(All Images by The Drifter)
“It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”
– William Carlos Williams
“Look at / what passes for the new. / You will not find it there but in /
despised poems.” – William Carlos Williams
The above lines appear so simple that any literate child could have written them in her or his off moments.
At the same time, it took me twenty years of periodically re-reading and returning to these lines before I was able to understand them in their deeper levels, or in what Ralph Ellison called “the higher frequencies.”
I always knew there was something there, but just what it was always seemed to elude me.
It was this mystery, this enigma, this most simple yet deepest of riddles, which kept me returning to these lines, as with so many other great lines of poetry.
When you know what it is but also know you don’t really know what it is (and Socrates said the most important thing to know is what you don’t know), the mind-heart-body-spirit must engage with the work in a way that is beyond mere mental exercise, but also is mental exercise of the highest kind.
By the word “high,” I mean that it makes you feel high.
The word “kind” in another guise is another thing poetry is, even when it’s savagely satirical.
The honest and plain truth is that poetry says what nothing else can say, whether that something else be politics, science, philosophy, or even religion, which is why poetry is a religion to many.
It is a religion to an uncountable, indefinable, and scattered multitude, now and always.
It is what made us human (“in the beginning was the Word”) and it will be the last thing to go when and if we ever become no longer human.
There is nothing to believe; but somehow poetry makes you believe it anyway.
Key Notation: A novel like MOBY DICK or JANE EYRE or a Nathaniel Hawthorne or Carson McCullers short story are also, very much so, “poetry.” Wallace Stevens said that we should go around collecting poetry from the epiphanic moments in our lives and put those moments into words only afterwards; and so on one level, there is no greater argument for the holiness of poetry in and of itself than this.
The Drifter
Saragun Springs 
Hello Drifter
Those are wonderful lines by the elder Williams and the current.
Unless it is something sentimental writ by one’s Aunt Louise, poetry is one of those rare things that has neither “good” nor “bad”–but it has a great category that has no other side. Truly great poetry (like “Dover Beach” or Shakespeare’s sonnets) connects with the suddenness of an Alien face-hugger, but without the down end result. No one knows why, really, some things just shine better.
Leila
LikeLike
Hi Leila
I like to remember that William Carlos Williams’ first book (self-published, like much of his work) was called TO YOU WHO WANTS IT. The title was actually in Spanish and I don’t remember the exact words, but the translation is: To You Who Wants It. Anyone can understand poetry who wants to; but one very much must want to, first and foremost of all, or the effect will be gone before it arrives. Thank you so much for everything as always!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
We can never too much WCW. “There is nothing to believe; but somehow poetry makes you believe it anyway.” Brilliant observation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, David.
And this is a great place to mention William Wantling again, since he appears to me to be, on many levels, a child of William Carlos Williams and H.D., as Williams and H.D. themselves were both children of Whitman and Dickinson. Thanks for introducing me to Wantling’s work/s! Another great one produced by the great state of Illinois!
D
LikeLiked by 2 people
Afraid I couldn’t read the words in the last frame – I zoomed but it remained a blur on my machine. But I’m with you all the way on the awesome power of great poems to rattle round in your head all your life. Only last year, a dying friend of 50 years standing, and suffering grossly disabling dementia, could readily quote several lines from Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King.’ bw mick
LikeLike
Thanks for sharing, Mick!
I cannot think of a better way to exit this vale of tears than by pronouncing lines of Tennyson. As William Butler Yeats once opined, “And I may dine at journey’s end with Landor and with Donne.”
D
LikeLike
Hi Drifter
The line does sound resistant to causal and even deep thought. This is what I like about your writing–the ability to tackle the most complicated topics–Such as poetry. Great quote by W. Stevens.
We live in these erasing times. Where an algorithm(s) has copied the entire canon of human literature. I think, it would be good to go back to the pen and paper.
CJA
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi CJA
Yes, THE MACHINE does seem to be swallowing all at the moment. The question now is, Yes we can do this, but SHOULD we do it? Examples include cloning animals and humans and dropping nuclear bombs, among other science fiction horrors that are now part of daily life often celebrated by the masses and definitely cheered on by the mainstream culture. We are too smart for our own good and not smart enough to understand that the Middle Way is the way to go. Balance and beauty are found there and only there. Hope you’re doing well despite all.
The D
LikeLike
Hi DWB
Yes it is science fiction of the worst kind. The Government posting the war like a sinister video game.
I use to have a degree of respect for science, but now I see it’s a tool for money making schemes and world terror. I hate the experimentation on animals, so our mostly corrupt human race can benefit. Which includes the unregulated abuse of farm animals. Sometimes I see a farm and I think of Auschwitz. Especially the ones that are long corrugated industrialized meat factories. Where the animals have no space or life at all. It’s a horror show.
I liked what you said the other day about the innocence and loyalty of animals, and why we miss them so much. That was really good. Thanks!
CJA
LikeLike