Chinese and English writer (my father was from Japanese occupied Taiwan) I’m self taught from the 5th grade to present, in 19th c English literature, 19th c German philosophy, and Confucianism.
At age ten, and then at age 13, I experienced two conversions to poetry. At age 13 began a perpetual wave of inspiration, researching and writing poetry and philosophy, and living/producing a constant stream of lyrical poems, dramas and epic, as well as original philosophy writings. From age 13 to the present, I have kept a journal, every day has an entry- I am currently at journal number 72. (I think its the longest journal in history?)
As I turned 40, I went into deep forests for three days away from humans, in order to begin what I call the Thirty Year Campaign, from age 40 to 70. I reorganized my life work into two groups of three, poetry and philosophy, as a basis from which to revise and expand my work indefinitely .
METANOIA (ark version)
My life, my true life, began with two conversions to the world of poetry. The first when I was ten. But the second of these, at the age of thirteen, saved me from myself, when the most chaotic parts of my soul were in prominence.
I was the lone and outwitting illegalist, building the courage to cross boundaries of society. Kleptomania felt like a craft, making fires was a journey to power. I tried to be an ethical bandit, stealing only from impersonal capitalists, and never for greed but for skill. But still there was a downward spiral in my soul. Tale-telling became more elaborate, and banditry more personal. I was ‘collecting’ hubcaps from wealthy cars (once, a metal screech resulted in a chase), and, in the worst of all, one of my fires went out of control, and an older boy was blamed for it. I hadn’t the courage to vindicate him. I fear now that his father was abusive.
I boasted about the hubcaps to a forty-year-old friend, who offered to pay me for stealing car parts. At that point the last shreds of ethical banditry vanished, and I envisioned a livelihood of petty crime.
Whatever poetry was left in me, by some miracle, rose out of its slumber, and transformed me.
Uncharacteristically, for some unknown reason, I was thumbing my old book of English poems, and found a lyric by Byron.
Through this and the world it opened up, I was filled with an almost violent exhilaration. I longed for the image of myself as poet I had found when I was ten, and longed for what I had lost, surprised at what I had become.
I didn’t sleep that night. I lit candles and worked on a poem until daybreak. In my thirteenth year, I was transformed. My language, my dress, and philosophy were altered in an instant, and people who visited me were shocked.
I modeled my new existence on this first night, creating a melancholy paradise for myself:
Every night I would stay awake and read the Romantics, and read what they read. My education began on a perpetual wave of inspiration. Where I used to smoke cigars I now took up the pipe, instead of stolen beer I made a nightly ritual of black wine (coffee), and the energy of writing verse was unceasing. At every turn I poured out lyrics.
I began my first epic poem, Pantheistic Lines, with an invocation of Lisa.
“Of all the beauties to behold
Thine eyes meant more to me
Than all blue seas and silver skies
And every summer breeze..”
I was reentering the illumination I felt at ten years old, when Lisa, her personality, and joy came into my life, and I became a poet.
It was for her I wrote my poem on that first night, and this new life of words in me was inseparable from her being. I was saved from a very different life.
I speak of the world to which I returned, and the blessed memories of the poet-spring.
I was ten and she was nine. It was a mysterious place, a Waldorf school surrounded by trees and meadows, with beautiful buildings and timeless murals; everything was fresh from nature, beeswax, wool and wood. It was a contrast to the chaos and violence of my home. I remember the peace and the feeling of refuge. But when Lisa joined the class, her sparkling eyes, her laughter, and the strength of her personality awakened me. ‘Is this love?” I wrote to myself, as a question of such resonance. I felt so deeply, I wanted to cry. I dared not speak to her. It was enough to be close to her, always by accident.
In the children’s chorus, her voice would rise above the rest, and the earth became full. Through her presence and the question of love the radiance of the universe became so bright I thought my heart would break for reverence.
At recess I would go to the woods alone and sing to the trees and sky, where the meanings of the world could only be met with poetry. It was clear to me. I would be a poet. Only this would be my life.
‘In all the winds, fire, and strife,
never to doubt the wonders of life.’
I would emerge a composer of words. I would celebrate the beauty of Lisa, and the question of
love, and the pantheism of the earth she unveils.
I have lived with the simple memories. In fourth grade, the class went for two weeks to a farm in Harlemville, NY. Each morning we were up at dawn, collecting eggs and milking cows. On a magical night we had an evening picnic and campfire. Lisa was by the pond with her fishing rod, and swinging it back the hook had caught me in the hand. She felt so bad, but we laughed, and attaching the hook to my sleeve, she led me up the hill parading our way to the teacher and our class, showing the ‘fish’ that Lisa caught. The stars were so bright, the evening so warm, I could live in our footsteps forever.
I remember, too, so vividly, how I would secretly leave presents for her to find, jewelry I would make, and an egg of jade.
The last day of school we had a ‘French dinner,’ which included a talent show. I wrote a poem and set it to music. Like all my songs it was in an eerie minor key. I stood before the class and sang to her.
‘Love can be painful, love can be sweet,
all until our eyes did meet.
Then I questioned it, and I began to cry…”
I looked at her as I nervously sang. She seemed to glow. It was my profession of love.
In these early days of my poet life, I felt a sense of mission, but among my classmates I cultivated a cuteness (so others would take care of me in times of disaster). But in my poet world I was not a class pet, but a child-mage, playing my flute until the trees would sway in the wind to music.
My daydreams were a form of art, always so detailed and vivid. Once I had a stomachache and lay in the nurse’s room, laying on a bed behind a screen and gazing up to the ceiling. The school was founded by Austrian occultist Rudolph Steiner, so he often figured in my fantasies. Looking to the ceiling I saw what looked like a loose panel, but I couldn’t reach it. Christopher Updike was walking by with Lisa, so I whispered to them, and looking nervously to see if the nurse was coming, we got on a chair, Christopher on the bottom, holding us up, trying to push the panel in – we did! I was up and climbed into the smell of dust and wood. Right next to the opening was a rope, Lisa and Christopher were up, the panel put back in place, and softly with excitement we lit the candles and nervously looked around us. We saw an old passageway, narrow and half-built. The candles crackled with dust and with a dowel we made our way through the cobwebs. “This must be the oldest part of the school,” said Lisa.
To the right there was a door which opened. And then, to our horror, in a chair, sitting upright was the cobwebbed, mummified body of Steiner.
Beside him was a leather-bound and gold-fringed book with symbols on it. Being a magician, I opened it reverently, and though unable to read its German, I somehow felt clairvoyantly that we should look to the eastern comer of the room- there was a hole by the baseboard. Crawling through its crumbling plaster to our astonishment was a meadow, green and lush. The light seemed more than natural, almost ghostly. Christopher and I looked in amazement on Lisa, who unknowingly by her beauty and purity began to glow with light. Birds flew about her and petals fell down upon her.
Christopher was such a sensitive boy. He was the only one who would go with me on a search to see the fairies. We had heard somehow that gnomes were very fond of pineapple and could swim through stone. So we procured some dried pineapple rings and went to the woods at recess, tip-toeing in reverence to a stone uprising from the earth, and placing the fruit on the top, we hid behind a tree waiting for the mysterious creatures to come. Did they? I remember (in my daydreams during classes) when the stone began to move and a Gnome came swimming out of the stone, and sniffed the fruit and vanished.
But things were not always benign. Some Gnomes were malevolent, and though my classmates could not see them, they approached with danger in their eyes. I drew near, watching through the bushes, and they came so close to Lisa who walked with her friends. But I, magus as I was, made a circle in the dirt with a staff, and dancing and singing to the sun, I called from myself the power of magic and with this I infused my staff, and came dancing in rings about Lisa and her friends. They couldn’t see the circles of fire I made, but the malevolent Gnomes were horrified at these symbols of perfection and fled.
But one of them, laughing, snatched from Lisa’s bag a polished stone I gave her. I saw it and pursued him down into the earth – he was astonished as I followed, full speed I glided under the darkness of the surface, weaving through the tree roots and boulders, until he was cornered at the foundation of a church.
My staff was now a flaming sword, and he held the stone out trembling. I took the stone and ascended into the sky like a comet, looking down on the land of trees and the height was felt in my limbs. And down I soared to the ground again, and quietly slipped back into our classroom. Lisa found the stone on her desk. She looked at me deeply from across the room and smiled.
She had seen what was invisible to most, and knew how the stone was retrieved.
Through her, the unchanging pattern of Beauty was witnessed. I was still in a world of chaos and violence, but in my ten-year-old self, even if at times it was hopeless, the world of Lisa had shown me the world of spirit, and the work of the poet must be accomplished.
I wrote –
“I feel a shadow within me. The shadow
Of the footsteps of harmony. I wish
to follow them and be as one.
The stars in which the light may shine, in which
The glory of the grace grasps of the light
Within the shadow Of the dances
But it is all lost. (1983)
How should I order the soul where human life is hideous and disordered? Lisa and the poems had shown the footsteps. But in time I lost my way and fell into the city of chaos, of lies, of theft, of fire. But where I had once retrieved a stone for Lisa, Lisa in that hour retrieved my soul to me.
My task in that season of 1986, of 13 years old longing for what I found at 10, was a recovery of innocence. I must learn to be ten years old again, where the gates of the symbolic worlds were open, and the greatest strength was a willingness to be vulnerable. From this would come a tenderness of steps, and a reverence.
Now the poet-craft was reborn and ready for the impossible journey. Inspiration poured out as I had never dreamed it could. It was not lost.
Still my thoughts returned to Lisa. The music of my life grew sad as a witness to suffering. But now at thirteen years I could pass through all grief with eyes of innocence. I had left all schools forever, but even the sadness of parting from the presence of Lisa could bring me close to the spiritual home of Beauty.
If one may sing a saddened song,
The trees may sway, And the squirrels may weep
As the birds and the clouds, toil above.
And yet the saddened song,The song so deep,
The song that sings of such sadness and love.
The saddened song that lives within the dark blue skies,
Blow to the ocean by a summer breeze,
Sung in a whisper by the rising tide
Then carried to the land by the sea.
The land in which I met my love,
My sight was through a veil of tears,
Like a shower from the skies above
The song of sadness I did sing
As my true love came near.
Yet I was left speechless when my love did pass,
And my heart was shattered like a rosary of glass.
(1986)
Critical Opinions, 1986-1992
At the time of this writing, I’m trying to reevaluate my previous literary and philosophic work. As part of this process, I’m reflecting back on my creative genesis in 1986, the time of my second conversion to poetry.
At that time, I was thirteen years old and absorbing the western canon at a rapid and imperfect speed. I had very strong opinions on the subject of literary criticism, but I didn’t have the knowledge or establishment to grasp at subtleties, or express my self the way I desired. My prose was far behind my poetry, my vision ahead of my capabilities.
I was overwhelmed by the beauty of Byron’s finest moments, in canto IV of Childe Harold, and Shelley’s Ode To The West Wind. I ventured a comparison with the best of current poetry, looking to the Nation and New Yorker. The effect was a powerful dissonance. What I hoped for was a progression in literature, where my contemporaries would experience the heights of the masters, would entirely reinvent that experience, and surpass them. Instead, what I encountered to my sorrow was what I could best describe as a genre of disjointed prose, notes to self, and dramatic readings, sometimes moving toward poetry, often grounded in the prosaic.
I was of the opinion that the Modernist direction of poetry was away from the direction of what made poetry most uniquely poetry, and over all, tended to replicate what made prose uniquely prose. I
Admitted the highest points of Pound and Elliot, but I was
dumbfounded by the popularity of the poet Rod Mckuen. I’d purchased a set of his books at a flea market, and I quoted from them when visitors came by as examples of a crisis in criticism.
Of course I tried to make up in enthusiasm what I lacked in knowledge. I was just starting to grasp the trajectory from the Age of Pope to the Age of Wordsworth. But it would be years latter that I would read a survey of verse from Imagists to Spoken Word. I felt I understood enough to resonate with an essay by James Stephens, where he wrote
Today, whether it be for poetry or for prose, for painting or for music, there is no artistic-subject: and in consequence, no demand upon, and no production of the graver artistic- energy. It may be; it almost assuredly is, that our predecessors have plundered and exhausted our fields; and that even the instrument of production, technique, has been so diligently over used by them that it, too, comes blunt and inept to our needs, and will work no more.
I was excited by a reinvention of technique, with all that Stephens implied by the word. Though I was far from it in my own verse, I had an idea that poetry should take a step back in to the recent past, from the north, southward to the center to the circle, then, turn east, and move with it in an new direction, one that would be alien to the Romantic tradition, and indigenous to our own time and experience.
Contrary to Stephens, I believed the over all qualities of the ‘poetic’,
The quintessence as I called it, has been proven by world cultures to be inexhaustible. If a group of poets based them selves in the quintessence, the much maligned ‘poetic’, and practiced a union of art and life, and ‘tinctured’ their work with the never-before personality of the ego, a revolution in literature would occur.
While the alchemical expressions came a bit latter (‘tincture of the ego’ etc) the concepts were there at the beginning. The qualities of the ‘poetic’, the mythic, timeless, primal, the musical, the metaphorical, the mysterious, are inexhaustible, and must be recreated, and, to use the phrase of Shklovsky, defamiliarized.
Also, from the beginning, I held the view that poetry will do itself a disservice if it abandons form, or expands the word to include its very absence. Rather then depart from form, I advocated a radical creation of new forms. For my self, I took a sort of vow to never work in free verse, and to start the exploration of new formal possibilities.
In contemplating forms in particular, I tended to view modernism as a bad excess of the libertarian aspects of Romanticism. Out of the clockwork preachiness of neo classicism, the best of Romantics came to a restoration of form in vitality. In modernism, style and content and ethos went back in the direction of prose, but form went into the opposite extreme. Again, my call was not to write like the Romantics, but to recreate form from their sense of ‘organic’ form.
When I went to local poetry readings, I encountered what I felt was a harsh orthodoxy of modernists. One person argued so forcefully against my views, and felt I was taking a ‘conservative’ position. Interestingly, I was surprised at this. I saw my call to be progressive, but from an opposite direction. Conservative I thought was to write in the manner of the currant orthodoxy, in disjointed prose, making witty points, and valuing point of view over art it self. If my own early poems sounded like I was a companion of the Romantics, it was because it was a necessary step to a new literature.
I latter made my slogan ‘NEW FORM, NEW STYLE, NEW CONTENT’ as a way of new discovery in quintessence. I couldn’t fathom how that could be called conservative. I figured it was possible to be a curmudgeon, and say, “this new fangled new stuff, that’s not how we wrote when I was young”, and that’s how I appeared, I felt, to the modernists. In fact I was taking a very different approach, which seemed lost on them no matter how much I tried to explain. I felt as if,—–years latter they were still reacting against Tennyson as if he were the establishment.
I took this orthodoxy to be omnipresent, when in fact it wasn’t. Yes, among currant writers of poetry, among those who organize and attend the readings, but not among the wider public of poetry readers. In the wider public, I latter learned, there’s much more of a critical neutrality. I found more openness, to looking at the sort of poem I advocated, to look at it on its own terms, to see if it’s original, and whether it speaks to experience.
But in the poetry scene, it was very different. Readers wanted strait forward American English that told a story, and made one see the world from a different perspective. Some rhythm was approved, some archaic poeticisms if they showed off the author’s virtuosity, especially if it did so with wit.
When presented with a poem that tried to find its own voice in the quintessence, the result was often confusion. One writes in the way modern people write. If one writes in rhyme, in meter, in metaphors of sun and moon, then one is writing the way they wrote back then. If one writes in the way they wrote back then, then one is not original.
This struck me as a bit shallow. If someone writes in the style of Ginsburg, it can ether be an unoriginal imitation, or quite possibly, make it entirely new, expanding it in a new direction, investing one’s experience in it. Maybe this can be said of any style of verse, that in the right hands it can be made a vehicle of original expression, true to the author.
So, can the same be said for a poem beginning from the foundations of Rilke, and blossoming out from it? Say what one will of Byron, but his poems are distinctive. From the cavaliers he built his lyrics, from the Dunciad tradition his satire. In both he infused his life, and made them his own.
Once this principle is observed, the author is faced with a question, ‘what model will be my vehicle?’ It seemed to me, among the orthodox, the question just wasn’t on the table. The assumption was, “current poets throw out all models, we write from out own experience”. But this just wasn’t the case. Every poem at the reading was modeled, consciously or unconsciously on Mary Oliver or Charles Bukowski, a descendent of someone’s work. They each had their models as I had mine.
Almost invariably there was someone at the readings, or a small cluster, which appreciated my verse, found it a refreshing change in the free verse routine. But people who actively agreed with my critical outlook weren’t in the poetry scene. They were ether scholars of literature or free readers of poems, or new poets who hadn’t yet adopted the modernist persona.
I wasn’t any where near being able to write about the things I talked about, but I day dreamed an essay precisely on the modernist persona, how readers at the readings have unconsciously adopted an identity as the cutting edge, free spirited commentators on current issues, activists against the bulwark of reaction. My essay would question this direction of poetry. It would question this persona, while powerful in relating to contemporary issues, and bonding with other people. Whether it limits the more unearthly calling of the poet, or limits our access to the kind of art that’s world resounding and timeless, that remains another question. Milton, I pointed out, lived in a world of mundane objects, outhouses, doorknobs, ledger sheets, details of legal codes. But instead he wrote in the quintessence. You could dismiss this by saying he did this not out of choice, but custom. And now the custom has changed. No subject is taboo, and poets have unprecedented freedom.
But I felt there was a more probing question. What is the farthest we can reach beyond our selves into what is unexplored? What is the very nature of our art, that distinguishes it from the world of the newspaper?
I wanted to argue that in every great age and culture, in India, in China, in Greece, there was a unique human activity of the poet, expressed in countless ways. It moved with the human experience from beyond the shell of the mundane daily object in a water of subjective objectivity. (I use words I have now that I didn’t have then.) The world of dream, of vision, of trance, incarnating in symbols the immediate experience.
But in the world of the readings, there was the strangest sense that this world of ideals was socially backwards, part of a Eurocentric oppression. Meter itself a Eurocentric oppression. I proposed that they should look to Valmiki and Lipo, but I retracted it, because the translations of Lipo make him seem like a colloquial free verse poet in the manner of the Beats. I felt frustrated and isolated in these arguments. Politically I was a Godwinian anarchist, to the left of their liberalism. But the more ideological among them saw me as a Jesse Helms Republican. My essay was a call for two works, one, creating new worlds in new myths in new music, second, with our hands, creating a social revolution for class equality. The two, I felt, should be complements.
To be honest, the negative encounters were probably few. But I was insecure, and felt defensive in that environment. It made me defensive as my work might be rejected in my lifetime. So I withdrew into a very bad habit of producing and producing, plays poems, epics etc, and being horrible at sharing them, never promoting them. It was a very defeatist outlook, which I’m now trying to undo.
Conversely in my imagination I made a vivid fiction of poets philosophers and painters, who created a subculture of dissident artists reviled in their lifetimes and treasured by posterity. This fiction wasn’t on paper, but in my mind. I would smoke my pipe and wonder in the basement, imagining the first appearances of a new artistic movement, a new renaissance of the humanities. I imagined all sorts of critical reviews of their work.
Some of the poets were actual friends of mine, like Edward Egan, others were from the imaginary world, like Julia Strataveri. With each character I had a chance to work out all manner of conflicting ideas and approaches. For the most part, they weren’t defensive, but together simply created the new literature. And there it was.
They addressed themselves to both posterity and antiquity, and built their monumental dramas and works expressing the world of the present in the new language of the infinite. Time passed, and they developed their own readership, their own subculture of enthusiasts. To be left wing, mystically inclined and advocates of a complex metaphorical art were typical traits in this group, always with exceptions.
By 1987, the fiction showed the first signs of manifesting in outward life. With my mother, my cousin Har’i Khan, and Amy Champion, we found the first four of this kind of community. We were producing poems in the quintessence with a strong sense of shared ideals. Latter, Melissa Jameson came into my life, and the new beginnings were discernable. But the story of the Dionysian Rite is written of elsewhere, I should stay to my topic.
The ideas of this time of my life are scattered through my journals, essays, and some fragmentary pieces. There are some small essays in which I try to assess the poems of fellow Dionysians, one called Mortality’s Masque for example, looks at the work of Har’i Khan, but from the lens of our tortured friendship in that time and place.
But more abstractly, primarily interested in innovation, I spent time wondering how forms of one art could be fused with another, and wither it might offer some directions. I launched a long group of poems that ‘translated’ details of musical forms into verse, mirroring the details of first movement form for sonatas, and experimenting with Prelude and Fugue. These abstract and repetitive pomes were so thrilling to write, having the feeling of a new synthesis; I felt I was moving toward the breaking down of barriers of all art forms. I was at that age a convinced Wagnerian in music; I yearned for the Gesamtkunstwerk, the synthesis of all art forms. Poetry, I thought early on, unites all the arts within it, and I went on in detail about the painters’ and sculptor’s and composer’s crafts in the narrative poem. When I first became aware of Wagner’s doctrine, I felt I was aligned with a thread of historical Aesthetics without even being aware of it.
Concerned with the reception of poetry, I noted, a person might read an ode by Keats with a cold curiosity, and another person find in it gateways to another world. I thought about the process of writing, but the process of ‘entering in’ to a work seemed like it demanded examination. Very taken by Blake’s ideas of the ‘firm liniments of the imagination’, I wondered how a person might cultivate the visionary imagination as a way to literature. I wondered if there were steps a person could take to ‘enter in’, if this didn’t come naturally to them. With any literature, Chinese or English, an intellectual preparedness opens countless doors to the poets, familiarity with the whole literature allows us to see context and influence and nuance. But a person new to poetry, with a rich experience and a sense of reverence is miles ahead of a jaded scholar.
Around 1988, I started to find a way to look at individual poems that could open one to experience their mystery, together with critical analysis. This started out as a ‘threefold ring of criticism’. The first ring, with the poem in front of the reader, was to try to enter the ‘cosmological’ sense of the piece. That is, the eyes close, one ‘baths in nothingness’ until the world is vanished. Opening the eyes, as if a first fresh glimpse at the wonders of the earth, one enters a symphonic poem, and witnesses to its existence. This is the cosmological sense, the poem’s existence outsides of concerns of history, in and of itself.
The second Ring is the individual sense. From here I quote from a latter synopsis. “Now we descend to the earthly worlds, but retaining closely the cosmological sense, we retrieve or gather our learning of the poet’s individual character, and understand the poem in the context of her life, and try to discover what influence bares on its content. What happened in her life when she wrote it? What part of her earlier life is relevant to it? Above all, what is the unique flavor her character? Where is this found in her art?”
The last Ring is the historical sense. “Now, we retrieve or gather our learning on the history of poetry and social events before, after and during her life. What poets had she studied and learned from? What part of her poetry is determined by her Age and its conventions? Above all, what in her poetry is unique to her, and not found in poets before her?”
These Threefold Rings were latter expanded to Nine Keys to Interpreting the Poets. In short, after the third Ring, there was a forth step, while keeping still to the cosmological sense, the reader interpreted the music, rhythmic and tonal qualities, etc. Fifth, an interpretation of the concrete meaning, the narrative, the concepts, the figures of speech. Sixths, ‘the two betrothed’, reading again with the music and meaning united again. Seventh, interpreting the poem as a whole, the assessment of the unity of its parts. Eighth, retrieving particular phrases, particular images from the whole for savoring, or for noted detraction from its purpose. And last, the interpreter’s life. What dose the experience mean for the reader’s life, how dose it speak to one’s own history and experience?
Very connected to this was my intense interest in Alchemy. The Hermetic process should be mirrored in verse, I insisted, if we could find a way to reflect the very particular procedures of Alchemy in verse, it wouldn’t be merely a metaphor for a lover to a higher state (as in “Alchemie du Verbe”) but could potentially unveil a new nuance in literature. I didn’t believe this alchemy could be divorced from the physical work with metals. So this ‘poetic alchemy’ was to be a spiritual extension of the physical work, and what would remain might be discoveries that stand on their own from a literary perspective. In other words, what for me might have been a weaving of literary aims and personal hermetic practice, should in effect have no dependence on their origin.
I was interested in the process of the imagination in poetic creation, and I turned to various systems of divination as a way of passing to deeper corridors of creativity. These were themselves considered mirrorings of alchemical processes, for example, where I engaged in the sublimation of mercury, in poetic composition, this was paralleled in clairvoyant vision into evocative images, when what was witnessed in vision was brought back into poetic phrases. Again, the aim was regardless how one interpreted this process (skeptics reducing clairvoyance to auto suggestion) the literary experiment would stand on its own.
Over all, the principle out lines of poetic alchemy were as follows:
The play of sun and moon, or sulfur and mercury, were reflected in two directions of verse, that is, ‘Symbolism’, meaning the evocative and intangible, the music; then, ‘Humanism’, meaning the intellectual concrete and narrative. The symbolist aspect might be found in the lyrical fevers of Shelley’s Prometheus, the humanist, in Wordsworth’s The Prelude, with its philosophical groundedness.
The third quality of alchemy, magnesium, was reflected in the verse-form, which cradles the previous two, and creating a pressure, an intensity, and leading where bounds become vehicles of freedom
In assessment of texts, I think I followed a predictable progression. As a thirteen year old, secretly I valued a mediocre moment in Wordsworth more then a fine poetic moment in Elliot. Publicly, I looked for the worst in modern poetry to compare to the best of Romantic verse. As my reading grew, I was forced to rethink my own dogmatism, as I witnessed my self trying to fit evidence to the argument. All throughout I affirmed my main argument, that is, against the twentieth century proseation of verse. But the argument matured as I grew older. I talked more of “Shelley at his best moments” rather then “Shelley”. I became increasingly critical of Byron’s superficiality, and more attuned to his passages of depth and evocation.
Rather then ignoring American Romanism, as I previously did, wishing it would go away, I honestly tried to work through what it was that made Bryant seem so inferior to his English counterparts.
At thirteen, at the beginning of this process, I tried to understand what made the Ode To The West Wind move with genius, over and against the praise of anthologists and critics. So latter this same exercise pulled me to deepen my self-examination in regard to texts, and encouraged me to seek a path that was both principled and unidiomatic.
At this point in my life were I feel my work is only beginning, I look back and try to assess my opinions. From my own standpoint, because I am one with the thirteen year old in worldview, I am still an advocate for Dionysian art. I want to see a viable alternative to the proseation of verse, and a recreation of verse form. But the process of maturing views is indispensable. Many of my earlier pronouncements were nostalgic rather then progressive. If carried out, that vane could condemn a new literature to an historical box. The truth is my dogmatism sustained me when what I was doing was completely out of the mainstream of things. I was undertaking a life process with no supports, in fact, faced with quite a bit of hostility. In the end, I was able to turn the criticism onto the critic, and to crave more viable avenues for the same worldview.
If I were to try to look outside my own worldview, in devilish adcocacy, I might have the following affirmations:
If a critic has no such commitment to Dionysian ideals, he or she would be forced to admit the uniqueness of the situation. Even if I ‘did’ fail to produce much of lasting value, I was at least an experiment in an adolescent out of time. In isolation, I found my identity in the Romantic era, and produced work from this inspiration. I developed in this Weltanschauung a philosophical process, a critical and poetic one. This raises an interesting question: is original work, if modeled on the best of Shelley, if fused with a new personality and a modern era, not creating something essentially new? If a poet actually achieved this, then I think my argument was correct. It would have to be judged on its own terms, not on whether it conforms to the current ethos of the poetry scene.
Other details of my thinking, such as the division of poetry into the three components of alchemy, might be seen as interesting and instructive myths, and they may indeed offer new ways of looking at verse. But we could conceive of any number of contradictory myths of structure, and each would look at verse according to its own modal. Perhaps, even if ideologically driven, it can ultimately be seen as a product of art, expressing criticism. And in the right hands, leading to unique approaches.
That said, with out my worldview, my argument that
the best of Dionysian verse would be superior to the best of modernist/ postmodernist verse would be less persuasive. A more objective view might ascribe this judgment to taste and temperament.
But there could be little doubt that the best of Dionysian verse would excel in its unique field, and would be a valued contribution.
NATURE’S TEARS
Journals, April 15 1986-
The bookshelves at our apartment have their own small collections, philosophy, literary criticism etc. The back of the shelves form a bed room draped with cloth, and in the inmost shrine, right above the Greek and Latin classics are 61 Journals. The 62st is in my bag, being currently written in.
I think by the time I die this journal will my best prose work, spanning almost an entire life. Unlike the Journal number one, which you will see is a bit concerned with daily details, most of the Journal is a never ending laboratory of crazy adventures, almost novelistic people I go on adventures with, and always the workings out of philosophy and aesthetics. One moment I’m struggling with the German Idealists, the next I’m breaking into a city reservoir with my cousin Hari Khan, scaling a fence with a Hegel book.
I began this Journal (singular to mean the whole) on this day, April 15, 1986, when I was a 13 year old English Romantic poet. Today is its Twenty fifth anniversary. From the first entry, in those suppressed traumatic times, to this, almost every day has an entry, except for about a month when I was still 13, when certain events were so horrific I couldn’t even write. Beyond this missing month, there are three days unwritten from the time my father died, and journal fifteen is missing, having been in a bag stolen from under my feet.
I can’t even begin to describe the experience of having my life in handwriting. I used to call it my second unconscious, like a realm of existing but mostly forgotten events and thoughts and dreams that none the less are there if I open their pages. If there are things I need to remember, I go back to those dates, but sometimes, too, and cyclically, I fall back into its stories and ideas, a traveling back in eons.
In a moment I’ll type some of the first weeks of the journal, but first some background and a few observations.
As can be read in my essay METANOIA, at age 12 I was taken out of school and left to my own devices by my mother. I was more and more caught up in petty crime, pyromania and kleptomania and lying. Then, on March 3 ’86 I had an almost mystical and sudden shift, randomly having flipped through a book of Romantic poems, coming across Byron’s maid of Athens; a whole world was suddenly begun, and all night long I was up by candle light, writing a poem for Lisa.
In the month that followed till I started the Journal, I was a drastic whirlwind of reading, of composing, tree climbing and pipe smoking. As the spring progressed, everything in the world was new. Climbing to a tree top at the crack of dawn after a sleepless night of Child Herald and writing, I tied a small bag of tobacco and pipe tools to a thin top branch, a satchel of books to another, lit my pipe, and opened my book of the poems of Scott. It was pure heaven. Some part of me will always be there, is always still there.
Rapidly consuming everything the Romantics read, I was led from Byron’s Journals back to Pepys, and knew I should start a Journal of my own. I purchased my first diary from a card store, and made the first entry upstairs in my mother’s room, carpeted with dust and refuse as it was. I was clearly unsure of who it was addressed to. In many ways, to this day, it is addressed only to the privacy of my soul. But as the preface I wrote in the first journal shows, I was also addressing posterity, and as Southey taught me, probably both posterity and antiquity. I opened up its rather florid pages, and wrote a title for the Journal, NATURES TEARS. I wrote a Wordsworth quote below, and a made some effort to make it calligraphic.
For all my enthusiasm, the first thing to notice is that I could write poems before I could write prose. The prose, especially at the beginning and improving toward the end, is awkward, overly formal, sprinkled with ill fitting archaic contractions. But it was the only way for me to learn. I think by the next Journal number two, prose style began to take root.
But as I read this first journal, it’s almost impossible for me to not be conscious that I was a child. When I wrote it, I assure you I saw myself as a powerful youth who would one day change the face of literature, but when I see pictures of myself at that time, or when I see children now of the same age, I’m a amazed at how little I was. For a long time, I was really embarrassed to look back at these first Journals, as they seemed so unreadable and awkward. But today I want to share the beginning, in all their tortured prose and awkward attempts at literary language, as part of the history of a child.
Two last pieces of background before I share selections. First, as I alluded to, the conditions I lived in were by any current standard, unsuitable and unsafe for a child. The house, before my first conversion to poetry at age ten, was consumed by domestic violence. As I approached the second conversion, I was a polite child acting out in the loudest way I could. I don’t want to say too much, as it concerns people still living, but there were recent and buried traumas.
Further, the house was dilapidated, stuffed from compulsive hoarding. A police report described conditions of extreme neglect. As these journals are my second unconscious, reading them now, I can only begin to sort through the threads of many knots. There has to be a deeper story for how a 12 year old rascal suddenly became a 13 year old Romantic poet. But as I find my way through these bygone mazes, I don’t want to dismiss in any way my childhood sincerity about the role of poetry in the life of philosophy.
I wanted my poetry to capture the freshness of the spring, and I think in my best poems I could do that. But in my first journals, language seemed to obscure rather then reveal sincerity. This is especially true in the accounts of my love for Lisa. My written professions do no justice to my experience of her beauty. Often, my accounts of dejection and confusion seem almost theatrical on the page. But I was working through confusing emotions which were somehow at the heart of my spiritual work and future.
From Journal Number One
Preface
Unfortunately, I have never recorded my thoughts and deeds unto a journal before this day. Yet, I shall try my humble best to explain some events which have occurred in my past. (I may not be the best speller, but please try your best to figure out the words of my life.)
April 15 1986 On the way to the library I met my friend William H—n whom I had not seen in quite a time. (We were arrested for shoplifting from a hardware store in October of 1985)
We talked for a while, then I continued to walk down to the library to read the news paper. (This is the day America Bombed Libya.)
I then came home. I lit my pipe, and read the poem: Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
April 16 1986 This morning I awoke to a grey rainy day. Yet by no means did that stop me from enjoying the beauteous wonder of nature.
I tidied up around my favorite tree, and remembered a poem I wrote a long time ago.
“Mimosa, dear Mimosa,
So simple yet so sweet.
The green green clovers and Irish grass
All kneel at your feet.
And as the breeze blows your graceful leaves
You may sing your silent song.
I once may have believed thee
To be just a tree
Yet I realize that I was wrong.”
Latter, I when to work with my mother where she taught Piano. We then came home. Then my friend Louis Carlini came for a music rehearsal with my mother. And now as we go to bed, we expect both the war and our deaths at any minuet.
April 17 1986 Once again, I awoke to a grey rainy day. But my mind was completely off the war. I dragged myself into the kitchen ….I smoked my pipe and eat my breakfast.
Latter we went to the Irene Fokine school of Ballet to play the Piano. Latter, I went across the street to the Tobacco Shop to visit my favorite clerk and good friend Red. I purchased an Irish clay pipe, a pipe stand and a pipe pouch. I latter returned to the studio and wrote the following verses:
“Lisa my love, where hast thou gone?
Last night you were by my side.
Or could it seem
That it was just a dream?
(That would surely rob me o’ my pride.)
And yet the dancing,
the loveliest treat,
could reality ever be so sweet? (No!)
(The above verse is about a love sickness which I was never o’er.)
At 10pm, we returned home.
April 19 1986 This is the day I wrote my first sonnet. I titled it, Sonnet to my love.
A bit letter in the day, I helped my mother teach violin to little James, my mother’s violin student. Latter, I whet for a walk with Edward Egan. {30 years old?}We then came home to eat dinner with my mother. Then, my mother came to the music room to practice the harp (She is giving a concert on April 27 1986)
April 20 1986 At 8:30, we left the house for Palisades Park where my mother plays the organ. After that, we went directly to NYC to hear a violin and lute concert. Then we came home.
My friend Edward came to treat me to a movie, and I latter treated him to dinner.
April 21 1986 I went to Ballet class. My mother came to pick me up. She then explained that she met Lisa on her way to pick me up.
(Lisa is a girl of great Beauty in every way. I am believed to have fallen in love with her at the young age of ten. It was then that I wrote my first poetic prose. Then latter in 1983, I wrote my first poem which latter I set to music, and sang to Lisa a French dinner at school.)
Lisa remained on my mind for the rest of the day.
April 22 1986 This morning I awoke, thinking of Lisa. Si searched through some old poems which I wrote about her. I latter when to school with my mother to teach Violin. Much much latter we went to a restaurant for dinner.
April 23 1986 This morning I played the violin with my mother. I then wrote the poem Nature’s Tears, in which I titled after my Journal.
“Nature’s tears of love and loss
Ne’re ever gain the floor.
And yet my tears of a broken heart
Fall such as ne’re before.”
I went to teach piano with my mother. We then went to pick up Alexis at green meadow school. We found her with Michele, so we brought them both home. Alexis had her piano lesson, while Michele and I helped Mrs. Starkey (Alexi’s mother) prepare dinner. Latter, we eat the dinner we prepared (Tacos) and then Alexis talked us into putting on a play for the adults.
After they left, my mother and I had a heart to heart talk about ‘love’. But when we fell upon the subject of Lisa, I embarrassed myself by breaking down and crying. I then dried my eyes and quickly changed the subject. No more was said.
April 24 1986 This morning I awoke to the most beautiful day this year. I went outside, and played my violin to a squirrel. I learned that squirrels are much better listeners than birds. Because birds become jealous when your song is sweeter then there’s. (I am jesting, I assure you!)
Latter, I wrote a poem to a bumble bee.
I read for most of the afternoon, then went to the Irene Fokine school of Ballet for the evening where my mother played the Piano. I met a lady named Ann who was sure that she could bring me up in a better way than my mother, though she would never admit it. I met my friend Edward. We talked for a while.
April 26 1986 On April 19th I wrote what I thought was a sonnet. Today I noticed that it had only 2 quatrains and no couplet. Today, my first sonnet came naturally to my hand. I titled it Sonnet: The saddened Song.
Latter, Edward and I went to a book sale. I bought two Shakespeare plays and an out of print book of the Works of Robert Burns. I played the violin for the rest of the evening.
April 27 1986 This was the day of my mother’s concert. She played the harp beautifully! She recited the poetry of Yeats, Cornish, and my verse: Willow By the Brook. {about Lisa.}
After the concert, we when tot a Chinese takeout place, and took it to Ramapo Mountain. We came home, and I practiced my Tetrameters, and made myself some Chamomile tea.
April 28 1986 …in which I purchased a photo album for the binding of the book I am privately printing. I shall call it: A Saddened Song. {Dedicated to Lisa} in it will be in order some selected poems I wrote a long time ago.
April 29 1986 This morning I wrote the autobiography for the book I am writing. I went to work with my mother, and on the way back I heard news of the nuclear power plant that exploded in the Soviet Union. Nuclear radiation fallout is coming near America.
I wrote a sonnet, thinking it was my last, and titled it: sonnet: No my love.
Much later in the morning, I received a call from Alexi’s mother who, without my say, decided to take to me a class party at my old school.
My only fear is that I might meet Lisa. And would break my heart.
April 30 1986 This morning I practiced my violin. This afternoon I wrote the table of contents for my book. This evening Luis Canrlini came for a music rehearsal.
May 8 1986 From the moment I awoke my mind pondered a subject of which I latter set to paper and titled “The Faults of Christian Piety.” By the time I finished, my mother and I went to work at the Lutheran church. During the service I took note of a few problems with Christianity.
Much later in the night, about 10:00, my mother told me some solemn news about a week ago, my 18 year old —-gave birth to a child. Neither her nor the father want to bare the burden of responsibility of bringing the child up.
There is s slight possibility that the child might be put up for adoption. If so, my mother and I would adopt the child, and I would take the place of her, even though I am her uncle. I would bring the child up with nature, music, poetry and love. I would name the child Arial Bliss.
May 9 1986 This morning, my mother and I decided that we could not support another child, and legally, a divorced lady and a 13 year old boy would never take the responsibility of adoption. However, in our griefs and woes, life went on.
May 10 This morning at 8:20am, my dear friend Edward came to pick me up. Then we drove to the Waldwick train station to go to NYC.
When we arrived, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the way out I bought a post card for mother’s day. We then went for a quick bite to eat, then we returned home approximately 5:00.
I was very careful not to mention the Pamphlet {I was writing, On The Faults of Christian Piety}, o’er the fact that he is a Roman Catholic. Much later in the day I mailed the post card and a piece of paper, and titled it in pantheistic letters, Hallow of Truth. At the bottom of the paper it reads:
“Dearest mother that shares my blood,
That shares my deeds, thoughts and dreams,
And when so kind to share thy knowledge,
a halo of truth is to be seen.”
May 12 1986 This morning I read a chapter of Shelley and the beginning of the book, Reviewing World History.
May 19 1986 I found today to be an unusually usual day. The schedule followed through such as every Monday I have ever lived to live through.
May 21 1986 Between the time of September 1985 and February 1986, I have written a series of verses named Ahrtistaicism, a form. Today, I changed the form slightly and shortened the title to a one word name. So now, the form to be known as Ahrtisaform consists of a couplet, a quatrain, followed and usually ended by a couplet. Though it can be ended [or begun} by two {un}rhyming lines.
Rhyme scheme: AB CDCD EF GG
May 23 1986 This morning, I went to the valley cottage to teach with my mother. While my mother taught piano, I posted a few more flyers
Latter, we went to my old school to pick Alexis up. It was there that I noticed Lisa, my love. When I walked around the corner, I immediately fell within her beauteous eyes. Her smile warmed my heart, as I viewed through a veil of tears.
May 23 1986 Today seemed to be a very short day. Unfortunately all I accomplished today was to morn for Lisa, and hold great self pity.
May 27 1986 Within the many schools my mother teaches at I have noticed that o’er the last few weeks, I have found many people addressing me as the young philosopher. Or they would say “he’s 13 going on 53”. Of course I have no objection.
I am still wondering about the spirit I see every time I enter the kitchen. Above all, I started the first skit of a drama-play. It contains two brothers, and a chorus of nymphs.
May 28 1986 Most of the morning I read some of the sonnets of John Milton. Latter within the afternoon I left with my mother to teach piano. When we returned, I left for a walk into the woods.
As I knelt under a tree, I piped my pentatonic pipe. I find it most interesting how such an instrument can hold such pantheistic magic.
May 29 1986 –publishing day-
This morning I walked down to the library to borrow the book on Greek philology, mainly for the work “On the Soul” by Aristotle.
When I returned, I read some more of Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. By that time I received the Post Review, from the mail man. In it, they finally published my lines submitted two weeks ago though they misspelled my {middle} name. They spelled Freydam F-r-e-y-d-a-n-s. Though little do I care, for the reason that they only read that particular column are the mothers of the children that {submitted} to the paper.
{ Lines
Could I ever view thee from under a cold clear sky?
Could thy cheerful smile ever greet my eye?
Pleasure to my eyes.
Could the sonnets that I sing
E’er echo through the wild woods ring
And hear thy whispers echo back?
Pleasure to my ears.
Could I woo thee from dust to dawn
(but then awake, and find thee gone)
Only pleasure to my dreams.”}
June 5 1986 This morning I received a call from Mrs. Jonson. (My old teacher from school) She invited me to visit the class tomorrow. I gladly accepted. Though, I fear the site of Lisa.
Today I wrote a number of verses for Dedicatory Lines. Plus I also worked o bit more on Pantheistic Lines by adding a few more lines to Ballad o’ Pan. This Lyric is the story which the spirit of Pan tells. It is also symbolically my story of Lisa and the pain I felt for her, and yet still feel for her.
June 6 1986 This morning, I awoke at 9:45am. Then, at 10:00 we left to visit the school. My mother dropped me off within the parking lot. I then walked through the courtyard to the class room door. Everyone came rushing to greet me, yet I only took notice of one of the welcoming party. A girl (who is but a Lady at this time) with deep eyes, so simply divine. She bore a smile of the utmost warmth, yet of the absolute most beauteous simplicity.
She wore a snow white blouse with the collar ever open wide. Breaking loose from my trance I walked with in the room.
I noticed that many of my friend’s voices have deepened since I last left. After I grew acquainted with my old classmates, we said our verse, eat our snack, and went outside to play kickball. However, I never expressed an interest in sports, so such as the many many times before I wondered into the woods.
I visited every tree that I knew so well (from 1983 to 1985, I would often walk through the woods. I would sing to the trees and squirrels the melodies I wrote for Lisa. )
When recess was over the class went to the gym for Assembly. A few students played a piece by Vivaldi. We the returned to the classroom for lunch. At the end of the day, we began to clean the room for lunch. At the end of the day, we began to clean the room.
After sweeping the floor, Lisa began to carry out the large bag of unnecessary paper and trash. I rushed to help her. As we took our exit from the room, and were no more than six feet from the door, she gave me the warmest smile, and asked me how I felt being taught at home by my mother. My voice was husky form the lump in my thought, and my skin was tingling. Though I tried my best to explain to her that I gathered more knowledge within this year then within all the years I have lived to see.
My tears were about to break away from eyes when glanced at her flowing locks.
When she saw this, she obviously knew I did not wish her to see such a sight, so she politely tired not to notice.
When I wiped the cascade from my face, I saw an expression of great pity in her eyes. On the way back to the class room, she told me of her year within the school.
What shall I call this emotion of sweetness and pain? Can one truly love at such an age? And yet, can such youth dwell with such depression?
June 21 1986 As I look back upon the 13 years which I have met so far, I claim the time, from my breath to the present, to be the happiest life one could live.
The times of depression I have met were of the {separation} from a maiden.
I understand quite well why the word called Love comes so late within one’s life. Then I was a child of the age of ten. I would have very well gone mad if I did not know myself better. It left me with the question of depth, which is still not answered.
My life is hardly begun. How then can I bare knowledge of such an emotion? What proof do I have that this is ‘true” love? None what so ever! Love has been described to be as a passion of lust. Why then would I have such a respect for the maiden, that I cannot do so much as glance upon her bosom begun? Why does my voice quiver when I speak such simple words unto her, afraid that one word would make me hat e her for eternity? Much less view upon her complexion fair without the veil of tears?
From Journal Two
December 30 1986 Passing thoughts now written
In truth, much has been accomplished within this year. I expressed my first interest in Philosophy that was not that of mine own; beginning with Aristotle-Plato, then that of Epictetus-Marcus Aurelius, then jumping thus from Godwin to Nietzsche –Kant- Schopenhauer, Wordsworth-Shelley-Coleridge and of course Blake. In way of thought, in way of deed and spirit, I found my place in the early part of the 19th C. The majority of my time, and essentially all my thought has been in some relation to Romantic literature. My lyrics and narratives have bloomed to a point that I confess I am indeed proud. And for the first time, I have found the ability to pen larger poems, beginning (if am not mistaken) with the fist version of the first two cantos of Pantheistic Lines, then dedicating to Egan the Demissus, then my Peter Bell the ‘fourth’, and begun the Fragments of a Satire, putting to use my first two satirical poetical characters Cherub Giovanni and of course, though fictional, my good friend Lucifer.
I began Orpheus and Eurydice which I doubt shall find its conclusion. (Forgive me if I skip one or two) and most recently Memorabilia.
And of course, my first full length Lyrical Drama Queen Syrinx.
Thus this year I have also found the ability to read other author’s poetical works of great length. For example, the Miltonic Paradise Lost, though only fragments of his Paradise Regained, the Byronic Don Juan, (most of it anyway) Shelley’s Witch of Atlas, Prometheus Unbound, Masque of Anarchy, Alastor, Queen Mab, Julian and Maddalo, Prince Athenese and Epipsychedion.
I am still searching for an anthology containing Thomson’s Seasons and desperately seeking Hunt’s Story of Remini.
I have written, in the last year a great bulk of Lyrics which I guess could fill a good two books in whole. Though I have been penning various verses since the fall of 1983, still I am a beginner to my judgment.
Within this past year I have produced two odes of which I believe to be at my best: both the Hymn to the Sylvan and the Ode to the Mystic Raven.
As for a resolution for the next year, I shall try my best to have my works published.
