Two Propositions

[PrinceMyshkin]

1

One can see the tentacles of reason
creep about, beaten back, at times,
by theory, even benevolent theory
and ideology, those graven images
of the over-impassioned heart.



2

Thought itself is a metaphor
for something not yet here,
not quite here, not altogether
here, but forever being called into being...

[Virgil]

Now that is a very strong poem Prince. Only suggestion is "tentacles" as a metaphor is sort of a cliche these days. Now it could be that's the best word possible then you'll have to go with it. But you might want to explore a different possibility there. But don't throw this one out. This is a really good poem.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Now that is a very strong poem Prince. Only suggestion is "tentacles" as a metaphor is sort of a cliche these days. Now it could be that's the best word possible then you'll have to go with it. But you might want to explore a different possibility there. But don't throw this one out. This is a really good poem.

MUCH appreciated because - maybe one can tell? - it meant a lot to me. As for substituting something for the overly-familiar "tentacles," I'll give a thought to it but as a general rule, between using something that feels spontaneously right and reaching for a more striking word, I'd go for the former.

[paperleaves]

How powerful your words are, strewn almost swiftly and carelessly in some dark recess of your mind, only exposed by a silent, quick beam of light seen by your reason momentarily. Thanks for sharing, I love this so much. If I tried to pick a favorite line, it'd be as such:

Well, I loved the second stanza, but I really also loved the first stanza, well, they're really inseparable, you know? I just love the whole damn thing!"



love
Kate

[PrinceMyshkin]

How powerful your words are, strewn almost swiftly and carelessly in some dark recess of your mind, only exposed by a silent, quick beam of light seen by your reason momentarily. Thanks for sharing, I love this so much. If I tried to pick a favorite line, it'd be as such:

Well, I loved the second stanza, but I really also loved the first stanza, well, they're really inseparable, you know? I just love the whole damn thing!"



love
Kate

Your comment on the inseparablity is of special worth to me because the connection between them is almost an accidental one. After writing a first draft of the first verse at the cafe, I stepped outside for what felt like a much-deserved smoke, and the 2nd verse began assembling itself. It seemed to me to belong with the first if only for their proximity of creation.

I remembered later that behind the 2nd was an essay I'd recently read about how neuro-biologists were studying metaphor, not so much as adornments of speech but as evidence of the influence body has on thought.

But as for your "carelessness" may I substitute "carefreeness" because one of the things I value about this poem is what looks to me like the sure-footed pace.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Double post in error.

[MorpheusSandman]

I love, love, love this especially since its very much thoughts I've struggled with and pondered myself. In fact, you've quite poetically stated something I've thought for a long time how unreasoned theory becomes ideology too easy. The 2nd piece seems to echo the "no mind" zen sentiment that I mentioned in the last piece by yours, especially in how it recalls the first piece's subtle suggestion of how unreliable thought is to begin with. This is a wonderful piece if only for the richness of themes it suggests. Excellent.

[Bar22do]

1

One can see the tentacles of reason
creep about, beaten back, at times,
by theory, even benevolent theory
and ideology, those graven images
of the over-impassioned heart.



2

Thought itself is a metaphor
for something not yet here,
not quite here, not altogether
here, but forever being called into being...


Reason is easily beaten back when one's emotional background is a marsh, the last being a fertile field for ideology to blossom...

Does thought necessarily precede "something not yet here" thus preparing its possible realisation (creative power of thought) or might it be a premonition re something on the way towards one (power of reality over one's sensitive, receptive mind)? Or - is it never to occur a reality?

Your excellent poem's second stanza re-plunged me into Dino Buzzati's "Tartar steppe" atmosphere of heroic (and hopeless) expectations for something to happen and which eventually does, but too late for the unfortunate life of the protagonist...

Thank you for the reflection your poem offered on mind's vibrating life (conscious, unconscious.... still so little explored), as well as for its sublte grace!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Reason is easily beaten back when one's emotional background is a marsh, the last being a fertile field for ideology to blossom...

Does thought necessarily precede "something not yet here" thus preparing its possible realisation (creative power of thought) or might it be a premonition re something on the way towards one (power of reality over one's sensitive, receptive mind)? Or - is it never to occur a reality?

Your excellent poem's second stanza re-plunged me into Dino Buzzati's "Tartar steppe" atmosphere of heroic (and hopeless) expectations for something to happen and which eventually does, but too late for the unfortunate life of the protagonist...

Thank you for the reflection your poem offered on mind's vibrating life (conscious, unconscious.... still so little explored), as well as for its sublte grace!

Many thanks for this thoughtful reading of my poem.

[blank|verse]

Another aphoristic missive from Myshkin...

Being an Old Romantic though, I tend to value imagination and creativity over 'reason' and 'theory', and that's what leads me to question what's being expressed.

I see reason and theory as two sides of the same logical coin - opposed to imagination - so in the context of your poem, not being at odds with each other; and therefore read the poem as saying that reason is beating itself back, effectively.

In a way, these issues are at the heart of my 'snow' poem - the juxtaposition between the adult (reasoned, logical) response and the child's (joyful, spontaneous) response to a beautiful natural phenomenon. Adults, including the media (hence the 'radio' reference) see snow as a nuisance - stopping them going about their busy business of being busy for the sake of it, staring at lamp-posts etc, because they're adults and important blah, blah....

Whereas kids just want to rejoice in the natural wonder of it all, being free, making friends... and reminding us miserable old people that we're really as every bit as human as they are, it's just been supressed by a rational society which tells us to grow up and get a dull job and view nature with suspicion. And it should be pretty clear whose side I'm on!

Back to your poem - I don't really know what you mean by 'benevolent theory' but presume it's meant to be a positive thing. 'Ideology' is of course a lot more problematic - something one associates with political or religious extremism: Nazi-ism, Communism, Muslim fanaticism... - and doesn't really have a place in mainstream Western society these days, so I'm not sure what the point is here.

The second part is a nice observation about thought being a metaphor for itself. What I find about these comments is that they read like sketches imploring to be turned into full poems. The best poetry for me is a combination of philosophical insight and artistic expression - I think your work is very strong on the former but not so much on the latter. For example, I found your villanelle excellent, and think you should force yourself to write in metre/er and form more often - put down the philosophy books and pick up your lyre!

[MorpheusSandman]

Being an Old Romantic, neo-classicist myself it also took me a while to warm up to Prince's style but now that I have I can definitely see more of the poetic, artistic expression in his works. Maybe it doesn't provide as much to pick apart as, say, Shakespeare or Milton but Prince's subtle but potent use of line breaks is always extremely poetic. While I wouldn't insist that Prince write in meter (since meter seems to be becoming an anachronistic thing in modern poetry) I would like to see him play more with words; aliteration, consonance, rhyme, etc. He doesn't need to be as perversive and pervasive about it as I insist on being, but sometimes I feel a delayed rhyme or subtle consonance/assonance here and there would enhance the reading of his pieces a bit. But here he does have some of these subtle touches: "beaten back" + "creep & beat", etc. and the repetitions of the second stanza which seems to enhance the theme behind it.

I wonder if we're making Prince uncomfortable deconstructing him so much? :D

[PrinceMyshkin]

Being an Old Romantic, neo-classicist myself it also took me a while to warm up to Prince's style but now that I have I can definitely see more of the poetic, artistic expression in his works. Maybe it doesn't provide as much to pick apart as, say, Shakespeare or Milton but Prince's subtle but potent use of line breaks is always extremely poetic. While I wouldn't insist that Prince write in meter (since meter seems to be becoming an anachronistic thing in modern poetry) I would like to see him play more with words; aliteration, consonance, rhyme, etc. He doesn't need to be as perversive and pervasive about it as I insist on being, but sometimes I feel a delayed rhyme or subtle consonance/assonance here and there would enhance the reading of his pieces a bit. But here he does have some of these subtle touches: "beaten back" + "creep & beat", etc. and the repetitions of the second stanza which seems to enhance the theme behind it.

I wonder if we're making Prince uncomfortable deconstructing him so much? :D

Writing in a regular metre is kind of alien to my mind-set: it comes out as doggerel. I do listen for and try to employ the 'natural' beats that one can hear at times in spontaneous speech.

As for making me uncomfortable: no. I can take ANY amount of criticism when it is offered courteously and none when it is rude or hostile.

Thanks.

[PrinceMyshkin]

First of all, many thanks for this thoughtful response


Another aphoristic missive from Myshkin...

Being an Old Romantic though, I tend to value imagination and creativity over 'reason' and 'theory', and that's what leads me to question what's being expressed.

but I do see "imagination and creativity" as aspects of reason: reason in its more playful aspect...


I see reason and theory as two sides of the same logical coin - opposed to imagination - so in the context of your poem, not being at odds with each other; and therefore read the poem as saying that reason is beating itself back, effectively.

I see reason as a somewhat passive observer of what's there, and assembling what it sees into theory as part of its activity, a step beyond mere observation, but once observations are clustered into theory, reason is kind of conscripted to provide further support for theory, even "benevolent" theory


In a way, these issues are at the heart of my 'snow' poem - the juxtaposition between the adult (reasoned, logical) response and the child's (joyful, spontaneous) response to a beautiful natural phenomenon. Adults, including the media (hence the 'radio' reference) see snow as a nuisance - stopping them going about their busy business of being busy for the sake of it, staring at lamp-posts etc, because they're adults and important blah, blah....

Whereas kids just want to rejoice in the natural wonder of it all, being free, making friends... and reminding us miserable old people that we're really as every bit as human as they are, it's just been supressed by a rational society which tells us to grow up and get a dull job and view nature with suspicion. And it should be pretty clear whose side I'm on!

Back to your poem - I don't really know what you mean by 'benevolent theory' but presume it's meant to be a positive thing. 'Ideology' is of course a lot more problematic - something one associates with political or religious extremism: Nazi-ism, Communism, Muslim fanaticism... - and doesn't really have a place in mainstream Western society these days, so I'm not sure what the point is here.

The point was that ideology was the 2nd step away from pure reason...


The second part is a nice observation about thought being a metaphor for itself. What I find about these comments is that they read like sketches imploring to be turned into full poems. The best poetry for me is a combination of philosophical insight and artistic expression - I think your work is very strong on the former but not so much on the latter. For example, I found your villanelle excellent, and think you should force yourself to write in metre/er and form more often - put down the philosophy books and pick up your lyre!

I too cherish poetry that has more music in it than mine usually does, but my mind doesn't work that way. What you call "sketches" I like to think of as brief pin-points of light that permit or invite the reader to speculate what more might be there.

[firefangled]

Thought itself is a metaphor
for something not yet here,
not quite here, not altogether
here, but forever being called into being...


The whole idea of this is mind boggling and reflects your on-going fascination with quantum dynamics. I thought the repetition was done well. It gave a sense of almost infinite increments of advancement toward the realization of the something not here yet.

It reminded me of the childhood poem:

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that man would go away.

[PrinceMyshkin]

The whole idea of this is mind boggling and reflects your on-going fascination with quantum dynamics. I thought the repetition was done well. It gave a sense of almost infinite increments of advancement toward the realization of the something not here yet.

It reminded me of the childhood poem:

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that man would go away.

Thank you.

[Lokasenna]

This poem, in spite of its brevity, is very deep, and one of your best, methinks.

The entirety of the second stanza is very appealing, and could stand as an excellent poem in its own right. That said, the first stanza is also strong, and your use of repetition is highly effective, though like others I'm not too sure about the use of 'tentacles'.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This poem, in spite of its brevity, is very deep, and one of your best, methinks.

The entirety of the second stanza is very appealing, and could stand as an excellent poem in its own right. That said, the first stanza is also strong, and your use of repetition is highly effective, though like others I'm not too sure about the use of 'tentacles'.

Many thanks. Yes, the 2nd stanza did seem to be a poem in itself but because of the proximity of their composition, I decided it belonged with the 1st, albeit separated a little by the numbering.