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I really never could brook the time and effort required to read verse. It has always been excruciating to wade through the complications of phrasing that ask my brain to operate in unaccustomed metaphors and twisted forms. I always wanted inconsiderately highfalutin authors to stop wasting my time in floweriness and just give me their facts and truths. And so I remained disobedient:
My Teacher, to whom I owe all spiritual blessings, gave me two explicit, unequivocal instructions which (though I’ve been a middlin’ loyal student in most practices) I have repeatedly and unremorsefully ignored. Until recently. “Memorize my poem Samadhi,” he charged all students. Admittedly disinclined to memorize anything, my eyes have frequently seen his command, while winking at that one verb, memorize. With similar force I have read also his words (and even heard a recording of his voice pronouncing): “Read my Whispers from Eternity” (his collection of prayer-poems and affirmations). But it has always been easy for me to rationalize that his prose works are poetry to my soul, and that my time is better spent reading in that more accustomed form. Ah, the mind’s ability to rationalize against any instruction!
So Spirit conspired a loving healing for my truancy, and coaxed me to the grotto where muses of verse would tempt me to drink more deeply than my impatient practically had formerly been willing. In turn I wish, in prose, to coax you to dabble in some of the spiritual implications of verse.
First remember the enlightenment experience of the good doctor Bucke. In his case, as in most, the first moment of enlightenment is often not when one is seated in meditation. But there is often some striking meditative or mystically stimulating experience that directly precedes the illumination. Especially pertinent for the present topic is the prelude to Dr. Bucke’s momentous evening: “He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman.” When I first read this line I was so abysmally ignorant of poetry that I couldn’t separate Keats from Yeats, nor their works nor concerns nor qualities. It did not even occur to me to ask what possible role poetry might have played in Dr. Bucke’s awakening. I admit that the possible spiritual implications of poetical exchanges are only just beginning to open up to me, yet I feel certain enough of there being something vital here that I would entreat you to consider several possible issues.
The Yoga of Poetry is not even a concept as yet, but I believe that it has become for me an experience — yoga, that is, in the sense of union, in the sense of systematic exploitation of the subtle energy processes that affect our spiritual evolution. As a new domain, the following ideas must be regarded as tentatives, as possibilities.
First of all, to our benefit and our detriment, the experience of poetry is a much more demanding relationship than other modes of communication and expression. Herein lies much of the aversion — poetry would ask of us much more work than other reading and writing. As a steady diet, it would surely be too rich for the average digestion —just as there are some human relationships so heavy or rich that you might not seek to make of them an entire meal.
Part of the richness of the dynamic experience we call poetry is the complexity of working several aspects of our consciousness at once — the mind, the heart, the intuition... approaching the deep interaction we experience in connecting with another human being. Given a chance, verse will attract our attention to the rhythms, the tones, the polyphony of innuendos, the plays of meaning that are both course and garnish of the meal.
It is not necessary to read a poem and process it in the linear fashion of reading didactic or narrative prose; nor do I recommend you do so, for it is tedious the creative heart. I have come to appreciate that a rich poem is like a human being: too complex to be experienced at one level or at one sitting. Yet each sitting with a poem and each level at which it is touched can be an enriching repast at which additional fragrant suggestions, implications, and experiences are able to surface. Neither a person nor a poem should be expected to reveal its heart completely at any one encounter. Nor do readers need to feel inadequate or frustrated at inability to pin down such dynamic, organic protoplasm— no more than they should regarding their children, parents, or spouses.
Several spinal centers of consciousness (the chakras they are called in Sanskrit) demand activation in reading verse, and even more so in writing it. I’ll admit that if one approaches poetry as an assignment rather than a medium for expressing one’s desire to communicate, the primary consciousness will be frustration (solar plexus center). Too many rules and inner criticisms can make it indeed a hellish experience that is completely antithetical to the creation of beauty or the expression of the soul. I was blessed to have weeks of opportunity to throw thoughts and feelings on the page in a variety of forms of verse to a supportive, noncritical audience. Then, when I approached the highly structured form of the sonnet, I was able to relax and experience the process as play.
In a relaxed state, the power of concentration has a meditative effect during the writing. I find that as my absorption in the process develops, the two sides of my brain are able to cooperate without distress: the expansive, creative right brain, and the organizing, meter-and-rhyme checking left brain. In this way the experience of writing poetry, like meditation, integrates me.
I believe another reason for the meditative impact of versifying is that, at least in my expressions, it requires that energy be active at several chakras, at the least: the heart, the throat (center of creative expression), and the spiritual eye (intuitive ability to pull material together). Thus the process of being lost for an hour in writing a sonnet leaves me with a joy that is cousin to a good meditation.
I recommend that you try some lines — not with specific expectations, not with any set structure, but just some free writing to express something important to you. Just enjoy yourself. If you get interested to explore specific forms or possibilities, I suggest you begin by spending a little time with verse that others have written, especially the verse of enlightened beings. Take a stroll through some of the Blake, Shakespeare, or Whitman samples given in Cosmic Consciousness, or a couple inspirations from Whispers from Eternity. Or whatever you relate to. Above all, be leisurely; savor the relationship!
© Richard Pinneau, 2003 Your feedback is appreciated: rp@richardpinneau.com |
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