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Toward A Poetry of Witness

Published in The Mid-American Review

I know very little about ballet. I've seen classics like The Nutcracker Suite and Swan Lake, but in terms of technique and the craft of dance I'm the one in the audience thinking things like, "How'd she stay up on her toes like that?" or "Did you see how he lifted her up?" Yet, I also know that, though awed by the dancers' physical dexterity and sheer strength, I'm moved by the way the gestures, music and costumes work together to create emotional experience. I am moved as a person.

I know the story, but the way the artists dance can communicate feeling and conviction that knowing the facts alone cannot. This is true of all art. When I was 13 or so, Franco Zefferelli's Jesus of Nazareth aired for the first time. Why did I weep at a death I knew was coming, especially when I believed the life was not finished? Art argues in a way that the rational does not understand. It communicates not only information but experience, and persuades us to believe in that experience, to commit our emotions to it and to change our way of thinking/feeling. To abuse this power to move or persuade people is to manipulate.

I get suspicious when people--many representing political ideologies, religious traditions, or business ventures--try to move me in such a way that requires surrender of intellectual or moral discernment. They're trying to manipulate me. We all know what this is. Television evangelists worshiping Mammon, used-car salespersons only out to make a sale, and crooked politicians (from senators to town council members) taking bribes to protect some interest group are so true to our collective experience that they're cliché. These people's style of argument may be flawless and their technique may be precise, but their intentions are self-serving and exploitive. Seeing how clean and polished a person's craft of communication may be and being insulted by their immoral motivation has led us to use the word "crafty" pejoratively. We even refer to such people as "con artists."

I remember when a vacuum cleaner salesperson demonstrated an amazing product in our home. It not only sucked up dirt from rugs and drapes but could wet-clean carpets and seat cushions, and (can you hear the hackneyed television pitch saying, "but that's not all"?) it could deodorize the air. By the end of the demonstration, my mother and I thought these cleaners were the best thing since sliced bread and one of my brothers wanted to sell them. My father, a salesperson all his life, was away at the time. When he returned, he requested another demonstration. He watched the technique to see how information about the product was delivered and how the persuasion was intensified. We didn't buy the Rainbow Cleaner. That salesperson who visited our house communicated something, and did it well, but was it moral? Perhaps a bit of professional skepticism like my father's is good, because art communicates as well, and we must ask how that communication works, how the work gets us to commit our feelings to it and maybe even change our way of perceiving.

Whenever the topic of the craft of poetry comes up, I'm interested but wary. I'm interested because I know I've much to learn. In the end, though, I may have a musical way of saying something, but if I don't have anything to say then I'm serving no one. We can get washed away in something without looking at how it is delivered. The Mid-American Review's "Musicality in Poetry Forum" was a fine collection of diverse expressions about the craft. Ultimately, as these four essays show, discussions of music in poetry become accounts of personal experiences of sounds, rhythms, melodies--both euphonic and cacophonic--and ways individual poets have tried to shape poems that reflect these experiences of music. A sense that craft is organic and individual, as the four essays attest, shows that each artist needs continuously to hone and expand his or her tools of making. Mr. Enslin's training in musical composition may equip him to communicate his experience in a manner very different from Doris Davenport's "training" in life. My interest in the visual arts will result in another sort of "music."

For me, Doris Davenport's statement summarizes the whole discussion: "And as for the 'influence' of music on poetry, and/or trying to make it work (mentally/intellectually only): if you can't feel it, you can't fake it." Music, like dance and all art forms, is a full-person experience: physical, emotional and intellectual. I sway or tap or hum or dance when I listen to U2. I sing when I'm alone in the car. And as Hilda Morley says, sounds and rhythms are "stored in our memory and the memory of our bodies."

Art is sensuous; it embodies our experience.

In his essay, "Where There is Life," Theodore Enslin seems to understand poetry's ability to embody and communicate experience when he writes, "There are many who will attempt, not so much to define, as to limit poetry to a kind of information." If poetry is limited to the information within it, then the manner--the craft, the music--is discarded once the information is passed. How experience is delivered is a question of craft and music.

I must listen carefully and deeply to words and phrases, sounds and rhythms and hear the sense of it, the music of it. Lacking this drive to listen and mold, delighting in the whole process, I would not be a poet. Each poem says what it needs to by how it is put together. We could paraphrase a lyric poem by saying it's about the love of two women in a dangerous time, but like the plot summary of the ballet it is nothing without the piece, the motion and music, the feeling and images--the language itself. Like the story (I don't even know if it's true) about when Robert Frost "said" a poem and someone told him it was beautiful.

There is dangerous territory up ahead, though. I fundamentally disagree with the notion that language does not refer to anything outside itself. Each word is an abstract and complex symbol pointing to human experience with nuances of history within it. Poetry is metaphorical in that it "bears" experience from one person to another "across" the abyss of mystery that surrounds our conditions. Perhaps a dancer's hand-flick or lift of the foot refers only to itself, but even with my limited knowledge as an observer, I'm not so sure. Gestures communicate something: a feeling, a non-rational idea, like when we can't understand someone's words but we "get the idea."

Communication is essential, though imprecise. Carl Jung said,

Each word means something slightly different to each person, even those who share the same cultural background....[T]he fact that [such differences in a term's "emotional tone and its application"] exist shows that even the most matter-of-fact contents of consciousness have a penumbra of uncertainty around them" (28-9).

I feel my poetry must wrestle with this "penumbra of uncertainty" but not become so fascinated with the shadow that I ignore the light and the object that cast it. No deep encounter with the craft of one's art will make up for having nothing to say. We will create beautiful voids that move no one except the maker. This is one area where craft can become the same sort of artifice as the proverbial used-car salesperson's persuasion.

I understand the discussion in The Mid-American Review was limited to musicality, but Mr.Enslin touched on the idea that poetry, and art generally, does include moral considerations.

Unfortunately, if he [sic--to refer to all artists] attempts to impose his will upon [the material at hand], to inform what is already essentially totally informed/amoral, with his personal message, he will fail both himself and the material entrusted to him. As George Oppen, the most moral of men, said, "If you want to reform the world, try to do it. If you want to write a poem, do that." These things are not necessarily the same, indeed it will be found that they are very rarely the same.

It seems that Mr. Enslin agrees that poetry is no place to be selling vacuum cleaners. Reforming the world can happen as a result of a poem, but to deliberately attempt such persuasion could compromise the art. I am wary about how Mr. Enslin asserts that "it will be found that" making a poem and reforming the world are not the same thing. He sounds as if he is privy to some knowledge that I'm not, and when I happen upon it, I'll agree with him.

Each time I work a poem, I change the world, if only my perception of it. I have objectified (or more deeply subjectivified) it. Granted, my struggle to make a poem may have little effect on the social, political or economic structures in our world. As Wendell Berry writes in his essay about Hayden Carruth's "On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam," the history of protest shows that individual's efforts have resulted in little social change. Yet, Berry goes on, "Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence" (62).

While my struggle to shape my experience in language could preserve qualities in me, my further struggle to offer this work to others could reform another person's perception of the world. It could affirm qualities in their heart and spirit. It could comfort those who struggle to preserve their humanity, and/or confront those who have aquiesced--many times these are the same readers. Putting this small difference with Mr. Enslin aside about how poetry can, and in my experience, does change the world, we seem to agree about the idea of trying to persuade in a poem.

At one point a few years ago I grew disgusted with many Open Poetry Readings because it felt like many poets were trying to "sell" me something: Krishna Consciousness, Agni Hotra (a way of meditating over a copper pot of manure), animals' rights, or a New Age awareness of a benevolent universe. These writers, people trying to live their convictions, were trying to persuade me to change my life. Though our poems are informed by our lives, we should beware of "using" art to persuade others. The most convincing persuasions are those that simply bear witness to experience. Let's take another example other than political or religious convictions because these raise the question, "If I disagree with the point of the poem, can I enjoy it?" So, let's look at the most common poem-subject. Love.

Those who have been so abused and jaded that they no longer believe in the validity of love cannot be persuaded by slick talk or "low, low prices." Only authentic experience could break down their self-protecting defences. A love poem should honestly bear witness to the experience, rather than set out to "win over." There may be millions of love poems, but that doesn't mean no more should be written. On the contrary: bring on more poems that articulate the painful ecstasy and mystery of our experience. The question is not one of subject matter or information alone, nor is it only a question of how musical or well crafted the poems are. Neither can be discussed alone. I'm not calling for poetry to be limited to a certain range of subjects, but opening our lives more fully to our experience and crafting it in our own personally unique music. It is not enough to have pretty words, phrases, images and/or perfect structure. Pure technique can lead to mechanical, or even manipulative, poetry. As much as these considerations of craft and subject (form and content, et cetera) are two sides of the same coin, I agree with James Wright's idea of an "intelligent poetry," which is:

I must listen to the nuances of language for the music, but I must also listen to my life. Perhaps this is the way our poetry is informed by convictions and morals. Granted, having convictions or obsessive questions about philosophical considerations will not make poetry and could degenerate into shrill rantings or abstract nothings. A poem is not the place to expound answers about ethics or epistemology, forcing our conclusions on the work, but if we don't recognize the persuasive power of art and take some responsibility for the effects of our craft, poets can be immoral. Wittgenstein insists that ethics and aesthetics are one. Sam Hamill goes even further when he writes, "The writer accepts responsibility for every implication derived from what is stated" (53). Hamill may be making a point by ignoring the shadow of uncertainty around any utterance, especially crafted ones where the content and the manner are one, but it is a compelling statement worth "slow and silent attention."

If we fully imagine our lives in our place in the world we will see that our time, like most of human history, is violent and destructive. Our lives are violent and destructive. Slow, grinding violence of poverty and homelessness. Rape and degradation of women that we continue to blame on the victims themselves. Ongoing State-sponsored abduction, torture and killing. The omnipresence of nuclear annihilation especially muted in the headiness of post-Cold War rhetoric and international crises...Our awareness of the range of human suffering at this moment is numbing. "And yet," Hamill says, "we go on living closed lives, pretending we are not each personally responsible for the deaths we buy and sell....We don't want to know what the world is like, we can't bear very much reality" (49). Can our poetry bear witness to our shared reality without sounding shrill?

Not only are our lives continually threatened by nuclear weapons, not to mention the violence we inflict on each other in a direct and personal way, but unlike any other period in history, consciousness is taking control of the evolutionary urge to produce life. Human beings are delving into the basic components of life and matter and changing them. These are decisions people are making, and like all decisions, are a moral problem. As consciousness is beginning to dictate the future of life on the planet, we're still reaping the harvest of our past--and continuing--addiction to industry and consumption. The state of our environment is discussed so much and by so many that it could be becoming cliché. In addressing the faculty of SUNY Brockport with the life-and-death facts about our world William Heyen challenges, Imagine, a hundred years from now...no human beings on earth. If this is what is going to happen, if it is even possible that this is going to happen, then everything else that we are thinking about, dealing with, is just distracting us. (20)

Not only the human species, but most others, too, face oblivion. This terrible truth is part of my experience, my reality, as well as anyone else's alive at this moment. I can only imagine this in glimpses, but I must try. Trying to imagine this reality can be crippling. For me, there are two ways of seeing our time: either as the end--and we may as well get it over with, living our closed, individual lives while hoarding as much pleasure as possible--or as the birthing of another age, in which case each of us is both midwife and mother with much work to do, and much pleasure to enjoy from such a painful purpose.

Denise Levertov has been bearing witness to private and public experiences for more than twenty years with a distinctive sense of music and mysticism. "Two Threnodies and a Psalm" in her latest book, The Door in the Hive, demonstrates, in my view, a fine example of craft with an openness to our larger experience. A brief look at the first part of this three-part work could illustrate some of what I'm talking about.

Though some may call it shrill simply because it is about "the environment," I think Ms. Levertov's poem is not restricted to our time in its perception of human experience, nor in its prayer and faithful "placing before" the Spirit (in the following two sections). What is contemporary is the vocabulary and sense of urgency--though I'm not convinced this is unique to our age. But all this has to do with the subject, which should be open to whatever a poet wants or needs to write about, and, in this case, is still open to various readings. The other consideration is craft, or the music of the language. Using some of the skepticism my father taught me I ask, How is the information of the poem delivered? Do we simply finish reading this and say, "Yup, we're in a terrible soup"--get what the poem's about but not be persuaded to trust the experience and commit our emotions to it? How does the music of the poem offer an experience that merely sharing information cannot?

The way the first section piles short statement on statement, each one beginning either "It is..." or "We are..." builds a tension as if something is impending. The words say It has arrived, the music says It is growing huge. The phrasal repetition intensifies what could be summed up, factually, in only a few words. The sounds interlock (in the first seven lines, long ´s and i's dominate the mostly short vowel sounds, and the rhyme in "circumventing it" with "preventing it") unifying the opening to a single feeling that builds to the line, "We are within it." A chilling resolution. Then section two begins to tighten the feeling again with almost-antiphonal pairs of lines. I can imagine two voices or two groups of voices, one chanting The sound of it happening... The sight of its happening... The grip of its happening while the other "side" intones the remaining lines. The final section continues the music of repeating phrases ("Without intermission... without cessation...") and weaving vowel sounds (mostly short ´s and i's) all in the hiss of sibulance that resolves the whole first threnody to a whirlpool experience of our fate in the abrupt verb "tugs" followed by monosyllabic words (which are especially effective because Ms. Levertov uses three words of three-syllable or more in the five preceeding lines of the section).

The information given in the first part of the poem is that doom is immediately impending, but knowing such information is nothing without the rhythmic (physical) tension (emotional) that builds because of the music.

Ms. Levertov's discussion of poetics makes her someone I return to for instruction, and her work continues to explore and embody her ideas. Her lines are precise and rhythmic, her vocabulary is exact in sonic quality and reference (denotation and connotation), and her poems are organic wholes. Denise Levertov is someone who continues to open her life to the destruction our world is suffering: a personal encounter with public matters. In her recent books she has also made more reference to an Incarnational, or Christian, mysticism which is both challenging and comforting to me as I read her work. The Psalm section of "Two Threnodies and a Psalm" invokes the Spirit to "waken/our understanding..." Ms. Levertov does not pray for some deliverance from our impending destruction, only a keener sense. Like the prophets, she bears witness to the reality she senses and calls for ears to hear and eyes to see--so that each person who imagines life can change their actions. She is not accusing or trying to persuade (or, in Mr. Enslin's words, impose her will upon the materials at hand). The music of her language offers a reader/listener an experience that, once imagined or brought to a fuller consciousness, could change his or her feelings, convictions and view of the world. Denise Levertov writes from her deeply-imagined experience of life.

If our poetry cannot drag some of this experience into it so that the facts cannot be paraphrased into glib and empty persuasions of sales people and politicians then artists have failed. Without a poetry of witness, one engaged in our world and crafting it in musical ways, we will all be involved in the Danse Macabre, the dance of death. We will be distracting each other from our shared life. We will not be leading ourselves back into our lives renewed to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste, in short, to sensuously experience the mystery of living.