Lawrence: I doubt that you were prescient in your poem. I believe that the
contents of what you wrote had been there in you, “jumbled up” somehow,
unknowable by you, in principle, and thus not readily accessible. But if
people’s lives are only huge chunks of text, they have a natural tendency to
show up, they will “out” one way or another: in stories, chats with others, or
through poetry. Therefore this jumbled up content in is made up of your past,
present and some kind of modality (probability about what could possibly
unfold) in it, and your verses were its mode of existence. This means that
contents of our mind/soul/personhood/self will out, with or without our
explicit desire for them to do so. That’s how I feel, but I may be completely
wrong.
On Dec 5, 2015, at 4:48 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Borges in his lecture "A Poet's Creed," said, "I think of myself as being
essentially a reader. As you are aware, I have ventured into writing; but I
think that what I have read is far more important than what I have written.
For one reads what one likes -- yet one writes not what one would like to
write, but what one is able to write."
If I am simply writing what I am able to write, then I would agree with
Borges, but that hasn't been my experience. If I am writing my best poetry
then it is not I who am able, it is something else, and I write what I must
write. My "ability" is submerged or set aside -- at least that is the way it
works -- or feels -- just an image or two comes to my mind and my "ability"
is to not turn away from it. Beyond that, where does it all come from? Was
it all there in my mind, jumbled up, needing to be sorted out. That is what
Susan used to tell me, and yet . . . consider the image that began my last
poem, a poem written on December 1st, 2015:
I marched a long while
Near the edge of town,
Looking out, having no
Place to go and no reason to
Stay. I checked my weapons --
Getting dark as it was and night
Was when it could be --
And then the last stanza
Their boots and the clank of
Their gear. I saw their gleaming
Teeth and smiles. I held my
Rifle in my left hand. They came,
Knowing we had no steadfastness.
Having lost my own, I drew my
Colt and pulled the hammer back.
If I were in truth (rather than in metaphor) to march along the edge of town,
what is beyond that edge is a lot of open area, desert and mountains and the
Loma Linda Medical Center that a few months ago determined that Susan could
not be saved. On the next major street over from the Medical Center, on
Waterman a shooting took place on December 2nd that killed 14 and injured
many more. My son lives a very short distance from the facility where the
shooting took place, and my grandson was working at an Amazon.com facility,
heard the gunfire and was there when his facility was locked down.
So I was metaphorically walking post at the edge of my town a short time
before the shooting took place. Was my poem prescient, describing what was
shortly to occur, a militant attack? That doesn't seem likely; so was it
mere coincidence? Perhaps.
Had I been writing what I as able to write as Borges said, I would say it was
undoubtedly a coincidence, but since I was writing what I must, I have doubts
. . . sitting here thinking about them . . . waiting for the next unbidden
thoughts to sound in my mind.
Lawrence
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Dr. Djordje Vidanović
Professor of Semantics
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš
Ćirila i Metodija 2, 18000, Niš, Serbia
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djordje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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