It’s Wednesday! And this, the penultimate post before my year of poetry, is a good week. I am, as you may know from the last post I made (last Wednesday that is) in the process of working out a much more substantial poem compared to everything I’ve written before; and! (and this is quite the and indeed!) and it is coming together swimmingly (which is spelled with two “m’s” for some mysterious reason). I have about eight pages of full poetry so far (although this is not so great an accomplishment as one might think, my notebook is rather small in size and so eight pages is perhaps more like 6 full pages of text on a standard document — obviously I guess at this number though, as I’ve yet to transcribe them). It’s coming (spelled with a single “m” for equally as mysterious a reason as above) along so wonderfully and indeed I am a very happy person to see it written out. So far I’ve drafted what is essentially a three poem introduction to the ideas and now am forced to actually get into the meat of the thing (which is proving much more difficult than just talking about what I’ll be talking about). Regardless, it’s a grand experiment and I am nothing if not willing to try.
Do not be fooled though! I am not only writing a single long poem. My poetic drive has been full of undue flame as a result of who-knows-what! That is to say, I’ve written more than just what I’ve been majorly working on. One of those works is here today. It’s a poem that begs for explanation; however, I shall offer none and proudly must bear my work as a speechlessly offered speech. Do with the poem what you will, it is not my will to coerce you. You know, I have been listening and reading some things as of late and I am convinced that the only hope for us (and hope is not exactly the right word but is perhaps the only word we can understand) is the critical attitude. We must hate coercion in a way that actively works against it without falling back into it; how though? You ask as if it were a simple thing. Education, learning, these are the dreams of the dead who wish to see a redeemed world. No small shock that hordes of half-educated dilettantes continue to oppress and destroy each other. The real test of criticality is with one’s friends and family. No one is a deep thinker to their family; no one is more than a fool to their friends. If anything, your family will see your work as facade deep thinking, as a kind of debate where one uses fancy language and pseudo-deep thinking to argue a point alongside an embracing of eclectic nihilism. I believe this is because your family has seen you as nothing but the child, and no child can achieve any depth of thought. Debate is a game, it has always been so and remains so. Little does it matter that our highest courts practice debate, that our political actors act as debators is as much a condemnation of the practice as all else. We are not to debate, we are to learn and embrace the critical attitude. This is exactly where education and culture has failed us. The family and the friends who have no inkling of criticality cannot fathom it in anyone else unless it is seen as the debased game of rhetoricians and quasi-logical debate clubs (who at some moment argue for one side and then equally as well will argue for the other on another occasion). One simply cannot live without criticality and it is the smallest shock in the world (that is to say, no shock at all) that the endless mass of half-educated people wander around as if dead. Their eyes tell it to you, their hands are cold and in their voice one always already hears the tones of resignation expressed in the effortless repeating of received opinion, in the worthless prattling of administratively approved views which endlessly obfuscate reality behind the veil of half-assed mental activity. But enough! What is a poem post without a poem? A riddle which you’ll, thankfully, need not to deliberate upon today. We off to our work.
- G
Bookshelf
.
It’s such a horrid thing to take a look
upon one’s hold of read and reading books;
at one you’re shocked by how minute it is,
and how there’s almost really nothing that
you’ve read;
.
and how the shame of all of this
inspires your further delve into the flat,
or sometimes curvy, pulp, with ink ‘pon it,
to further read — or else you’re failure for’t.
.
A greater shame upon the Earth has fell
as shade which covers all: the novels swell
with what’s called their “tremendous moral worth”
and what a waste is found within their perth,
or mostly all; their corpse of binding’s bile
is there to hide, distract, the soul with guile,
and thus no shock the world is hell.
