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Judith Beveridge on Poetry and Spirituality …

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From an excellent article by Australian poet Judith Beveridge written for the New South Wales Writers Centre …

Throughout history, poetry has always been the most powerful and effective form for addressing and exploring deep spiritual questions.

Partly this is because poetry is connected so intimately with the breath. Poets know that the breath can act as an interpreting spirit, something which will help move, uplift and carry lived experience into rhythms and tones which allow both writer and reader to feel as if they are in communion and intense dialogue with the world around them.

The full article can be read on this link

A poem only comes alive when it is taken down from the book-shelf opened and a reader enters that unique word-world of the poet. The spirit of the read word then breathes into the living now and expands the consciousness of the reader in communion with the consciousness of the poet.

… (some poems could even take your breath away! – well you mustn’t take life too seriously must you).

Don’t drown in thought – Just Do it!

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Looking at that famous T. S. Eliot Poem – ‘ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ …

Lines 129 – 131

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

I think the whole poem is a dialogue by Prufrock with his own internal thoughts as he deliberates on a future confrontation in which he has to make his intentions known regards a certain lady. Something he obviously finds very demanding.

His underworld of thought is like the world below the sea. The sea is referenced through the text. He likens himself to a crab. And we have seen from the very beginning the reference to Dante and the shade underworld of the dead. This underworld even colours his view of the sky in that famous line at the start of the poem.

Prufrock has lingered below the surface within his own mind-chamber. In this chamber the sea-girls are wreathed with seaweed – the imagined girls are wreathed. A decoration for the dead perhaps and they could be considered as dead compared with the real-life women that are apparently dreaming of someone quite different. The sea-girls are wreathed in red and brown – quite a different image from the women he is about to meet. He has distorted them and the image is now removed from the beautiful singing mermaids in the previous lines.

The last line is an emergence from his underworld of thought into the world of action – human voices wake Prufrock from his internal sub-life – he has to respond, he is back in the real world – and he drowns, he dies – at least part of him dies – because he does not respond to the demands he has set-himself. And what a nice twist that he dies by drowning.

Note – Our thoughts about people are quite different from the actuality when we meet the person concerned, in fact what we rehearse is usually markedly different from the real-life transaction.

Some thoughts for discussion …

Thought … To what extent have we been ‘Prufrockian’ in life and not done what we know we should have done?

Thought … the more we rehearse the future the more we fear life and do not live or appreciate the present moment. What do you think?

Thought … To what extent do we feel overwhelmed with the trivialities of life?

Thought … There was a major comparison at the time TSE wrote the poem … the First World War and the Boston Scene … what exists today – that is for us, in a similar vein.

Thought … Do you think the word ‘defrock’ can be associated with the word prufrock – what would be your definition of this verb?

Defrock … take away the status, job, and authority of a priest or other member of the clergy, especially as a punishment for wrongdoing.

… and some more questions for consideration –

TSE started writing this poem at Harvard in 1911. It was published during the First World War. What impact did the war have on the poem? (explore the dedication)

TSE’s work is re-known for referencing other literary text … this is very much the case in this poem –

The epigraph is from Dante’s ‘Inferno’. The torture of Guido da Montefeltro in the eighth circle.

A literal translation – “If I thought that my answer were to one that could ever return to the World, this flame should quake no more; but since none ever did return from this depth, if what I hear is true, without fear of infamy I answer thee.”

Would you like your thoughts be made known to the whole wide world?

Here is a list of literary references in the poem …

Line 29 – “works and days of hands” – Hesoid

Line 52 – “voices dying with a dying fall” – Shakespeare

Line 81 – “I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed” – Matthew

Lines 82-83 – a reference to the story of John the Baptist

Line 89 – “among the porcelain” – Emily Dickinson

Line 92 – “sequenced the universe into a ball” – Marvel

Lines 94-95 – two Biblical stories concerning Lazarus

Lines 111-119 – the character of Hamlet and Polonius and the interplay between the two

Line 124 – “I have heard the mermaids singing each to each” – John Dunne

Explore these references – are they appropriate?

Do they add value to your reading of the poem?

The poem is a monologue spoken by Prufrock – but to whom?

What lines are important to you?

What does this poem say?

Which line in this poem is considered a turning point in poetic expression?

This poem is a statement of some of TSE’s themes which are explored again and again in his poetry – can you name a couple?

The full text of the poem can be found on the Poetry Foundation Website … http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/173476

The original text can also be found on the above Site … http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/6/3#!/20570428/0

… and more analysis can be referenced from this Internet Site …  http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section1.rhtml  

Promising Heaven at a Heavy cost

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Paradise Replaced

Stop Press – heaven has been moved,
the door has been closed.

Well it was all in your imagination anyway
and you should know very well,
didn’t they teach you in Sunday School, –
paying the Devil is just not on.

Richard Scutter 22 July 2013

Context –

The new Australian Labour Party Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has stopped refugees from entry to Australia if they come by boat from Indonesia. Instead they will be processed and settled in Papua New Guinea – if deemed to be genuine. Papua New Guinea has entered into an agreement with Australia on this issue.

The reason for this change in policy is because refugees are being ‘taken for a ride’ (you could say a very dangerous sea-ride!) by people smugglers who are luring these people to travel in completely unseaworthy boats across the seas. After they have paid a large sum of money and with the promise of getting to Australia.

Many of these boats have sunk and many lives lost. This back-door traffic has been steadily  increasing and something has to be done to stop the rising death toll of innocent families especially the drowning of children. Hopefully this policy will reduce such needless deaths from occurring.

Australia is not against refugees. In my view Australia should increase its intake of refugees that come to this country by legitimate means – especially given the current state of turmoil in the World.

A Religious Selection

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The following is a selection of religious poems chosen for discussion at a recent U3A meeting in Canberra. I have included the list for interest – quite a variety of work.

Amoretti LXVIII: Most Glorious Lord of Life – Edmund Spenser
On His Blindness – John Milton                                                                                    
At the round earths imagin’d corners – John Dunne
A Song for Simeon – T.S. Eliot
Spring – Gerard Manley Hopkins
Making a Myth – R A Simpson
Extraterrestrial Report – Michael Thwaites
To J S Bach – Michael Thwaites
The Late Passenger – C S Lewis
How to hide Jesus – Steve Turner
Christmas is really for children – Steve Turner
Christ in the Clay-Pit – Jack Clemco

And below is Michael Thwaites’ humorous poem concerning Mary’s desire for something quite different from the gift she received – but it was by royal decree – so I guess she shouldn’t complain.

Extraterrestrial Report
 
Arrived at the heavenly mansions, the blessed Saint
(female on earth) was welcomed by St Peter
enquiring whom she most desired to meet.
Mother Mary? Positively no problem;
Let me conduct you.  Presently, bathed in bliss,
they sat together, in light and joy and fun.
The Saint was charmed.  Mother, how can it be –
you so divine, yet still so down-to-earth?
I don’t forget; and here I have my Son –
As a sword pierced my soul, he from the Cross
gave me in tender care to his dear friend,
my Son, my Son.
Yet there, as you have read,
he learned obedience by the things he suffered:
So did we all …
The Saint took courage, asked,
diffidently bold, Those pictures we so loved –
the Babe and you adoring: did we catch
ever a trace of not-quite-perfect joy?
Mother Mary twinkled – I was young:
I’d really wanted a girl.

Michael Thwaites

It is indeed an extraterrestrial report for it is something quite out of this world – to consider Mary desiring a daughter. We are very much conditioned with Mary and son Jesus. It is a nice twist and emphasizes the humanity of Mary – she comes down to earth so to speak – in fact the poem is grounded on the last pivotal line.

Some details on Michael Thwaites.

Mad Girl’s Love Song – Sylvia Plath – Analysis

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Mad Girl’s Love Song was written by Sylvia Plath in 1951 when she was twenty. She was a student at Smith College. It is usually included in the biographical note appended to Plath’s novel – The Bell Jar.

The poem was first published in the August 1953 edition of Mademoiselle.  In June 1953 Plath worked for Mademoiselle as a Guest Editor in New York City, as portrayed in The Bell Jar.

It was written before her first suicide attempt of 24 August 1953.

Looking at this Sylvia Plath villanelle in detail …
 
MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead,

1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1=10
Ten syllable iambic – with an up and down bounce to it as you read the line. The quotes indicate the start of a conversation between poet and reader.

To what extent does the world drop dead when you shut your eyes?

If you say to the world ‘drop dead’ and you are irritated by what is going-on then shutting your eyes may shut out the world – provided there is not a noisy car screeching up the road!

But by shutting your eyes you enter into yourself – at least to some extent – sometimes you may find an internal sanctuary of precious space that is you – shut your eye and think about it. 

I lift my lids and all is born again.

1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,2=10
The end of the first sentence

Opening eyes is a return to the world a return to where you have been – and if you have been truly away from the world, and there is no screeching car to damage your retreat then perhaps you are indeed born again and everything is new.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

1,1,1,1,1 1,2,1,1=10
This is the closing line to the rhyming couplet of the villanelle – lines 1 and 3.

It is a thought, emphasized by the brackets … a personal thought about a person created in the mind or about a thought about a real person known to the poet – what form this make-up takes is not known … but from the title of the poem we might assume a male person.

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

Closing the eyes to dance in the sky to blue and red stars – well that sounds pretty high to me (if you excuse the pun)

And arbitrary darkness gallops in.

 The dark is arbitrary, indiscriminate … and the world around continues to interfere with the high … galloping horses invade rather than a screeching car.

 I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

This is a reiteration of getting away from the world around her by closing her eyes.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

Well I think we can take this as mind-sensuality – if not I’m sure she would remember the experience and there would be no question … indicating a physical desire

(I think I made you up inside my head).

… again the villanelle refrain reinforces the fact that it she is in the mind world

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and enter Satan’s men:

The highs and lows of imaginary love disappear … note that these are defined by the extremes of God toppling and hell fading … and exit an angel and in come Satan’s men the reality of the real world which overwhelms.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

… perhaps living in hope that this will be the case … removal from the world

I fancied you’d return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.

… unfortunately there is no return of the mind-lover and the high/low experience of love

(I think I made you up inside my head).

… It was made up before but where are you now

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.

… I don’t know what a thunderbird is … but there is some guarantee offered of a return … gave me the image of a flash of lightning

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

… the mind-love conversation concludes. Unfortunately it took much more that the shutting of eyes for her world to eventually drop dead.

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)

 

Looking at Madness and the poet and via this excellent website link- http://www.neuroticpoets.com/

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact ” ~ William Shakespeare.

From the diary of Sylvia Plath  (early fifties)…

“To annihilate the world by annihilation of one’s self is the deluded height of desperate egoism. The simple way out of all the little brick dead ends we scratch our nails against … I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb.”

Footnote …

The interest in the controversial aspects a poet’s life itself can sometimes draw attention away from their creations. There is a general tendency for the sensational and pathological to attract heightened notice by the general public.

This may not always be a negative thing, however, as it can generate more interest – See more at: http://www.neuroticpoets.com/#sthash.OR0QxSbs.dpuf

Your essential words – Example: Teilhard De Chardin

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Your essential words …

One way at looking at any text … whether a book or books read, an article from the paper, a poem or even a few pages or paragraphs … is to define your own words that give your personal understanding to your reading.

If you work with mind-maps take a blank piece of paper in landscape form and start from the centre of the page. I suggest radiating five key words that reflect your reading. Each of these words could then be explored – this might result in changes to the first level words. These words could then be used in whatever way you wish in your own textual creation, including poetry of course.

The following is an example –

Looking at the philosophy of Teilhard De Chardin here are my five words associated with his thought …

God … providence … control … Christ
Evolution … progression … growth … complexification
Love … spiritual … energy force … connection
Order … physics … … harmony … relationships
Unity … christ in all … inclusive … communion of humanity

Teilhard De Chardin, Pierre (1881-1955), jesuit priest, geologist, palaeontologist, and philosopher-theologian, noted for his evolutionary interpretation of humanity and the universe and his insistence that such a view is compatible with Christianity. He was exiled. He spent time in China and India on scientific work.

Palaeontology is defined as the science of the forms of life existing in former geological periods, as represented by fossil animals and plants.

Scientific evolutionary theory is the key to Teilhard’s thought. Evolution, he wrote, “is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts . . .

“. His major work, Le Phénomène humain (The Phenomenon of Man, 1955; trans. 1959), is an attempt to set forth a comprehensive evolutionary vision that speaks to both scientific and religious interests. Matter, argued Teilhard, has always obeyed “that great law of biology . . . the law of ‘complexification’“. He interpreted evolution as a purposive process in which the matter-energy of the universe has continually changed in the direction of increased complexity. With the emergence of humanity, he argued, evolutionary development entered a new dimension. From the biosphere (the layer of living things covering the Earth) has emerged the noosphere (a mind layer surrounding the Earth). This mind layer, or human consciousness, generates increasingly complex social arrangements that in turn give rise to a higher consciousness. Ultimately, the evolutionary process culminates in the convergence of the material and the spiritual into a super-consciousness that Teilhard called the Omega Point. ‘Love’ is the attractive force in a ‘God-Omega development’ and  gives direction to the whole evolutionary process. Such love, for Teilhard, is most clearly evident in a universal Christ.

Re: evolution …consider the evolution of man … the development of the brain … the jump with the development of language … and the attendant jump in social communication associated with language … and now in this age with the development of the Internet there is a quantum leap in communication … the development of social networking … the world-wide physical independence of human communion based on computer technology … and the speed at which a ‘common mental consciousness’ can develop.

Teilhard’s three components … Apologetics (a branch of theology concerned with proving the truth of Christianity)… defended by writing … Mystism … spiritual intuition and truth … Physics … natural laws, matter and energy

Some thoughts …

As a scientist he understood the growth of humanity and the ever-increasing complexity of life especially that of the mind and the deepening of relationships based on his phenomenological approach. Christ is in all life. The emphasis is on an inclusive worldview of humanity unified by the personal presence of Christ within each individual.

Eventually the evolution of humanity will grow to a point where increased consciousness is the key to a new understanding in the relationship between man and God.

God is the destination and the love-force that develops and controls the development of both the collective and the individual.

I think he believed in the individual and the relationship to ‘the whole’ … the individual is not lost … the communion of the universe is seen through personal eyes and each person is defined by their relationship to all life. A person is seen as having no meaning outside their relationship to others, the common and to God.

definition – phenomenology

  1. 1.      the science of phenomena, as distinguished from ontology or the science of being.
  2. 2.       the school of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, 1859–1938, which stresses the careful description of phenomena in all domains of experience without regard to traditional epistemological questions.

Poetry Annoys

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Poetry is annoying

Well what do we mean by poetry … many answers to this question … what do we mean by beauty … a similar problem … but perhaps it is easier to know when we recognise beauty … but do we know when we recognise poetry …

If there is a formalised definition – for example, we could say poetry must have within it some sort of poetic structure and then define poetic structure ( such as rhyme, rhythm …), so in this way we could filter work according to our agreed definition (I still meet people who say a poem is not a poem unless it rhymes)

But of course what happens then is that a defined poem may not be ‘poetic’ in the eyes of the beholder … just as beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder … so perhaps individual taste has a lot to say on what is poetry and what is not poetry (or at least what is worthy of the name, what is ‘good’)

… today conformity to some form of rigour in the nature of poetic expression is somewhat lacking … an almost anything goes attitude and if the author defines the work as a poem then it is a poem (at least to her or him) … so given this wide approach to what is accepted perhaps individual taste is much more important in defining the nature of poetry and poetic expression

… and perhaps those poems that have ‘agreed common poetic respect’ will survive the ravages of time and like splendid historic homes be frequented by many visitors.

But what does a poem do for you? … what differentiates poetry from other reading? … an elderly lady was asked to give her view … her reply was simple …

… a poem annoys

… elaborating … I have to stop and think and spend time looking at the text … in short I am arrested … and furthermore I might not be rewarded after using time and energy

I like this response … poetry makes you think

… whether you – see an experience in a new light, see life in a different perspective to the extent of changing behaviour – or whether your awareness is stimulated to the extent of widening your understanding and appreciation of life by understanding another – is, of course, another matter.

Please enjoy those annoying times when poetry may arrest you out of the blue – but you are always free to go afterwards.

Do not go gentle into that good night – Dylan Thomas

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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

The above poem by Dylan Thomas is perhaps the most well-known villanelle.  A villanelle has 19 lines and comprises 5 stanzas of 3 lines and a closing quatrain of 4 lines.

Like the sonnet the last two lines are arguably the most important lines of the villanelle. These not only form the closing rhyming couplet but these lines appear repeatedly through-out the first 5 stanzas.

Looking at the above poem the closing lines are –

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

If we label these lines A and B then these lines must appear in the five 3 line stanzas as follows in order to conform to the format of the villanelle.

S1 … A / l2 / B
S2 … a / l2 / A
S3 … a / l2 / B
S4 … a / l2 / A
S5 … a / l2 / B

So after defining the ending two lines 6 lines are automatically defined in the three-line stanzas. Furthermore the rhyming scheme is such that all the first lines, (labelled a) must rhyme with A. In the case of Dylan Thomas’ poem each of these lines must rhyme with night. And all the second lines of the above stanzas (labelled l2) must rhyme. In the case of this poem the six rhyming words chosen by Thomas are – day, they, way, bay, gay and pray.

The first and second line of the closing quatrain must use the rhyming of A and l2 … in this case height and pray.

So looking at the rhyming through-out the poem the 19 end words are –

Night, day, light / right, they night / bright, bay, light / flight, way, night / sight, gay, light
Height, pray, light, night

My advice is to create the rhyming couplet first. This is the key to the poem. You have then created 8 lines of the 19 line poem.

You will then need 5 lines that rhyme with the first line of the couplet and six lines where you are quite at liberty to choose the rhyme.

Below is my attempt at reversing the theme and also the two streams of rhyming words … basing the poem on the couplet …

Go gentle and enjoy your last day
Give a smile as you pass quietly away

Go gentle and enjoy your last day

go gentle and enjoy your last day
don’t focus on loss of your sight
give a smile as you pass quietly away

a wise man knows how to play
knows exactly the way that is right
go gentle and enjoy your last day

and a good man accepts the path-way
as he enters the door of the night
give a smile as you pass quietly away

now a wild man in wild disarray
thinks again his disorganised plight
go gentle and enjoy your last day

while a grave man will rise up to say
‘the end is indeed turning bright’
give a smile as you pass quietly away

so to all I respectfully pray
just savour those last rays of light
go gentle and enjoy your last day
give a smile as you pass quietly away

Richard Scutter 15 May 2013

The official website dedicated to Dylan Thomas – http://www.dylanthomas.com/

Here is an audio of the Radio National program ‘Poetica’ on 11 May in which Villanelles were featured.