Readings: A Rouzing Vision

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As I have previously mentioned, either here or on Facebook, my output of new poems has been unprecedentedly prolific during the past few months. This has been made possible by a mechanism that I have attributed to external help -- inspiration -- coming from the Muses, or the Holy Spirit, or perhaps sometimes from sources less wholesome. I will be reading a poem, or a prose text, and a word, or a group of words, will suddenly stand out from the original context to form the nucleus of a poem. The whole poem will be intuited -- nearly as a thing completed -- in this instant of awakening. In this process, I am left feeling as though I have been used as the conduit for the creation of a window to serve as a minor vision of revealed truth.

For this reason I was very taken by my reading of the first few pages of Christopher Rowland’s recent book, Blake and the Bible, in which he discusses William Blake’s creative methods:

Dr. Trusler had commissioned Blake to produce several paintings, but when he was sent the first for approval he took exception to Blake’s flights of imaginative fancy and the lack of naturalism, and demanded an explanation for the picture. Blake responded that he had ‘attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate’, but ‘have been compelled by my Genius or Angel to follow where he led’. In other words, the ideas were the result of a supernatural impulse. In response to Trusler’s request for an explanation, Blake responded in one of his eloquent statements of his art:

I really am sorry that you are fall’n out with the Spiritual World, Especially if I should have to answer for it. I feel very sorry that your Ideas & Mine on Moral Painting differ so much as to have made you angry with my method of Study. If I am wrong, I am wrong in good company. I had hoped your plan comprehended All Species of this Art, & Especially that you would not reject that Species which gives Existence to Every other, namely Visions of Eternity. You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients consider’d what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction, because it rouzes the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, Plato. [p.6]

On page 9, Rowland explains that “in Blake’s use of the Bible, the original context of the various allusions is almost completely left behind as the new narrative is woven together. In this kind of interpretation the Bible is a stimulus rather than a template.” [emphasis added]

Rowland goes on to say that for Blake “art is not something to be deciphered” and that “Throughout his work Blake challenged the hegemony of reason.”

In Blake’s own words, “Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably.”

The role of the poet, and the function of art, is to catapult the human mind out beyond the somnambulant state of ordinary consciousness, in order to ‘rouze’ an experience of the Real, which is the Eternal and the true Being of man. Exposing oneself to any true art, be it poetry or prose or visual, can excite the mind to participate in this process of creation.
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Religion: Earth Angels

When I got home from work last night, my wife, who had gotten there before me, called me into the kitchen. Listen to this, she said, and pushed the button on our old wood-burning answering machine that sits next to the fridge.

My name is Erica, said the voice that emerged from the static. Erica went on, without providing any additional personal information, to encourage us to go to our Bible and read Revelations 21: 3-4. We would profit, she said, from the hope it would provide in these trying times.

Strange, I said to my wife, and turned to go. Wait, she said, there’s another one. The second messenger identified herself as Helen. Her message was similar in content to that of her predecessor. But while Erica had been well-spoken, and probably African American, Helen spoke rather haltingly, in distinctly White Appalachian cadences, and wandered around a bit in getting to her point. The scripture that she was promoting was Psalm 37:10-11.

Play it again, I said to my wife. What for? she asked. I said that I wanted to write the citations down, so that I could go look them up in one of my Bibles. You’re kidding, she said. I’m not, said I. (Who’s that giggling?!) So I went down to my “den” in the basement and grabbed the first Bible at hand, which happened to be the NIV. The verses below, however, are clipped from an online KJV that I have bookmarked.

Erica’s verses are:

Revelations 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

And Helen ‘s message is contained in:

Psalm 37:10 For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
11 But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

Helen’s prefatory remarks had left little doubt that it is the recent devastating earthquakes, and the global financial crisis, combined with the wars and rumors of war, that have given rise to this campaign of telephonic evangelism. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the same thing had crossed my mind. (Stop that snickering, dammit-all!) I had not, however, generally been left with the feeling of hope brought to me by these two messengers, the first representing the New Testament, and the second, the Old. Thank you, Erica. God bless you, Helen.

(Go ahead and laugh, you sophisticated bastards. I guess you’re pretty sure that you know what an angel would sound like on the telephone, huh?)

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