Poetry as a conversation with the landscape

Over the past couple of weeks I have been practicing poetic reverie in various environments around the Golden area while my dog, Ishtar, takes me on her daily walk. Occasionally we walk up the gravel path that parallels Clear Creek, sometimes on the network of trails on top of South Table mesa, and occasionally around her favorite rabbit chasing grounds on the CSM campus at night. There is a stark contrast between my recent walks and those I took before being exposed to poetic reverie. It is as if a layer of depth has been revealed in any landscape I pass through. Over the past few years I have made a consistent attempt to be present in the moment as I walk through nature, but usually I just try to feel the ground beneath my feet, breath the crisp air, and to clear my mind. Often when I walk in this manner, I end up fixated on watching Ishtar romp and hunt her way through the brush, which is an extremely entertaining affair. Every walk is an adventure, but my mind runs thin with fodder for the stories I make up about her hunting antics. I enjoy hiking in nature every time, but sometimes it has a special depth to it; a tangibility that is unique to the outing, as if the landscape is alive, breathing, whispering stories into my perception. This state of expanded awareness is usually hit or miss for me, even when I am focusing on bringing my presence to the walk, sometimes I am just not able to go that deep into the sensory experience.
I have found recently though, that the mental state that I access when engaging in poetic reverie will consistently lift the veil of the landscape. As I meander down the trail, pondering each sensory input as a potential musing for some piece of creative output, the depth of the experience increases with every step. My first couple poems of the walk are superficial, similar or identical to thought sequences that I have followed in the past. No matter how many times I witness Ishtar hunting mice in tall grass, pouncing like an arctic fox, it will never fail to elicit a smile from my face. But as I continue down the trail, the environment begins to speak a more intricate language to my creative process. Previously unrevealed relationships between myself and the world around me open in every sensation. Thirty steps on the trail now feels like a fairy tale: a mystery hiding behind every leaf, every smell sparking an emotion. The atmosphere shifts, every photon of reflected light has more intensity and feels full of life. Every object in the environment breathes life; the misty air, the flowing and roiling water, the crystalline pebbles building the ground with their skeletons, vines weaving up from the earth through wavering branches, into the canopy of photocells, meeting the sky and distilling the sun into life, a cycle, the seasons, birth, death, rebirth. I watch the intricate web of relationships between every natural phenomena play out as a flow of visual imagery and thought forms constructed of poetic tools; alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, metaphor, and consonance. All of these devices extend the possibilities for storytelling. The depth of experience is indescribably beautiful, and the sense of inspiration that arises from even a momentary glimpse into this dream realm can fuel pages and pages of poetry. More importantly for me though, is the relationship that is has helped me to build with my environment. Feeling intrinsically connected to the landscape is a vital sensation that I believe is missing from many modern humans experience of reality. There is hidden universe in everything. The potential for infinite depth in every object, process, and creature. It can be revealed by many various practices, specific perceptual microscopes, but one of the most easily accessible that I have experienced is the trance-like state of poetic reverie.

applyBrakes()

void applyBrakes() {

if (you == theSun && I == theMoon) {

areWe(Destined).toAlignOnce;

onlyTo_pursue(differentPaths?);

}

if (you && I == 2roadsDiverged) {

willWe(touch);

for (++anInstant) {

only.toLive(Parallely);

4eveR(separate?);

}

}

if (you == flint && I == steel) {

willOur.fire(Warm) + us(inTheCold)_winter;

or [ignite, aBlaze, soFierce]

we_Will:regret * ever.Lighting.it(?);

}

if (you == magnet && I == bolt) {

will_weEverGet.close(enough) + toNever(separate);

or willWeRemain = “an uncomfortable distance apart?”;

}

if (you + I == raceCar) {

shouldWe_ApplyBreaks;

or (see - where.theRoad / takes(us?));

}

fairyTale || tragedy;

we_Will(wait && see);

}

On the Dreams We Create

My Chrome browser is full of tabs of stuff that I say I'll come back to but never do. Well, this time I actually remembered to read this one article that I thought had some correlation to dreams. It's called "Self-projection and the brain" and here's the link. Its a fascinating read on our ability to self-project ourselves into situations across time that feel real and the theory that this ability comes from a foundation of past experiences. I would highly recommend you check it out, but the main reason I brought it up was to speculate on how we create our dreamscapes. How do we architect the worlds we dream? 

I would say that we self-project into that other plane when we dream. The pages on lucid dreaming suggest that our dream lives and worlds are really just extensions of our consciousness so it would follow, to some degree, that we build them out of our past experiences. But what about those dreams that feel real but are so bizarre and alien, taking place in a land we've never heard of or seen for that matter? Are those the extensions of a conscious that we have yet to experience or simply extrapolations of the things we have seen before? If I had to venture a guess, I would say the latter but, of course, I'm not sure. 

On Our Canine Friends

My college house recently brought in a four-legged friend. His name is Cooper and he is a large black poodle. He was the family pet of one of my roommates. It was surprising at first, this large dark animal rearing up on his hind legs and pawing at my chest, but over the next few days he became a regular part of our college family. He was always there when you needed him, ready for an ear scratch, a walk, or a quick game of fetch. Cooper has become a vital part of the fabric that holds us five roommates together. If all other social interaction falls through, you can always turn to Cooper and feel better.

There is something in a dog’s eyes that shows understanding. I realized the same feeling with my childhood dog. If you stare into their eyes, you find yourself reflected there. Canine eyes show utter empathy for whatever feeling you have at that moment. They also tend to copy the behavior of their owners. A particularly calm and stagnant household will produce animal behavior that matches. The dog will laze around, spending periods of time laying on the floor, getting up, drinking water, and laying on a different part of the floor. You can typically analyze the household dynamic by the behavior the dog exhibits. With this in mind, it is desirable to keep your pet happy, and healthy with movement, games, and positive vibes. I feel that it is in the best interest of both owner and pet to keep them lively and joyous.

Lyrics vs. Poetry

This week while constructing my own poetry, I looked to song lyrics for inspiration. I thought that by referring to all of the songs whose words I have memorized and incorporated into my being, a flurry of beautiful words would spontaneously pour out of me in the form of poetry. But it didn’t work like that. I realized that my connection with these songs was 50% from the lyrics and 50% from the music itself, and that the reason why creating good poetry has been so elusive for me is that it has to accomplish what a good song does using words alone. 

Upon realizing this, I remembered what Lincoln said last class  -- that some songs are poems. Although the lyrics of some songs can stand alone as poems (take, for example, “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel), other songs rely on repetition and musical bridges to carry the lyrics through to the end (just listen to most pop songs). Other songs don’t incorporate lyrics at all -- Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 doesn’t use any words at all, yet for many listeners it can create a similar kind of reverie to that of great poetry. This Venn diagram of songs and poems makes both forms of expression even more impressive to me, because a good song requires either a union of both music and words, or music that is great independently of words, while poetry requires the words to stand on their own and produce a kind of music themselves. 

A Note on Poetic Inspiration

This week I looked for poetic inspiration in nostalgic corners of my memory. I thumbed through hundreds of pages of poetry books, listened to hours of spoken word, only hoping to find a muse. Much like practicing silence, I realized that the harder I try to focus on writing poetry, the less natural it comes. A poem's inspiration should come from a raw and unscripted sensation or experience. The more I let go, the more the words flowed.
Nevertheless, I'm glad I spent so much time looking for an inspiration for my poetry this week because it helped me remember my love of reading, hearing, and writing poetry. I revisited some of my favorite pieces, websites, and poets, and I thought I'd share them on the blog!

Six word stories

The Sorrow Tugs

The Last Love Letter from an Entomologist

Somewhere in America

Black Pearl

Black Pearl

Her lips, waves of inspiration, trust, security.

Gliding through clouds of despair.

In an instant, the horizon rips her soul from my grasp.

Anemic, desperate, left to die.

Her eyes, stars of supernova, forceful and guiding.

Our souls rejoined in the depths of the unknown.

How long has it been?

How did I get here?

No matter, that which breathes life into me has returned.

Her hair, fields of hope, beckoning silently.

She is close, yet so far away.

The deafening silence fills me up to the top, ripe for eruption.

A stranger to her, has it been that long?

How can I make her remember?

Perhaps with a kiss, if only I could reach her.

Her legs, pillars of piety and purgation.

With each waking second I shrink.

With each infinite second, I become closer to losing her again.

I was strong with her, I am strong by virtue of her.

My wrath will be known!

My vengeance unrivaled, supreme!

My sacrifice justified.

Her arms, all encompassing, smooth, gentle.

Rivers of pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth

A creature of no sin, is it possible?

Through her love, and in her arms, perhaps.

Love conquers all, its conquered me.

Can it conquer my conqueror?

Can it show him the avenue to mercy?

Time, if only we had it.

Her breasts, twinkles of time.

Inseparable is our fate, eternal.

It can’t be banished nor stolen.

Hidden or destroyed.

Stowing away deep in our spirit.

At peace, harmony, content.

Embracing our spirits, freedom dawned.

Calling to us.

Saving us from ourselves!

Why do so Many People Hate Poetry?

When I was a child, I loved poetry. My siblings and I would read Shel Silverstein, and Dr. Suess to one another, giggling at the silly words and wild antics of the characters. It never really crossed my mind that poetry was so different from prose, they were both just different ways of imparting emotions or a narrative onto a reader. Once I got to fourth grade, I started to formally learn about poetry. We started to explore different structured poetry styles and had to compile our own poetry anthology. This was the beginning of my shift in attitude towards poetry. For me these orderly, systematic styles seemed a far cry from the creativity of the poetry of my younger years. As school continued, my dislike of poetry increased. We always read the same poets again and again, and deconstructed the poetry until it was no longer beautiful. We tore it down to the studs, removing the emotion and depth of thought. My teachers always seemed to advocate for the meaning that they saw in the poem; so for a long time I thought that was the only way to read poetry: to search for a singular meaning. So for all of high school I thought I hated poetry, but it's only now that I realize that I hated the way I was taught to treat poetry. Now that I have reverted to my childlike wonder concerning poetry, I am starting to rediscover my love of poetry.

There are probably thousands of other students that like me, who had their enjoyment of poetry robbed of them due to the way they were taught it in school. We were taught to dissect and disassemble, to unpack a singular meaning, and in the process destroy the beauty.  For a lot of people, if the way they were introduced to poetry was changed, I think they would have more enjoyment of it. If instead of only seemingly classics, teachers added some contemporary poetry as well, then maybe more people would see the relate-ability and elegance of poetry.

Neurons Napping on the Job

During the in class discussion about dreaming, we briefly talked about how individual neurons and independent regions of the brain can fall asleep during periods of extended wakefulness, reducing effectiveness. Here is a pretty detailed article that delves into the subject a bit further.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sleeping-while-awake/

I think this information applies acutely to college students, who tend to deprive themselves of sleep in order to fit more into their busy lives. This does not come without a cost to performance however, and from my own experience, I learn much more effectively and efficiently when well rested. In fact, I have been working on my power napping skills lately. I started at the beginning of this semester, about a month ago, and after a little practice at quickly quieting my mind, I can now turn a 20 minute period into what feels like a few hours of sleep. I've managed to replace an afternoon cup of coffee with a power nap, and the effects are much cleaner and last longer. This article discusses some of the other cognitive benefits of napping.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-science-behind-power-naps-and-why-theyre-so-damne-1401366016 

Since I've started napping in the middle of the day, I have noticed some pretty profound effects. I can maintain focus for much longer periods in the afternoon, my body feels significantly better (sitting for long periods tends to make my back hurt pretty severely), and I am able be much more productive all the way into the evening. The noticeable increases in efficiency and happiness that I feel after a short nap are enough to encourage me to make time for one if I can. Give it a shot, I'm sure most of us could scavenge 20 minutes from somewhere; facebook, imgur, staring at the wall...