Time is one No One’s Side
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
~ T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
In an essay from 1919 Eliot said some shit about the personality being something that personality-strong persons should want (occasionally) to escape from … Load of shit (as far as I am concerned). He said:
“… of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”
If I could escape, even through art, from my personality (hupostasis) I would cease to be Edward. Fuck that! I’d rather be the drunken, rambling pseudo-poet that I am, rather than some plastic “artist” living as an artifact of his “tradition.”
So much for Eliot.
But what about REAL poetic theory? Is there such a thing?
My answer is yes. And I shall use my beloved as an example:
Sylvia Plath strangled her own life for the sake of her art … She watched her children crawl about like slugs as she wrote the masterpiece known today as Ariel. She died for her art, and I am prepared to do the same. Here’s what SHE had to say:
“… everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Eloquence (and proper grammar) might be absent from her statement, but the sentiment (all-embracing) is there!
Sylvia is telling us that the highest to the greatest is cause for poetry. A quick blowjob in a subway station, or a major fuck in a five-star hotel (you see where my mind is at!) … All are worthy of poetry.
She herself was worthy of poetry, and I’d like to write about her … I just don’t feel worthy. So here I am going to perform a shameless imitation of my beloved. Harold Bloom would likely approve (and for those who understand this reference, you get my silent applause). So here I
go:
Listening to Van Morrison While Guzzling Vodka
A drink of water laced with vodka slows my soul
But sets it moving
Why does Born to Run suddenly seem like great poetry?
Because I am drunk.
Why do I think back to those golden days when I fed ducks in the parks and spoke cryptic words with my grandpop?
Because I recall what it felt like to be HUMAN.
Days take their toll, and love dies …
What is a man to do?
We … I … must remember that my soul resides only in this world:
In the air, in the trees, the geese, the grass that tickles my feet …
I must remember …
I cannot.
A veil has fallen.
Something called ….
Who fucking cares?!!
A veil has fallen.
My eyes are dim … not like Milton’s, but like a drunk who stares too long at Botticelli.
So what, then?
The world recedes and I call out to it with the only faculty I have left: my voice.
No one answers.
So I spit at the world and await a fight that I know will never come ….
And so my Sylvia awaits an academic reply. Sorry Sweetie, not yet … too much vodka in my system. Someday, my glorious angel, I shall do you justice in “academia” (whatever the fuck that means).
In the meantime, I shall lend you this:
“Curiosity killed the cat …
Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and On the Road …”
OR BETTER YET: Sylvia’s Colossus and Ariel!
You surpassed all of them, my love … all of them.
I’ll see you when my love grows, Sylvia … It won’t be too long. We’ll soon embrace.
In the meantime, take my tribute as a poetic memorial (if such a thing exists – we’ll have to ask Shakespeare!) and remember:
A world of experience does not create a person. For no creator exists. Not even the world.
Let us love from beyond the grave, ghoulishly, if it must be …
