And I think about him and the time we spent, all that time ago.
And and and...
The Poet
The poet isn’t defined by what he
writes. Some poets never write a single
line. Some people write hundreds of
verses and will never really be poets.
The poet isn’t defined by how he or
she lives. Not every drunk is a poet,
and most poets aren’t drunks. Anyone can
adopt a Bohemian lifestyle – it won’t make one a poet any more than it makes
one a Bohemian.
What then defines the poet? Perhaps this:
how he perceives, feels and expresses all the phenomena and sensations
coming around and through him. And what
common thread runs through the diverse lives of poets, through their
incongruous personalities?
Lorca
stepping between the guns on the morning of his assassination.…
Hart Crane
diving into a ship’s propeller….
Rimbaud,
racing for life in Africa after shooting his
lover, finally coming home to die
of syphilis….
Camille
Claudel, driven mad by love, destroying her own work….
Siefert
handing out his poems mimeographed when the government bans his work….
Van Gogh’s
ear rejected by a whore….
Pascal’s
slashed wrists floating in the ruby water of his bathtub….
Artaud
running with the mad….
Sylvia
Plath’s head in the cold hissing oven….
Chatterton
eating rat poison….
Hemingway
blowing his brains into the orange juice….
Berryman
flying off a bridge….
Burroughs
accidentally shooting his wife in a Mexican bar….
Pound
dragged through the streets in a cage….
Dostoevsky
up against the bullet-scarred wall….
The common thread is a vague
indefinable something that animates
the poet and sends him or her swimming deep and flying high, til the very words
‘exalted’ and ‘degraded’ no longer have any meaning. It is a spark, a charge which drives him in
the futile attempt to encompass all depth and height with his own being, to
learn the questions, discover the answers, find the connections and essence.
The poet
tells truth, using subtle arts:
exaggeration, the misnaming of things, smoky oblique reflections, and
those illogical but revealing comparisons.
And all these acts would be considered unethical and dishonest if used
in normal discourse. But for poetry they
are the meat and sinew, the crushing muscle, the flashing nerve.
And why does the
poet tell that story, use those clever arts?
Because he or she is a poet, and
that is what poets are driven to do.
Because something burns in the most private heart of the poet, something
which forces him – often against his will and contradicting all reason – to
stretch the skin of his soul… so that tamer creatures might finally know how
large they can grow.
THE POTTERY BREAKING
--for & after Lee Mallory
I broke your stuff.
I broke the lunch-bowls and bidets
the crash of it here
the smash of it there
where I threw it.
I broke your stuff
I broke your stuff
I broke what you turned on the wheel with your hands —
how it spun into shape
and it burned in the kiln
(that felt good).
I broke what you worked from the wet mud
the moisture of its kiss,
but how did you do it?
I broke your stuff.
I broke what you made by hand:
Plates
airy cups and
bowls
a 1000 vessels
crashing
pinch-jugs
that crowd of
tureens
(I liked that woman painting and
unpainting the glaze.)
I broke your stuff.
I broke your stuff.
I broke your stuff.
I messed it all up pretty good.
Only when I was done
I couldn't find you,
That’s when you say it’s a game,
that when the clay’s worked
the potter just goes away, fades…
And that’s your Delftware dishes
your Ming vase and
your jug
your porcelain
nights
your Grecian urn
nights
Still I’ll shout, believe
I broke your stuff.
I broke your stuff.
And when you throw me
you throw you.
David Hakim is an
internationally-published journalist and award-winning author who has run
several newspapers – and recently received a commendation for his short story That
Man in the London Aesthetica
Competition. He can be reached at dhakim at earthlink.net
© 2013 Hakim - ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED: use without profit allowed only with author’s express written
permission. Please don't wake up my attorney. Please.
