Readings: Art as Life & Vice Versa

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This morning I’ve been reading again in The ABCs of Robert Lax. Below is a rather long excerpt from a piece written by Alexander Eliot, a man who had maintained a decades-long relationship with Lax, beginning when they worked together at Time magazine in the 1940’s. He visited Lax in Greece, on Patmos, in the 1980s and his piece recalls that visit. I post excerpts from it here because it seems to me that what Eliot says about Lax and his art, is relevant to the poems I’ve written recently, especially the one (or two, actually) shared in my previous post:


The older he gets the more Bob comes to resemble a Byzantine saint, in looks & demeanor alike. That’s obvious to all, but I see something there which is more ancient still: a person standing in an open space, alone, well apart from the clustered parasols of piety. To me, Bob resembles a Siberian shaman, cradling his sacred drum, crackling with shock-power, vibrant with silent song.

Bob had fallen recently, & broken a tooth. ‘Jesus!’ he’d yelled as he fell. ‘The neighbors took that for a prayer,’ he told me, ‘which of course it was.’ The dentist who repaired him said, ‘I don’t want your money, I just want to be your friend.’ It’s fortunate so many people feel that way, since money is one thing Bob hasn’t got.

Bob has reached the conclusion that everyone really wants to be perfect. That goes way beyond Socrates’ notion that everyone desires the good. Is there even a path to perfection? If there were, Bob would probably be climbing it; in fact he’s doing something quite different, and far more productive. He’s tending his word-garden, tapping his sacred drum.

One day Bob remarked that e.e. cummings, Henry Miller & James Joyce had profoundly influenced his youth. ‘Mine too,’ I said, ‘but looking back they seem pretty contrived today.’ Bob disagreed. He argued that their intense concern with words on paper paralleled the modern painters’ obsession with paint on canvas.

The medium is not the message, exactly, but the message doesn’t matter all that much. Instead of exploiting words for illustrative or expository purposes (like me), the modern masters perform in an erudite & yet paradoxically childlike manner with words per se. This tradition, Bob told me, dates back to the Kaballah. It’s his own field of play, clearly.

I’m not certain that Eliot completely gets it. As the penultimate paragraph above indicates, Lax was not sure that he did, either. Nonetheless, Eliot’s observations illuminate some of the things I admire about what Lax was doing with his art—and with his life.
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Readings and Writings: The Only Way Is Up

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This morning I was reading again in The ABCs of Robert Lax, a collection of critical and anecdotal essays concerning the literary theory and poetic works of Robert Lax. The essay by Nicholas Zurbrugg with which I began my reading today kicked off with a Lax quote which I had already encountered in several of the other essays in the collection:

Starting at the top and moving down, sometimes even syllable by syllable…it’s a little like movie film. ~ Robert Lax

Zurbrugg enlarges upon this quote thusly:

xxAs Robert Lax suggests in the lines above…his poetry frequently evinces a peculiarly vertical, cinematic quality, in the sense that it flows downwards, word after word – ‘even syllable by syllable’ – somewhat like the successive frames of a film.
xxConsidered in terms of this trait, the poetry of Robert Lax – and most particularly, those works that he entitles ‘Movies’ – seems to invite partial definition as one of a number of examples of verbal creativity elaborating a distinctively vertical aesthetic, as opposed both to the horizontal discourse of conventional poetry, and the multi-directional, predominately geometrical constellations of concrete poetry.

I decided to continue the series of experiments I have been making based on my appreciation of Lax’s work by composing a ‘cinematic’ poem, employing only one word per line. Many of Lax’s poems in this mode are like time-lapse nature films where one sees 20 seconds of spring unfolding in all its busy perfusion, followed by 40 seconds of quivering summer, followed by 20 seconds of brightly desiccating and molting autumn, followed by 30 seconds of successive sheets of brilliant snow. My concept of a good film, however, is one that narrates a story. So the vertically oriented, ‘cinematic’ poem which I wrote does just that:

artist > shaman > theologian

first
let
there
be
fire
primordial
light
painting
the
cave’s
stone
walls
with
shadows
of
human
form
then
the
sooty
print
of
the
hand
which
next
would
outline
the
icons
of
great
beasts’
deaths
at
the
hand
of
the
hunter
a
correspondence
made
between
the
mental
conjuring
of
the
image
and
the
providential
guidance
of
the
hunter’s
arrow
thus
art
becomes
magic
becomes
religion
becomes
faith
man’s
transcendence

Having worded this piece to my satisfaction, I began considering that a celluloid film does not, as a physical object, actually move on a straight vertical track; it winds its way over the spools, off the reel, and behind the light and lenses of a projector. How to depict this, using the same words? I hit upon the device of arranging the words in four columns, using a boustrophedonic (‘as the ox ploughs’) orientation. But, in keeping with the cinematic concept, the poem would be arranged in vertical columns, rather than in horizontal lines. I constructed the poem using the ‘columns’ page set-up of Microsoft Word. Since this would not transfer to any of the online templates available at the various sites on which I wanted to share these pieces, I scanned the boustrophedonic version, after marking it up to demonstrate the directions in which the columns should be read:


I personally find this latter version to be more satisfying, in that the words of right-hand column climb upwards to the final word: transcendence, rather than descending to it, as they do in the strictly vertical format. This upward thrust to the word ‘transcendence’ seems most appropriate.

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Reflections: Solitude and Wisdom

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As I sit poised to launch into the first work-week of the new year, I am thankful for the acquisition, at the tag end of 2010, of a new literary / spiritual / philosophical mentor – Robert Lax.

I admire Søren Kierkegaard. I am fascinated and at least partially convinced by Carl Jung and some of his disciples (e.g. Hermann Hesse). I enjoy reading the critical theory of Harold Bloom and share some of his interests (e.g. Gnosticism). And there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of other creative writers and thinkers whose oeuvres I admire and have studied in their entirety. But, until my recent discovery of Robert Lax, Simone Weil inhabited a category in my regard of which she was the sole member.

Weil and Lax were very different. One was male; one female. One was primarily a poet; the other primarily a philosopher. They were alike in each having been a solitary. But very different types of solitary they were. Lax was gregarious in his solitude – living alone, but enjoying the company of friends and strangers alike. Weil was largely a true loner. Her primary association with other people was in the role of teacher.

So much do I admire each of these human paragons, that I most value in myself those things in which I detect their faint echoes. So much do I learn from studying their very different lives and modes of solitude, that I’ve come to an understanding that I probably went wrong in my life by not seeking solitude for myself.

Here, from a work of Lax’s entitled A Greek Journal, are two entries with which I strongly identify and which I admired greatly when I read them yesterday morning:

sometimes, i have conversations with an imaginary guru, naturally one who lives inside me. he used to be a psychiatrist: at least in the old days a lot of my conversations were started with, & a lot of my problems heard out or resolved by, an imaginary Viennese who listened carefully, often accusingly, & showed me with a few apt technical phrases how far i had erred in my thinking, or behavior. the Viennese fellow has disappeared; comes back if ever for very short visits; but has been replaced by chuang tzu (sometimes merton, or sometimes chuang tzu in merton translation) who tells me other wisdoms: usually the wisdoms of abstinence & avoidance; of retreat, prayer & preparation, of non-attachment, of “sitting quietly doing nothing,” of seeking smallness, not greatness, or of seeking nothing at all.
[…]
what he promotes is wisdom, what he promises is grace. zen wisdom, perhaps; zen grace, but certainly wisdom & grace.

Amen.

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Quote du Jour: Poetry

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from “On Poetry and Language” – Robert Lax

xxx.

(language is a
phoenix

poetry a phoenix

reborn
from its
own

ashes

xxx.

(let the language
fall to ashes

& poetry
will arise)

let the language
fall to ashes

& new language
will arise

xxx.
xxx
XX[…]

Poetry may express
the poet

xxx.

It may serve as discourse
from man to man

More truly it moves
between man & God

xxx.

The psalmist David
sang for the Lord,

& the spirit of the
Lord replied

xxx.
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Readings: Why Is a Poem a Poem?

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Included in the anthology The ABCs of Robert Lax, is an interesting essay by R.C. Kenedy, (yes, Virginia, that’s how he spells his name) entitled (surprisingly enough) “Robert Lax”. Here is an excerpt from that essay, which I found to be instructive, on the subject of poetry:

Poetry begins where objects renounce their own identity in order to become other than merely-themselves. But this is not the whole story. They go through a stage of becoming in order to assert their existence. The question ‘when is a table not a table’ is only a starting point – and the answer (which may declare that, when burnt, it becomes firewood) is not poetry’s chief concern. Between the question and the answer there is a circular path, which runs through the points of the inspiration, to give a framework – which is meant to define a complete and allusive world. In the arbitrary example of the burnt table, the image is capable of referring the potential reader to poverty and its connotations, or to the axiomatic obsolescence of all matter, whether flesh, word or stone. This possibility is the domain of poetry and the dramatically cited instance, which is vouched for by the poet’s passion, confronts actual existence and observes its changes. The vulnerable is-ness of the object need not pass through the stages of becoming to attest the vast confraternity of everything which has a place in time.

Please take careful notes: this will be on the final!
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Rodak's Writings: A New Way of Walkin'

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I have never had much patience for minimalist or ultra-abstract art. Such things as so-called “concrete poetry” have left me cold. But my new-found interest in the work of Robert Lax, and the understanding that I’ve gleaned from reading a couple of interviews with him—as well as his poetry—have brought me around to a new understanding:

I certainly don’t think that you can tell people how they should take your poems, but I think you should feel responsible for any reverberation that a word you’ve chosen may have. I think that if you say ‘red’, you have to realize that some people will see red! But you also have to hope that the context of the poem itself will establish and clarify what you’re saying. ~ R. Lax; interview with Nicholas Zurbrugg, Patmos – 13th January, 1985

This morning I tried to clear my mind of all “busy,” pragmatic thought, and to simply record the “is-ness” of the moment(s). I found this technique—if it can be called that—to be reminiscent of the spirit of haiku, in that it seeks to distill immediate experience down to its essence. In so doing, I wrote the following poem:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxRe-Lax

dead timexxxxxxxxxx blue wall xxxxxxxxxxwritten word
dead time xxxxxxxxxxcold room xxxxxxxxxwritten word
dead time xxxxxxxxxxdead time xxxxxxxxxwritten word
dead time xxxxxxxxxxblank page xxxxxxxxwritten word

blank pagexxxxxxxxxblue wall xxxxxxxxx cold room
blank page xxxxxxxx blue wall xxxxxxxxx blue wall
dead time xxxxxxxxxcold room xxxxxxxx written word
blue wall xxxxxxxxxxblank page xxxxxxx written word

dead timexxxxxxxxx written wordxxxxxxxwritten word
dead timexxxxxxxxx cold roomxxxxxxxxx blue wall
blank pagexxxxxxxxxblue wallxxxxxxxxxxcold room
blue wallxxxxxxxxxx written wordxxxxxxxdead time

I think that timelessness is a real value to art, and that timelessness is also always accessible to a serious artist, just as it’s fairly accessible to a serious mathematician or a serious scientist. Timelessness is something that you can hope to work with. Though how you can talk about timelessness and progress at the same time, I’m not sure. ~ R. Lax; [ibid.]

Having completed the first experiment—again following Lax—I translated the same poem from the language of ‘noun’ to the language of color. I plan next to get out the colored pencils and translate the piece from word to image:

xxxxxxxxxxxxOr, Again

light grayxxxxxxxdark bluexxxxxxxxxbright red
light grayxxxxxxxlight bluexxxxxxxxxbright red
light grayxxxxxxxlight grayxxxxxxxxxbright red
light grayxxxxxxxbright whitexxxxxxxbright red

bright whitexxxxxdark bluexxxxxxxxxlight blue
bright whitexxxxxdark bluexxxxxxxxxdark blue
light grayxxxxxxxlight bluexxxxxxxxx bright red
dark bluexxxxxxxbright whitexxxxxxxbright red

light grayxxxxxx bright redxxxxxxxxxbright red
light gray xxxxxxlight blue xxxxxxxxx dark blue
bright white xxxxdark blue xxxxxxxxx light blue
dark blue xxxxxxbright red xxxxxxxxxlight gray


Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout a new way of walkin’. Do you want to lose your mind?
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Reflections: Don't F**k It Up

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I invite you to consider first the words of poet, Robert Lax, concerning the role of the poet in the human project; as expressed in a 1985 interview with William Packard:

I think the question that keeps occurring to me whenever we talk about poetry, literature and the rest, is: why are we doing it? Why are we writing it, why do we talk about it, and why do societies in general, at a certain stage of their development anyway, seem to take it seriously as a thing to do. Why are we writing poetry. It is funny that in most all societies, even though poets may not be well-treated, the idea of a poet is honored. I think it has something to do with vision; that without vision, the people perish. I think the people sense that poets are or should be carriers of vision, and should be those who express it. And people sense that that is needed; that vision is always needed. So there’s always or often a place for the poet in a society, and a person who’s writing poetry probably senses too that he’s doing something that matters. And that he should be left to do it, encouraged to do it. At least not unnecessarily hampered in his pursuit.

Okay. Keeping Lax’s vision of the role of the poet in mind, please consider also, in the same light, this wonderful poem by Anna Swir; translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan:

POETRY READING

I’m curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.

Who will tell me
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.

The telephone rings. I have to give
a poetry reading.

I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.
I know for what.

I am supposed to tell them
why they were born,
why there is
this monstrosity called life.

Ouch. Yet, consider again Lax, from a bit further on in the same interview:

We are related to all beings on this planet and particularly are human beings: we are all parts of each other. We contribute to each other’s lives in spiritual or psychological ways. We share each other’s dreams and we exchange dreams, and visions. And as we share, the general vision we have becomes larger and sharper, becomes clearer in showing us who we are, and what we are – not only individually, but who we are as one being, as a whole person, one humanity. It all becomes clearer through this exchange of dreams and visions. And one of the regular places for this exchange is in what we call literature – in poetry, drama, in novels – in literature and the fine arts.

If you call yourself “poet” then, or “artist,” you assume a major responsibility. Don’t fuck it up.
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