'scooped', 'groaned' and 'groined'...
-----
The presence of rhyme does not excuse the absence of imagery...does not compensate for slackness, abstractness, or excessive softness...

...poems on abstract subjects often work better in rhyme or meter, but overuse of abstraction is always a problem.
Who wants to seek his reading pleasure in a sensory deprivation tank ?
-----
In 'Out of Africa. Isak Dinesen describes how the East Africans working in her maize-field loved the sound of rhyme, "laughed at it when it came" and begged her: "Speak again. Speak like rain".

Good rhyme ( as well as good metaphor) often affects us with hilarity; we laugh because we are surprised and pleased - we get it.'

There follows a set of exercises, advice and practical tools.
Not quite ready for that yet...

But hey. This book is an eye-opener to all kinds of poetic forms, patterns and traditions with definitions of terms. So good.
I love the humour - the 'sensory deprivation tank'.
I immediately thought of the physics poem but that might be unfair and says more about my ignorance.
If anybody cares to explain and persuade me otherwise - feel free :cool:

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Reply to Gus Lamarch

Does the Haiku technique (economy of words and precision of meaning) somehow imply its own separate metaphysics?

The Hermit

Hermit greeting time
Out for a leisurely stroll
Walking stick in hand.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.)

Quoting Amity

Amity

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it.

Quoting TheMadFool

You disapprove. Why? What I said is congruent to what you've been saying, no?

You got me wrong. I, through the comment you refer to, were making explicit the fact that views like yours, which agree with a position - in this case, of mine - that go against the erroneous "common sense" of the masses.

"I was applauding you"

Quoting charles ferraro

Does the Haiku technique (economy of words and precision of meaning) somehow imply its own separate metaphysics?

Most likely, the technique also demonstrates that poetry has its own metaphysics, however, its method of analysis may be totally different from the poetic Sufi method, which I demonstrated in the original post.

Quoting charles ferraro

The Hermit

Hermit greeting time
Out for a leisurely stroll
Walking stick in hand.

Reading and rereading the poem you used as an example, it seems to me that the use of the technique of saving words, ends up also making it difficult to deconstruct the poem so that its metaphysical substance becomes evident - in a Sufi reading, obviously -.

The scenario where "possible different poetic analyses, can only work with certain poetic structuring cases" can also, be real.

Reply to Gus Lamarch

Is this Haiku, in your opinion, easier to deconstruct?

Demiurge

Imagination
Form giver to nothingness
Godlike in essence.

Or, is this non-Haiku even easier?

Final Harvest

Year after year
He plowed the earth
And planted seeds therein.
'Till, at the end,
They plowed the earth
And planted him therein.

Quoting Gus Lamarch

You got me wrong. I, through the comment you refer to, were making explicit the fact that views like yours, which agree with a position - in this case, of mine - that go against the erroneous "common sense" of the masses.

"I was applauding you"

Oh! I misunderstood. Sorry. By the way, how are your views different from Plato's? I ask because your notion of ideals matches Platonic forms and, while you extol the arts, Plato thought differently, accusing, as it were, artists of adding to the confusion by imitating (art) imitations (real) of Platonic forms (ideal).

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it.

Sent my spirit searching, searching...
Centuries of songs and places, spanned.
Gaming the galaxy of noughts and crosses.
Lutes lashed, lacking meta-physicality.
The bricolage of baubles and bubbles burst,
Outwards and onwards...
To the finale of the Grand Opera.

Applause and encore ?
Only if you agree.

In Harmony and Amity :sparkle:

Quoting charles ferraro

Is this Haiku, in your opinion, easier to deconstruct?

Demiurge

Imagination
Form giver to nothingness
Godlike in essence.

Serious suggestion - Why don't we deconstruct it. Here's my attempt:

The poem is a haiku with the standard 5/7/5 syllable structure. The title, "Demiurge" typically refers to that which created the world. The poem seems to refer to the imagination as the demiurge, which implies, as the poem verifies, that the imagination is God. Or God is the imagination. Actually, it says "Godlike" and "in essence" which means "sort of." "Form giver to nothingness" is a common way of referring to how God created the world.

This is an excerpt from one of my favorite poems. It's the most romantic/Romantic part of a very, very, romantic/Romantic poem.

[i]Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.

First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet ;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, " My painting
Makes me powerful over others."

Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
,And the interpretation, " Listen !
'T is my voice you hear, my singing ! "

Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
" I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion ! "

Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together,
With their hands so clasped together
That they seem in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, " I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes ! "

Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island ;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, " Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me ! "

Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, " Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you ! "

And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle ;
And the image had this meaning :
" Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper ! "[/i]

From "Song of Hiawatha" by Longfellow.

Quoting Amity

Applause and encore ?

Yes, both, to the fine summary of the Magnificat.

Next, here's one about the decay in energy's quality driving everything:

ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN As Energy

[i]Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.[/i]

We have oft described the causeless—
That which was always never the less,
As well as the beginnings of our quest,
And too have detailed in the rarest of glimpses
The slowing end of all of forever’s chances.

So now we must now turn our attention keen
To all of the action that exists in-between—
All that’s going on and has gone before,
Out to the furthest reaches, ever-more,

For everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions,
Meaning every single event ever gone on,
Of both the animate and the non,
Is but from a single theme played upon.

This then is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law’s dispersion,

The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.

These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still,
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,

Growth, death, and even reproduction.
There is excessively subtle change as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will,

And yet all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non-purpose.

All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose.
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on and come about through the decay.

The deepest structure of change is but decay,
Although it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.

Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And in the course of causing change it ranges,
Spreading and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.

The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once,
As might one’s paycheck inside of a month.

This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,

It accounting for all discernible change
Of all that ever gets so rearranged,
For the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.

Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built and formed,
And when symphonies are performed,

But these are but local deceits
Born of our own conceits,
For deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As All is being driven by decay.

The quality of energy meant
Is of its dispersal’s extent.
When it is totally precipitate,
It destroys, but when it’s gait
Is geared through chains of events
It can produce civilization’s tenants.

Ultimately, energy naturally,
Spontaneously, and chaotically
Disperses, causing change, irreversibly.

Think of a group of atoms jostling,
At first as a vigorous motion happening
In some corner of the atomic crowd;

They hand on their energy, loud,
Inducing close neighbors to jostle too,
And soon the jostling disperses too—
The irreversible change but the potion
Of the ‘random’, motiveless motion.

And such does hot metal cool, as atoms swirl,
There being so many atoms in the world
Outside it than in the block metal itself
That entropy’s statistics average themselves.

The illusions of purpose lead us to think
That there are reasons, of some motive link,
Why one change occurs and not another,

And even that there are reasons that cover
Specific changes in locations of energy,
The energy choosing to go there, intentionally,

Such as a purpose for a change in structure,
This being as such as the opening of a flower,
Yet this should not be confused with energy
Achieving to be there in that specific bower,

Since at root, of all the power,
Even that of the root of the flower,
That there is the degradation by dispersal,
This being mostly non reversible and universal.

The energy is always still spreading thencely,
Even as some temporarily located density—
An illusion of specific change
In some region rearranged,

But actually it’s just lingering there, discovering,
Until new opportunities arise for exploring,
The consequences but of ‘random’ opportunity,
Beneath which, purpose still vanishes entirely.

Events are the manifestations
Of overriding probability’s instantiations—
Of all of the events of nature, of every sod,
From the bouncing ball to conceptions of gods,
Of even free will, evolution, and all ambition,

For they’re of our simple idea’s elaborations,
Although for the latter stated there
And such for that as warfare
Their intrinsic simplicity is buried more deeply.

And yet though sometimes concealed away,
The spring of all creation is just decay,
The consequence and instruction
Of the natural tendency to corruption.

Love or war become as factions
Through the agency of chemical reactions,
The actions being the chains of reactions,
Whether thinking, doing, or rapt in attention,
For all that happens is of chemical reaction.

At its most rudimentary bottom,
Chemical reactions are rearrangements of atoms,
These being species of molecules
That with perhaps additions and deletions
Then go on to constitute another one, by fate,
Although they sometimes only change shape,

But too can be consumed and torn apart,
Either as a whole or in part, so cruel,
As a source of atoms for another molecule.

Molecules have neither motive nor purpose to act,
Neither an inclination to go on to react
Nor any urge to remain unreacted;
So then why do reactions occur if unacted?

Molecules are but loosely structured
And so they can be easily ruptured,
For reactions may occur if the process energy norm
Is degraded into a more dispersed and chaotic form,

And so as they usually are constantly subject
To the tendency to lose energy, as the abject
Jostling carries it away to the surroundations,
Reactions being misadventure’s transformations,

It then being that some transient arrangements
May suddenly be frozen into permanences
As the energy leaps away to other experiences.

So, molecules are a stage in which the play goes on,
But not so fast that the forms cannot seize upon;

But really, why do molecules have such fragility,
For if their atoms were as tightly bound as nuclei,
Then the universe would have died, being frozen,
Long before the awakening of the forms chosen,

Or if molecules were as totally free to react
Every single time they touched a neighbor’s pact
Then all events would have taken place so rapidly
And so very crazily and haphazardly

That the rich attributes of the world we know
Would not have had the needed time to grow.

Ah, but it is all of the necessitated restraint,
For it ever takes time a scene to paint,
As such as in the unfolding of a leaf,
The endurations for any stepping feat,

As of the emergence of consciousness
And the paused ends of energy’s restlessness:
It’s of the controlled consequence of collapse
Rather than one that’s wholly precipitous.

So now all is known of our heres and nows
Within this parentheses of the eternal boughs,
As well as the why and how of it all has come,
And of our universe’s end, but that others become.

Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.

(The verse lines, being like molecules warmed,
Continually broke apart and reformed
About the rhymes which tried to be non intrusions,
Eventually all flexibly stabilizing to conclusions.)

Quoting tim wood

Two by Robert Frost, one so short it's done before you've begun. The second best read slowly.

Again, thanks. I'd never read or listened to either of these poems. I enjoyed them both.
First one. Short and perhaps a 'quickie' like a haiku, capturing a moment's thought. Or a beautiful distillation of what 'Devotion' means to Frost.
Second. Yes, a longer one but just right. And you're right- a slow read like a slow hand, covering a silky smooth line or curve. Love. Will read again...

Unfortunately, I have no great background knowledge or understanding of Frost.
Perhaps you can say more about what these poems meant to him, and to you.

-----

About the book you recommended 'Creating Poetry'. I've been reading the book back to front !
Fascinated by Drury's writing in Ch XI.
Appreciating and drawing inspiration from the the interrelationship among all the arts and sciences: everything that's vividly human

Also in Ch XII - Finishing - with its several senses of finishing.
In 'Failure, Irritations and Difficulties' p195:

He writes that it can be helpful for a poet

Drury: ' to have enough confidence to be tough on his/her work, to feel at home with 'unsuccess'. One way is to emulate Keats's negative capability,

" that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubt, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason..."

I'm curious as to when and why you bought this book. What does poetry mean to you ?
Reading, writing and reflection-wise ?

Quoting tim wood

I have noticed in too many poems online small, deliberate errors. I'm guessing a "branding" by the producer. I read that mapmakers would include small deliberate errors in their maps, to protect their intellectual property. But with poetry?

Do you have any examples ? What kind of a 'small deliberate error' would be useful as a 'brand' ?
I have never heard of mapmakers making deliberate mistakes - wouldn't that be dangerous and have a negative effect on their reliability ?
Goodness sake, someone might even write a poem about their misadventure - but who would listen ?

Quoting Gus Lamarch

The Hermit

Hermit greeting time
Out for a leisurely stroll
Walking stick in hand.
— charles ferraro

Reading and rereading the poem you used as an example, it seems to me that the use of the technique of saving words, ends up also making it difficult to deconstruct the poem so that its metaphysical substance becomes evident - in a Sufi reading, obviously -.

@charles ferraro
Would be interested to hear your, or others, thoughts on this reply.
In particular, is the haiku technique just about 'saving words' ?
Where does any 'metaphysical substance' lie in a haiku poem ?
Why would anyone want to deconstruct it - as 'in a Sufi reading' ?

Quoting Gus Lamarch

Most likely, the technique also demonstrates that poetry has its own metaphysics, however, its method of analysis may be totally different from the poetic Sufi method, which I demonstrated in the original post.

I've asked a few questions and made comments re this so-called 'authentic metaphysics'.
I wonder if there is a similar concern of @Gus Lamarch re what might be considered 'authentic poetry'.
It isn't spelled out as such...but some talk about 'good' or 'real' poetry as if it is something from on high.
Only for superior beings...
Is that right ?

From: 'Creating Poetry' - John Drury
Ch XI - Other Arts, Other Influences, p184

Poems can imitate musical forms.
Michael Harper uses jazz as both inspiration and subject matter in poems such as 'Dear John, Dear Coltrane' and 'A Love Supreme' ( title of Coltrane's four movement masterpiece).
— Drury

The music:
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Full Album] (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU

The poem:

Dear John, Dear Coltrane
BY MICHAEL S. HARPER

a love supreme, a love supreme
a love supreme, a love supreme

Sex fingers toes
in the marketplace
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina—
witness to this love
in this calm fallow
of these minds,
there is no substitute for pain:
genitals gone or going,
seed burned out,
you tuck the roots in the earth,
turn back, and move
by river through the swamps,
singing: a love supreme, a love supreme;
what does it all mean?
Loss, so great each black
woman expects your failure
in mute change, the seed gone.
You plod up into the electric city—
your song now crystal and
the blues. You pick up the horn
with some will and blow
into the freezing night:
a love supreme, a love supreme—

Dawn comes and you cook
up the thick sin 'tween
impotence and death, fuel
the tenor sax cannibal
heart, genitals, and sweat
that makes you clean—
a love supreme, a love supreme—

Why you so black?
cause I am
why you so funky?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
why you so sweet?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
a love supreme, a love supreme:

So sick
you couldn't play Naima,
so flat we ached
for song you'd concealed
with your own blood,
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love:
a love supreme, a love supreme—
a love supreme, a love supreme—

Quoting PoeticUniverse

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.)

Just curious. Turning it around. Does opera inspire your poetry ?
What do you listen to when you write ?

About operatic influences.
According to Drury in 'Creating Poetry', p184:

Drury:Walt Whitman modelled his long, flowing lines partly on the recitatives and arias of Italian grand opera, (and partly on the Old Testament).

-----

Quoting The Walt Whitman Archive

Italian opera and opera singers were an important influence on Whitman's creative development during those crucial years in the early 1850s when Leaves of Grass was germinating. Probably no other single influence is more important than this one.

When we consider how many poems Whitman calls songs or chants, and how many references he makes to the voice and to singing, we come to realize that music and singing were central to the creation of his poetry. "But for the opera," he declared, "I could never have written Leaves of Grass " (qtd. in Trowbridge 166).

https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_42.html#:~:text=The%20poem%20in%20which%20Whitman%20mentions%20opera%20most,of%20musical%20influences%20on%20his%20life%20and%20poetry.

More musings. Metaphysical or otherwise.
Poetry in music; music in poetry.
Opera. Not to everyone's taste.
But, here, an example of the inter-related artistic process: inspiration and creativity:

Quoting NY Times: Music - Walt Whitman

“Whitman noticed how the theater was filled with both the elite and the roughs,” Mr. Reynolds said. “He began to view opera as a way to bridge social gaps and bring people together on the level of beauty.”...

But no singer seems to have influenced Whitman more than Alboni, the contralto. She “opened the possibility of both ‘heart’ and ‘art’ music,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Alboni appears in Whitman’s reminiscences; “Leaves of Grass”; and his memoir “Specimen Days.” In the opera-rich poem “Proud Music of the Storm,” he mentions her by name:

The teeming lady comes,
The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni’s self I hear.

Opera may have provided a way for Whitman to process the horrors of the Civil War. His slim book “Memoranda During the War,” which inspired “Crossing,” is fragmented into vignettes with operatic flourishes: observations, even grisly details, followed by sweeping, impassioned statements about broader subjects like youth, America and conflict...

In both his poetry and prose, Whitman wrote with a rhythm that took war “out of the realm of either the merely shocking or the distressingly gory,” Mr. Reynolds added. “He had always used poetry, ever since 1855, as a means of cleansing or uplifting the darker aspect of human existence.”...

And a few months before the poet died, nearly 40 years after he first heard Alboni sing, he described to Traubel a scene from “Lucia di Lammermoor”: leaning “way out of his chair — his gray hair shaken, his eye bright with fire, his voice deep and full of music.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/arts/music/walt-whitman-leaves-of-grass-opera-crossing-aucoin.html

Quoting Jack Cummins

There was, of course, the tradition of metaphysical poets, such as John Donne, but it was a very specific worldview and probably not one which could be seen as truly objective.

Metaphysical poetry is based on the conceit of juxtaposing the sublime and the mundane. Isn't that the challenge of metaphysics itself? Trying to express what is beyond the mundane, through the terminology of the mundane....

Reply to Pantagruel
In a way, the metaphysical poets were trying to juxtapose 'the sublime and the mundane', but it was in a rather different way from contemporary modes of thinking. Just imagine if they wrote on this forum, even converting their ideas to prose. I think that they would be seen as ridiculous and would come under fierce attack. I think philosophy has got to the point where the mundane is preferred to the magnificent.

Quoting Jack Cummins

I think philosophy has got to the point where the mundane is preferred to the magnificent.

Hmm. I do you think it is a linear progression over time though? Or are we all not simply creatures of the world into which we have been born? I have a small book on the American Transcendentalist thinkers. The introduction describes in detail how this transcendentalist mode of thought linked with the historical events of the American Revolution and Civil war, how there was a general atmosphere of cataclysmic upheaval and the overturning of the all accepted social meanings, and it was this that led to the transcendentalist point of view being so genuinely embraced.

Perhaps we are waiting for the next great event to spawn the next great evolution of philosophical thought?

Reply to Pantagruel
I am wondering how it varies from culture to culture as well as in different times. I was rather surprised by how mundane some of the discussion on the site is. I find this thread discussion more interesting than most. What I do wonder about is whether certain emphasis on certain philosophy topics is because many of the people engaging are from American culture. I think that there does appear to more openness to the unusual in some circles in England, and this may be true in some parts of America too. But, I definitely believe that there are plenty of creative bohemians, who probably write, even if they are often regarded as outsiders. Maybe they find more acceptance in the creative arts communities.

Reply to Amity

I think poetry is primarily a form of art, rather than metaphysics. Using an economy of words, the poet enjoys painting vivid nuanced portraits of life one can experience, enjoy, identify with, and, if so inclined, try to contemplate the meaning of -- if any. Like musical compositions, I think poems portray and communicate the many different ways in which life can be lived and how those ways of living make one feel. Obviously, certain poets can do this better than others and with an economy of just the right words.

Words

Spirit chisels,
Sharp
Pointed
Full of power.

Cutting laser-like
Right into,
And passing through
The massive stubborn heart
Of muted being.

Gently,
Lovingly
Caressingly,
Sculpting all the while.

Creating
Myriad, meaningful, manifold forms
Of rational eloquence
From the otherwise dumb,
Dense core
Of silent being.

Reply to Jack Cummins I thought philosophy was kind of the boon that the self-recognition of creative thought conferred on itself? Like the worst day being a philosopher is better than the best day actually working? Even if you do have to drink hemlock sometimes....

edit:
This is interesting. I recently read a book by Collingwood that made me want to read all of Whitehead's works on process philosophy, so I bought Science and the Modern World, and another book that hasn't arrived yet. I've been wanting to read it but the Essays I'm reading now is a huge book, so I'm focussing on finishing it. This little chat inspired me to sneak a peak at the Whitehead though. The first line of the foreward:

It has been said of nineteenth-century English Romantic poetry that it enshrines the best English-Language philosophy....When, by the early nineteenth century, the powerful industrial confluence of science and technology had rendered cosmic disenchantment the inevitable fate....

Sounds exactly like the kind of creation of the poetic sensibility by the dominant spirit of the culture that we were discussing.

Quoting Amity

Just curious. Turning it around. Does opera inspire your poetry ?
What do you listen to when you write ?

No, not regular opera, but more like the 'Phantom of the Opera', which music doesn't seem to ever wear out, or just any emotional music.

My poetic style is kind of a blend of Shelley and Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, as in particular the Rubaiyat quatrain of ten syllables, with some variations:

The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.

Such as:

“I’m the darkest,” boasts the Shadow to the Night.
“No,” gloats Midnight, “compared to me you’re bright.”
“You floodlights!” crows Starless Space, “Stop your fight.
The darkest plight is the lack of Love’s delight!”

I'm still hoping that some of my more lyrical poems can get sung, but may have to settle for now for some the Rubaiyat's quatrains sung, since two singers have done so that I found and incorporated into videos (they changed some of the words to make it easier to sing):

Dorthy Ashby:










Michael Montecrosssa (Bob Dylan style)(my favorite Rubaiyat rendition):




And finally, one of mine that I sang, ha, ha, needs improvement:

Reply to Pantagruel
I find that whether working or doing creative activities some days just flow so much better than others, with or without hemlock. It can be like being on different metaphysical or energy frequencies I find.

Reply to PoeticUniverse
Good to hear you sing one of your poems.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it.

I've been following the trail of John Drury. One of his poems is accompanied by a lutanist.
Unfortunately, the vid doesn't play for me.
https://www.ablemuse.com/v11/poetry/john-drury/ghazal-lutanist

Quoting Ghazal of the Lutanist - John Drury

The poem first appeared in Able Muse (Summer 2011) and was reprinted in John’s most recent book, Sea Level Rising (Able Muse Press, 2015). The book’s website includes a video in which the poet’s reading of the poem is accompanied by lutanist Rodney Stucky playing pieces by Dowland. Here’s the link.


Ghazal of the Lutanist

Ever Dowland, ever doleful, the lutanist says come again
to melancholy, whether he’s silent or plays “Come Again.”

Invitations that mention “deadly pain” and wail “out, alas”
won’t seduce anyone but a masochist who prays Come! Again!

Torches at court leave shadows for uneasy liaisons,
dark rooms where ladies-in-waiting, in silent lays, come again.

Courtiers whisper on back stairs, place notes in ruffled sleeves,
but the lutanist can’t catch the phrase. Come again?

The page rubs his eyes before stretching gut strings along the lute
and poking around for the tuning peg’s eye. Dark days come again.

When panes of leaded glass fill like goblets with tinted light,
John is fingering scales on his lute as sun rays come again.

John Drury

Reply to PoeticUniverse
Thanks for all of these. Will listen later.

Reply to charles ferraro

Quoting charles ferraro

I think poems portray and communicate the many different ways in which life can be lived and how those ways of living make one feel. Obviously, certain poets can do this better than others and with an economy of just the right words.

There's so much more to poetry than I ever thought.
I tend to think that poetry like philosophy is for all and any age.
Not all words in a poem are right but does that matter?
If the aim is to encourage creativity in any possible way to pose questions or paint a picture...
About life.

Quoting Amity

I wonder if there is a similar concern of Gus Lamarch re what might be considered 'authentic poetry'.

My concept of "authentic metaphysics" is nothing more than a "substrate of the metaphysical realm, completely substantiated only by poetic ideas".

Sufi analysis shows that, through certain writing methods, the poetic "essence" - aka, the idea which was projected through the text - can indeed exist. From this disclosure, I end up defending the position that, in addition to a "general" metaphysical field, poetry also includes its own - authentic - field of ideas.

If other concepts contain their own "authentic metaphysics", only a thorough research can provide an answer, which will often be questionable.

It seems to me that poetry does not always have to be about what humanity experiences as being pleasant and/or beautiful. It can also describe and/or render that which is disturbing and ugly to humanity.

Oh! Before I Forget ... !!!!!

"I Think therefore I Am!"
He Shouted Victoriously, Planting the Ego-Banner Firmly
In the Field of Consciousness,
Staking Out Its Claim
To Indubitably Certain Existence.

But a Wiser, Ancient, God-like Voice Replied:

"Behold, now, Arrogant One
The Horrific, Metaphysical Ego Cancellation!
Behold, How a Thoughtless Being is Possible!

"How Nothingness can Feel
As it Gradually,
Incrementally,
Dreadfully,
Chips Away at Your Cherished,
Seemingly Inviolable Memory of Self.

"Behold, now, Arrogant One,
As, Bit-by-Bit,
The Void Inexorably Encroaches Upon
And Consumes
Your Person
Your Self
Your Who
Your Ego
Your I

"Where, Oh Arrogant One,
Will You Be
After You Have Thoroughly
Misplaced Your Self?

"Will 'You' Be at All?
Will it be Your Who?
Whose Who Will be There Then,
As You Dumbly Stare Out into Empty Space?

"Amidst Your Aimless, Pointless Wanderings,
Will You Still be You Inside?
Who, or What, Will be There Then
To help you Remember Your
No-Longer-Recollected-Simply-Deleted-I?

"And if You, Oh Arrogant One,
Being Closest to and One with Your Self,
Can Forget Your Self,
Can Feel Your Self
Evaporate and Slip Away into Darkness,
Then, I Wonder,
How Much Could Your Self Have Been Worth in The First Place?

"And if, as They Claim, You are Created
In the Image and Likeness of Your God,
Then, Oh Arrogant One
Does This Mean that You
Are the Son
Of an Absent-Minded Deity,
A Deity Renowned above all Others for Forgetting Itself?

"That You Pray to The Magnificent Lord Alzheimer?"

Quoting charles ferraro

It seems to me that poetry does not always have to be about what humanity experiences as being pleasant and/or beautiful. It can also describe and/or render that which is disturbing and ugly to humanity.

Indeed, "Poetry" is written about what "Is", without attributes or characteristics, because its fundamental "essence" - Ideal - is metaphysically "perfect", as in "limitless".

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Quoting tim wood

Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, e. e. cummings. These three worth the dime obtaining complete collections of their poetry, usually in one volume, for long-term browsing. And worth a quick look at reviews of collections. If memory serves, and maybe it doesn't, with Dickenson and Frost there were some issues with editing. Not a biggie.

Appreciate further thoughts and advice. Re editing issues. Yes a biggie, if it changes the rhythm, meaning or aesthetic appeal. I remember reading that one editor made Dickinson Dashless.

Quoting tim wood

Frost wrote and lectured on his poetry and his approach to his craft. Among the things important to him was to catch what he called the sound of sentences, the meaningful sound of talk as if heard through a door, the words themselves obscured...

I love it when writers share their insights, methods, etc.
Of Frost, I will be reading more; enjoyed the re-writing story.
The importance, of a comma. Or not.

Re: Home Burial
'Visceral vividness' of a certain kind. Yes. Captured there on the stairs - powerful intensity and tension.
Unforgettable scene. Burials; repression and oppression. Raises a lot of questions...

-----

I think I will leave this thread here. It's been amazing to read the thoughts and examples of personal creativity. @PoeticUniverse astounding.

The marriage of poetry, music and song when it sounds just right to someone's ears. Even if not to others'.

So, to end with a well-known poem sung worldwide at a certain time of year:

Cue Rabbie Burns.
( Warning: not the usual singalong version )

Eddi Reader - Auld Lang Syne
From her 'Sings The Songs Of Robert Burns' LP, 2003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ppqjbd_wHw

Less weel-kent excerpts of poems, songs with descriptions, here:

Quoting Robert Burns - Famous poems and songs

10 MOST FAMOUS POEMS AND SONGS BY ROBERT BURNS
Burns was one of the leaders of Romanticism and he had a major influence on the movement. Romantic writers emphasized on emotion and individualism; as well as glorification of all the past and of nature.

https://learnodo-newtonic.com/robert-burns-famous-poems

Slainte :party:

Quoting Amity

It's been amazing to read the thoughts and examples of personal creativity.

You've contributed much to this thread. Well done!

Good recitations for poems can be a great as singing them, plus not all poems can be easily sung.

Here are some good recitations:



The following printed versions of two quatrains got left out of the video, plus printing for the omaresque recitation at the end that I don't have the words for (perhaps someone who has better hearing than I have could transcribe them.)

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
“My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!”

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on The Grass,
And in Thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

I also use the computer voices Brian and Amy, which are pretty good. My art is digitally composed in Photoshop by moving parts around to good places. Some of the moving character sequences were done in iclone by its features and digital compositing.

My long project of extending The Rubaiyat with my own quatrains has reached a usable stage, but the videos are hours long… (I could post them.)

Reply to tim wood

Example of a metaphysical poem.

To Run Lovely Rings 'Round Each Other

Within My Mind's Imagination,
The Boundless World Surrounds
Me,
And You are in It

And Within Your Mind's Imagination,
I Imagine,
The Boundless World
Surrounds
You,
And I am in It.

And Within Their Minds' Imaginations,
I Imagine,
The Boundless World
Surrounds
Them,
And We are in It.

Magical Imaginations,
Eternally Born of Nothing.
All Subtly Intertwined and
Secretly Married from Within.

Magical Imaginations,
Blind Cosmic Conjurers,
Omnipresent,
Static,
Space-Time Travelers.

Magical Imaginations,
Perpetually Creating
Familiar Alien Visions
Of Magnificent Vaulted Prison Ceilings,
Filled with Spiraling Galaxies,
And Scintillating, Starry Skies,
And Bottomless Black-Hole Pits,
And Circle-Dancing Orbs.

Magical Imaginations,
Presenters and Portrayers of
The Unceasing Flux
And Shapes of Being.
Trapped forever
Within their Own Unreasoning Creations,
Forever asking, "Why?"

Magical Imaginations,
Despondent Creators,
Whose Fallen Fate It Is
To Be but Stages
Throughout the Ages
For the Blind Play-Acting Productions
Of That Unseen Other Will Within.

Magical Imaginations,
Despondent Creators
Forever being Forced
To Run Lovely Rings 'Round Each Other.

[i]"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning
hours,
ran to the market place, and cried incessantly:
'I seek God! I seek God!'
As many of those who did not believe in God
were standing around just then,
he provoked much laughter.
Has he got lost? asked one.
Did he lose his way like a child? asked another.
Or is he hiding?

Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?
Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you.
We have killed him--you and I.
All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this?
How could we drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers
who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too, decompose.
God is dead.
God remains dead.
And we have killed him."[/i] - Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883 AD

I cannot recall any poem as explicit in its essence through the content of its text as this one by Nietzsche.

"The gods, like everything else in existence, rot, because they emanate from existence itself."

The gods
In their spotting
Are the only ones
Non-rotting
While every
eternity
Bloodery
Or nitty
Nor witty
Rots to the bone
Their flesh stays young
Like their every tone
In the waters of heaven
In the aromas of hell
On Stratford on Avon
In all that they tell
Their creation runs freely
At least, so it should
Like Dan oh so Steely
Down there under the Hood
Consider them dead though
As our friend once proclaimed
Give it a go bro
Nihilistically maimed
Dwelling the Earths
Undetermined and steady
Finding love on the road
Route 66
Lacks a 6 at the end
Or at the beginning
Is it that what they meant
And made us write down
The points that we do
Or faces that frown
And on and on and on
On and on and on
And on and on and on
And on and on and on it goes
On and on and on
Oh and on and on
Yay bro's
On and on on tippy toes
Thankfull am I
They made it all happen
That I walk on and by
Them so I reackon
I tell them to screw
Turn the blind eye in them
The big bangs they blew
An Inflation divine gem

All hail to the gods...
God damn them!

[i]"They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being."[/i] - Epimenides

The first written case of a "Liar Paradox" - c. 600 BC -.

It's amazing how contemporary we are to the ancient Greeks.

As it would be an offense to compare them to our times.

Reply to PoeticUniverse

I've actually tried to sing your poetic words. Withou actually assigning meaning to them they sound great words!

Quoting Rstotalloss

I've actually tried to sing your poetic words. Withou actually assigning meaning to them they sound great words!

Ah, good! Are you a good singer? We could make a musical.