Why I Write Terrible Poetry

I have realized, in my sleepless stupor-no-more, that poetry is humanity's always failing attempt to express the id.  Freud's id.  Which you know already.  And now I see why I write fiction, not poetry.  The id is not all there is.  The ego and the super ego are realities, even if the id is really me.  Artificially constructed, or construed, as they may be, they are alive in my conscious and my unconscious will never successfully be unleashed because it is my unconscious.  But perhaps my unconscious is what is spurring me to write, write, to write and not sleep and search for answers and push myself until I am delirious enough to speak something like the truth.  But you see, there is the barrier of language.  Even if a lion could speak, we would not understand it.  Who was the one who said that?  An intelligent man, but that is the problem.  My head tells the guts to spill, but it is my heart who obliges.  Yes, my heart!  And there lies the problem!  Poetry is wrung from the brain and the heart, when it is the guts that should be spilling!  It is the guts that throb inside us, the guts that defy expression!  Man always gets it wrong!  Heart, mind, heart, mind, fighting back and forth.  Enlightenment, Romantics, Victorians, Lost Generation, and so forth!  Of course, the "Lost Generation" comes the closest in a while to finding itself.  Hemingway pokes at the guts, Fitzgerald sticks his toe into the mess and wiggles it around, coming out with nonsequitors that try (and fail, of course, as always) to express that gut.  Close.  He comes close.  But they rely too heavily on the gut!  Like the poets of today!  The poets who know (and therein lies one problem) that rhyme and meter take away from the inherent chaos of the id, the lack of rhythm.  Silly Milton, who sat in his orderly rooms, scratching away in his orderly costume, espousing his "ideas" through that rhythmic sound over sense.  Silly, adorable Keats, who shivered and quavered in his humble dwelling, quivering out the yearning lines.  Silly, violent Byron, spiralling about in a nature many others would imitate, so that the blazers of Oxfordians needed patches at the ripped elbows, all that flailing and beating of chests and gnashing of teeth and glaring, seething of eyes.  And now, there is the poet who sits naked in his room, scrawling over the walls and scampering over the ceiling in an attempt to unleash, unfurl his guts.

But it is not so simple!  Poetry, ultimately, fails.  Yes, it stirs our passions and plucks our heartstrings and prods our minds, but never all at once.  Why do I write fiction?  Because my reality is more than my id.  The ego and superego are now just as real, and far more tangible, than the id.  They - the indefinable "they", because I have forgotten precisely who "they" are (I'm relatively certain "they" are connected with the sixties) - deny the importance of the ego and superego, tell us to free ourselves of those bonds.  Why free ourselves from the bonds that touch two thirds of the trifecta, the heart and mind?  The guts, or id, are not everything anymore.  Perhaps they once were, and perhaps some argue that they should be, but the fact is, the id is not all.  People call the Holy Trinity an oxymoron, or label it at the very least "paradoxical", and yet it makes sense to us that one person can be split into the ego, superego, and id, each contradictory and conflicting and seemingly impossibly interwoven.  Yet, here we are.  Poetry, I see now why I fail you!  You fail me!  Or you fail to fully express me!  And so the job of poetry will never be fulfilled, because it has been handed the wrong job.  Perhaps fiction will always fail as well, but that is yet to be determined (by me).  Fiction does not cut out the unnecessary as modern poetry does, because the unnecessary is necessary.  The unnecessary is a combination of the ego and superego.  The ego and the superego are a part of life.  This makes them necessary.  Paradoxical.  But sensical.  Fiction, or good fiction that tries, spares no aspect of humanity.  Tries to spare no aspect of humanity.  Give me the mundane, give me the actions and words of the people, and try to express what they do not express and perhaps to not consciously consider.  Of course, fiction is bound to fail also, since language is the medium.  But it comes closer.

I do not think it is true that white noise is the ultimate human expression, either.  It is too solid, too consistent.  Jazz is quite a bit like humanity, but sound too is limited.  Humanity is like humanity.  There we go.

I know the clock on my blog is behind.  It is 4:17am.  Unfortunately, no tea tonight.  Don't want tea.  I really would like some meat.  I look a fright, a lioness with a furrowed brow.  Too bad the library isn't open.  I'm in a mood to read Sylvia Plath's Ariel.  I've no copy of my own.  I really should own one, so I can mark it as my own.  Like when dogs piss.  I watched the movie "Sylvia" tonight, the one with Gwyneth Paltrow.  They got her all wrong.  It bothered me that they skipped right up until their meeting.  Sylvia wasn't herself.  Not pseudo-confident enough, not the sociopath, the attempt at lady lynx, the man-toyer of her diaries.  No mention of Richard either.  I'm such a creeper, reading all of her diaries.  I don't even love her, exactly.  I have great affection for her.  She reminds me of Lydia.  I fear for her, always, even though her death-by-oven was...almost fifty years ago.  Where has the time of Sylvia Plath gone so quickly?  Forty years is not so long.  Forty years isn't fifty.  There is plausible deniability in the age of forty?  Fifty is past prime.  That is crazy.

The Truth is Rarely Pure and Never Simple

I'm drinking Yorkshire Earl Grey, a gift from my best friend.

I believe I am in love with Christian Lorentzen.  Read it and weep.  For joy.  I did.
http://newyork.timeout.com/things-to-do/this-week-in-new-york/8355/why-the-hipster-must-die

Sometimes I pretend my literary idols are watching me.  Oscar Wilde has been filling my head with one-liners all night.  They're ALL going into my essay.

Stick That In Your Pipe

Tonight I am drinking chamomile and mint tea.

Every time I sing this song, I feel something swell inside me, a fantastic jitterbug.  I want to dance with Mr. Tambourine Man.  In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QjhYeN3Il4

Tonight, talking to Chris, I stopped believing in coincidence.  There is freedom laced in the bonds of fate, friends.  Fate knows each of us intimately, and it shapes the course of our existences based on who we are.

Tonight I also learned I could carry on four simultaneous (and successful) conversations.  Hurrah, Monsieur Internet!

Professor Brahm, if you still read this, I want you to know that I'm writing my essay on the misconceptions of conformity.  I am putting forth the argument that, by labeling oneself a "nonconformist", you are binding yourself to the concept of conformity.  If one lives in constant fear of conformity, one has not escaped it's grasp at all.  I am asserting the idea that an attitude of indifference toward Das Man is the only way to truly step beyond the limits of conformity.  By embracing oneself, one's own essence, leaves no room for reflecting over whether or not one's actions conform or not.  So, hopefully that will last me 7 pages.

In Brahm's class I came to the conclusion that the sixties made criticism a commodity, and that everyone equipped with exclamation points is a poet nowadays.

Attention, everyone: cynicism is not cleverness.

Oscar Wilde: "What is a cynic?  A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
(Put that in your pipe and smoke it)

Speaking of which, I have a pipe now!

Black truffle tobacco = happy Amber.

Please forgive this post, I haven't slept in quite a while.

For Alex

Mirth + Melancholy = Milton

Okay, so, we all know all-nighters are not conducive to the best essays in the world.  However, it can't be helped, and at least I'm finished.  It was for a Milton course, and the blasted thing finally meets the word length.  No, I didn't add words where they needn't be, but I kept adding random points to my argument that probably didn't need to be there.  The prompt I chose was "2. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso describe two psychological states. Discuss the ways in which the poems articulate not only the oppositional but also complementary aspects of the relationship between mirth and melancholy."  Theoretically, I answered soundly and correctly.

Guess what?  In less than two hours I can sign up for summer courses downstate!  Guess what?  I'm nervous they'll all be taken by now!  Poo!

Lent has officially started.  No more coffee, candy, pop, smoking or drinking for me.  Coffee and candy will be the only hard ones on there, to be honest.  But LORD, will they be difficult.  I've also taken on writing 5-10 solid pages a day.  It can be in diaries, fiction, poetry (although a poem a page long counts as half a page), and this week, essays (I have two more to finish, but luckily they have been started and won't result in more all nighters).

What am I drinking?  Orange and spice tea.  Pro tip: don't drink it without honey.  It is yucky without honey.  Lack of honey in this tea = gross tea.

Sadly, I have no honey.

Here's my essay.  Critique, please.  I know it's not great.  It's weirdly colloquial and poorly organized.  But hey.  It's an essay that didn't exist three hours ago.

Milton’s Mirth and Melancholy

            It is interesting to read John Milton’s Il Penseroso directly after reading his L’Allegro.  The contrast is readily apparent, even upon an initial glance at the titles of each respective poem.  The word allegro translates to joyful, cheerful, mirthful.  In the poem L’Allegro itself, Milton is invoking Mirth itself as a “Goddes fair and free” (L’Allegro, 11) to bring jubilance and pastoral merriment along with the break of day; meanwhile, Il Penseroso (the pensive, the thoughtful, the somber) invokes Melancholy appear, a “Goddes, sage and holy” (Il Penseroso, 11).

            The most immediately interesting aspect of both L’Allegro and Il Penseroso is the denunciation of its counterpart within the first ten lines of the poem.  L’Allegro introduces the concept of melancholy and night before hinting at merriment, perhaps to amplify the brooding drear it perceives in pensive darkness.  Strangely, Melancholy is described in the first stanza as “unholy” (L’Allegro, 4), despite the fact that, of the two, Il Penseroso takes on a religious tone while L’Allegro is immersed in mythology and folklore.  Meanwhile, Il Penseroso criticizes Mirth’s inability to profit from its merriment, calling the fanciful notions of the lighthearted “As thick and numberless/As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams” (Il Penseroso, 8-9).  This is interesting to me, since it seems that only an imaginative mind with time for fancy takes note of the dust particles illuminated by sunlight and connect those meaningless little motes with Fancy itself.

It is interesting that both invocations pronounce Mirth and Melancholy to be goddesses.  It seems there is perhaps a distinct difference between the two invocations that goes beyond the conflicting natures of the two themes.  It stands to reason that Mirth would be represented by a mirthful deity and that Melancholy would be represented by a melancholic deity, but the associations are not nearly so evident as one would assume.  Mirth is represented as a Classical goddess of antiquity, later compared to Venus, the three Graces and nymphs (L’Allegro, 14-15, 25) and is aligned with Bacchus, Zephyr—or “Zephir”—and Aurora (L’Allegro, 16 & 19) as well.  Melancholy, on the other hand, is represented by Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth.  It is interesting that Milton chose the equivalent of Hestia to represent Melancholy, considering the sister of Demeter and Hera gave up her seat to Dionysus in order to tend the fires of Mount Olympus, separating herself from the original Greek Pantheon.  It is also interesting to note that Vesta is, by all accounts, a virgin goddess.  It can be inferred that the invocation of Mirth is an entreaty to the idea of mirth itself and its personification of a halcyon deity, while the invocation of Melancholy takes on a more religious connotation.  Perhaps, by affiliating Melancholy with a goddess represented by ever-burning fire, Milton means to connote the fiery passion of prayer, and asserts that the intensity of intellectual and spiritual devotion trumps the lighthearted spirit of Mirth.  This would explain why the second stanza states that Melancholy’s “Saintly visage is too bright/To hit the Sense of human sight” (Il Penseroso, 13-14).  Surely, Milton’s definition of melancholy must differ from that of the Merriman-Webster dictionary.

Mirth and Melancholy are not only likened to goddesses.  Milton associates Mirth with the fantastical, mentioning the “Faery Mab” (L’Allegro, 102) of folklore and a “Goblin” as staples of mirthful conversation.  Like in many other of his works, Milton seems to grapple with a love of legends and a desire to uphold religion above all and any mythology.  In order to satiate this desire, Milton personifies Melancholy as a “pensive Nun, devout and pure/Sober, stedfast, and demure” (Il Penseroso, 31-32), and requests that she “Forget thy self to Marble” (Il Penseroso, 42).  By linking Melancholy with marble and, later, with lead (Il Penseroso, 43)—a metal said to be a metal associated with the Roman god Saturn, the contemplative god—almost appears to be Milton’s method of grounding his own zealousness in favor of “Contemplation,/And the mute Silence” (Il Penseroso, 54-55).  Though composure is a staple of Milton’s concept of melancholy, he allows himself to be carried away with an irrepressible fervor, which is alternately presented and chided by the poet.  This is where I feel we encounter the writer’s spirit.  There was a reason for writing both L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.  Firstly, it appears Milton wanted to prove the superiority of Melancholy.  Secondly, and less obviously, it appears Milton was conscious of a war waging within himself.  Perhaps war is too strong a word.  A conflict broke out within the young Milton, one he half knew the answer to: which should I live by, mirth or melancholy?  While he clearly chose melancholy, I believe Milton could not repress a fervency within himself, a passion for more than marble and lead.  Thus, Il Penseroso—the more complex of the two poems—wavers between the approbation of the somber, stern and silent, and the emancipation of spiritual ardency and ripe emotion.

Mirth and Melancholy are associated not only with goddesses and pious women, but with birds.  Mirth, personified by both the cock and the lark (L’Allegro, 41 & 49), signifies the coming of day.  Melancholy on the other hand, like that phantom someday to come from Leroux’ novel, disdains the garish light of day and seeks refuge in “Philomel” (Il Penseroso, 56), the nightingale who, paired with Cynthia of the moon, pulls the shade of night and “shunn’st the noise of folly” (Il Penseroso, 61) that day inevitably brings.  But the night of Il Penseroso, by the end of the poem, does not seem to be brought about by nature.  Rather, the “Mossy Cell” (Il Penseroso, 169) of the ivory tower constructs an artificial night, a constant hour of contemplation.  Perhaps that is why the lark wishes to “startle the dull night” (L’Allegro, 41); perhaps, even if only subconsciously, Milton sees a flaw in his isolated hermitage.

One odd complementary aspect of the poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso is their mutual claim on Orpheus.  Or rather, both claim that the assistance of Mirth, or alternately, Melancholy, could have gained Eurydice back from the dead.  The invoker of Mirth ends with the story of Orpheus, and states that if Mirth could succeed where Orpheus failed, he would live by Mirth’s ways.  In Il Penseroso, the invoker states that Melancholy could draw tears from Pluto and make “Hell grant what Love did seek” (Il Penseroso, 108).  While neither have sound reasons for claiming Orpheus, it is said that nightingales sang over his grave beneath Mount Olympus.  If that is the case, favor would learn toward Il Penseroso.  One wonders if Milton took that knowledge into account while writing both poems.

Though L’Allegro and Il Penseroso deal with opposing theories and doctrines and lifestyles, Milton’s arguments for the each poem suggests that he does not desire a clear, decisive, outright winner.  Though L’Allegro is not as concisely defended, it does not doubt its own premises in the way Il Penseroso does.  It is not in Mirth’s nature to doubt itself.  It is Melancholy that is suited to observation, reflection, and intellection. Mirth, on the other hand, is a celebration of imagination, vivacity, nature and, at its utmost, life.  Both poems require the ability to appreciate an aspect of existence, and though Milton subtly aligns himself with Il Penseroso, it is certain that Melancholy acknowledges the merits of Mirth.  Mirth, in turn, has no reason to reflect on Melancholy, unless to provide one quick smirk.  This is as it should be.

Reflections Upon Reading Hoffer

Today I am enjoying Bigalow's Lemon Lift tea.  Tomorrow classes start again, and I am contemplating change.  It doesn't help that I've been reading Eric Hoffer.

I wonder what change means for the United States?  Actually, I have multiple hypotheses.  I'll leave you, reader, to your own.

Whoopsy Punchki

I'm home for spring break and I left my camera at school, so no pictures of my tea.  You'll just have to trust that it's Red Rose and that it is wonderful.

So, down to  business.  I want to set some simple rules for this blog:

• I will not write here more than once a day.  I have 14 diaries, for pete's sake.
• I will have at least one somewhat lengthy rant per week.  Maybe the word 'rant' is a little harsh.
• I will have pictures from now on (so no forgetting my camera)!

That's pretty simple, right?  I think so.  The entire purpose of the blog is this: I want to improve my loquations.  I am not very good at spouting out all my thoughts and I am completely wretched at organizing them.  I am meticulous, but I get lost and all the things I want to say become garbled in the swirling world of 'things that need to be said'.  Unfortunately, those things are exactly what disappears.  I need to learn to voice my opinions without triple checking my grammar.  I need to allow myself some imperfections, in hopes of gaining a fuller understanding of my personal cognition.  I need to figure out how my mind works and I need to learn how to express myself, biases, contradictions and all.


This is who I am listening to at the moment.  I really like Joanna Newsom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMFPockMaKw&feature=related

I felt foolish today.  A few of my friends and I thought it was Fat Tuesday, and we spent (by "we" I mean Lydia, not myself) a good forty minutes looking for bakeries selling punchkis.  Guess what?  It's not Fat Tuesday.  Whoops.  Mardi Gras won't be held on March 1st until 2022.