Barbara GuestWounded Joy
The most important act of a poem is to reach further than the page, so that we are aware of another aspect of the art. This will introduce us to its spiritual essence. This essence has no limits. What we are setting out to do is to delimit the work of art, so that it appears to have no beginning and no end, so that it overruns the boundaries of the poem on the page. All of the arts share this need for delimiting.Coleridge said that a poem must be both obscure and clear. This is what we search for in our poem, this beautiful balance between the hidden and the open.
What is this poem that appears to be opening within our hands? Mallarme says that Poetry is the intensely musical and emotional state of the Soul.
Do you ever notice as you write that no matter what there is on the written page something appears to be in back of everything that is said, a little ghost. I judge that this ghost is there to remind us there is always more, an elsewhere, a hiddenness, a secondary form of speech, an eye blink. Not on the print before us. And yet the secret is that this secondary form of writing is what backs up the primary one, it is the obscure essence that lies within the poem that is not necessary to put into language, but that the poem must hint at, must say "this is not all I can tell you. There is something more I do not say." Leave this little echo to haunt the poem, do not give it form, but let it assume its own ghost-like shape. It has the shape of your own soul as you write.
John Donne wrote this very modern paragraph describing the state of his mind troubling his prayers, but he might as well be describing, and probably is, the state of his mind as he approaches a poem:
A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, and anything a nothing, a fancy a chimera in my braine troubles me.He can also be saying that these things trouble him as he reaches for his pen to make a poem. The presence of a hidden anxiety about a poem might be a necessary prodding to go intensely into the poem. A poem should tremble a little. Again remember, "Poetry is nothing but the intensely musical and emotional state of the Soul."
Baudelaire tells us that a poem should have within it "a dose of the bizarre." This can be a wake-up call within the poem, to say the poet is nodding, has become too mundane, too involved with a daily recounting. I love this phrase. I suppose it is the basis of Surrealism, but in Surrealism everything is bizarre. I prefer this little dosage. When one is nodding or recapitulating events of daily life and we become mundane, then this little "dose of the bizarre," like holding a minnow in your hands, or a feather of a riotous color, not too much, or the bizarre will overwhelm the poem and to have nothing but a bizarre account can be very boring.
To sail off on a ship of delight, a brief, necessary voyage, within the poem to encourage pleasure, to escape the mundane, the chain of struggle. If and when necessary, this pleasure will sparkle at the hour of a poem's struggle to endure, the poem's midnight.
Rene de Gourmont suggested that the past must constantly be re-invented. As you take issue with the poetry of the past, remember that it has its usages, its declarations and affirmation, because it has existed so long. Think of the past as the modern poem runs along beside you. As the past darkens the window.
In the youth of my poetry I was fortunate to be surrounded by painters in the Art movement of Abstract Expressionism and I learned from them.
First I noticed these painters appeared to have a lot more joy than did the poets. They were more playful! Their ideas were exploding on the canvas and they had a sense of freedom the poets were only beginning to learn from them. This was perhaps a heritage of Surrealism, but the fact that they were a MOVEMENT and were accepted even by the commercial world, which meant money, lent them this freedom. Not only were they enjoying themselves, but they were a MOVEMENT. And a profitable one. The entire city of New York liked their art. More importantly the air around them was hesitating as it turned into the moment. The idea of a moment with its special apparatus is a good thing for poetry, also.
No subject is introduced, the painting is spontaneous. The subject is found as you explore the canvas. And that is a useful idea. I remember when a painter visited and I had a little poem in the typewriter and he looked at it, the little unwritten poem, but with its title already secured. The painter said "never give a poem a title, let the poem find its subject."
Remember Picasso said, "you may give a painting a title, but it always turns out to be something else." Frank O'Hara's poem, "Sardines," plays with this idea. Another thing these painters borrowed from Surrealism, was the use of "accident." I know that I have accidentally typed a wrong word and thought, "well that's a better word, anyway."
Behind these sentences is the idea of no pre-planning. I can always tell when I am reading a pre-planned poem; there is no freshness in it. No mysterious element of change, as when the poem lies quivering on its page, its contents wounded, yet the poet is joyful.
An admonishment not to be fearful of tarnishing your wings. To rest in the glow of great poets; they always have something to tell you. To welcome the substance that glitters and rubs off.
I cannot end a discussion of poetics without stressing the power of the Imagination. To lean on it! To trust it! Imagination is the single most important element in poetry. When I examine a poem, it is not for its form or style. There are plenty of "successful" poems. One must look for the vibrating imagination hid under those stones of form or style. How empty is all their dazzle without imagination.
Coleridge wrote that in his youth he was "trembling with imaginative power." Imagination is the absent flower of Mallarme, a turbulent presence to be evoked.
Barbara Guest's most recent book is Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey St. Press, 2002), in which these essays appear.
