Recently, I was reading Paul Kingsnorth’s essay The Language of the Master (which is not new but was new to me.) After he describes Iain McGilchrist’s conception of the Master and the Emissary (with reference to the human brain), he writes:
“…What languages does the Machine not speak
“If the emissary runs our world, then we all speak his language, because we have all been trained to. It is the language of clarity, dissection, parts and not sums, specialisation, dis-enchantment, reason, theoretical rather than practical expertise, technological ‘solutions’, bureaucracy, abstraction, mechanism. The emissary will, left unchecked, turn our world into a machine, because he thinks it already is one. In the process, he will turn us into machines too.
“Linguistically, then, we should all be encouraging the master to regain power. This means working with the ways of seeing and communicating which machine culture downplays or ridicules, but which every traditional society before modernity’s advent understood and worked with. That means myth, religion, practical expertise founded upon physical work, rooted imagery, holistic conceptions of life, communication with non-human beings, poetry, complexity, questions that do not have answers, questions which are not questions at all. It means seeing time as a circle, not a line, life as a process, not a puzzle to be solved, death as a part of that life, not an enemy to be defeated. Sometimes – horror of horrors – it means embracing unknowing. It means learning to stop, and be silent.”
Kingsnorth has a talent for asking just the questions I need to send my thoughts in a fresh direction. But this is the first time that I have read something and thought: that is a good reason to write poetry.
Many years ago I used to write poetry, and considered it fundamental to who I am. But I stopped shortly after graduating from university because I couldn’t see how my poetry could connect me to a larger community or purpose. I knew of a few options: to continue writing, alone, and submitting work to journals read and edited by a tiny minority of people I didn’t know, and had no particular reason to respect. I could join local writers’ groups, but they weren’t doing the sort of writing I was interested in (to put it politely). I could join academia, which was additional expense and years of my youth and I could perceive, even then, not a world I wanted to be part of. So, my energy went into other things, and I’ve never regretted it. But now, reading this article, I see a purpose for writing poetry again, or at least writing poetically.
Do I even know how to write poetry anymore? I certainly couldn’t give anyone instructions how to do it. My instinct tells me to start with small observations or episodes of life that represent bigger questions. Put words on paper (real paper, not a screen) and then start re-writing from there. I can even think of blog entries that could be starting points. But rather (and I have observed this already happening) writing poetry will lead me to look at the world in a manner conducive to poetry. That is perhaps the bigger point.
Right now, I also have no need to force poetry to serve as a means to an end in my life. My life already “is”. It has its own purpose and validity. Poetry can just be poetry. I don’t have to write like I did twenty-five years ago. I don’t have to write like anyone else. I can see what direction it goes.
What I will need to figure out though, is what sort of shape my poetry could take. What I have now is an embodied memory of what it means to write poetry. What I don't have are goals. I know I need some kind of a goal. I'll also need somebody to share writing with, so I will need to look into some sort of group or mentorship situation.
Meanwhile, the notebook continues to fill!
