Poetic Profundity: Spells of Wonder
"...poetry rebels against pedagogical and academic confinement. It’s a way of conjuring the inexplicable and mysterious, and in so doing poetry brings others into greater intimacy..."
When I was still in high school, I was fortunate enough to have an “English” teacher who offered a class specifically on poetry. I’ve been reading and writing poetry since the age of six. My first poems were, of course, masterpieces of which I shall not share with the world lest they cause paradoxical explosions. Needless to say, to have a class in HS that focused on poetry was fuckin’ amazing.
My teacher is/was a very short, stout womxn, whose body was round like a poppy bulb. She wore glasses that were of comparable roundness. Her hair was Einstein-ian - unruly and white to the core. My experience of her at that age (sixteen) was something akin to a feral prophet ceaselessly pouring over pages to record the most recent whisperings from an other-worldly realm detailing the world’s emergent futures, and just barely being able to transcribe, with any degree of accuracy, what was being shared. There was probably a young part of me jumping with jubilee to meet someone who I could scream to, with exasperation and flailing arms, “You hear the voices, too?!”
One day one of my classmates was whispering to a friend while she was teaching. His whisperings not to be confused with the whisperings of the other world - which would result in recording crass jokes and questions about whose bringing the beer to the weekend party. She maintained her composure and slowly made her way unsuspectingly over to him. As she stood behind him, notebook grasped in both hands, she straightened her spine, and drew back her shoulders. As if the very words were pressing their way up her body and out her mouth, she said “Poetry…” with great pride “is the highest form of intelligence!” and then she slapped her notebook over the crown of his head which abruptly stopped his side banter. A shame, really, because I hear that many teenagers endured parched mouths that weekend.
His name is Adam, and I just know there’s a Christian joke in there…
I believe what she was pointing at in those few words is the way poetry rebels against pedagogical and academic confinement. It’s a way of conjuring the inexplicable and mysterious, and in so doing poetry brings others into greater intimacy with the wonder of the world without bludgeoning the reader with fallible certainties and crumpled over fixities.
It’s life itself moving across the page. Life as containing within it death and birth, the seen and unseen.
The meanings within poetry are multitudinous.
Where words all too often reduce and merely attempt to point at Gaian and Cosmic phenomena and experience, poetry is an invocation toward intimacy.
It’s a way of saying “YES!” to perplexity and bewilderment. A way of being swept up by the words that turn our astonishment into a spell - cast for others to unsuspectingly stumble upon AS IF it were an ancient text bound in sea urchin skin and written by coyotes wielding mycelial ink whose symbols are met with the marvel of one’s innate ability to translate its deeper meaning through the senses of the soul.
I love poetry! So, in honor of this ancient, magikal form of conveyance and inquiry I’ll leave you with a recent poem that birthed its way through my body-soul. I invite you too, dear reader, to share the poems that birth their way through you. To listen from that place of poetic intelligence that dwells within your own astonishment and confusion. It’s important to be dizzied by Chaos so that we can see the world from re/newed places of perceptual intimacy.
I Wish to Say Something Profound
I Wish to Say Something Profound I wish to say something profound To sound wise To convey the thousands of seasons my life has seen To show everyone that I’m smart, and can speak well, and use big words A persistent wound, that one, fed by the waters of tearful inadequacy, and the spiritual assault of my people Moose Trees Ocean Sea glass that acts like a radio transmitter if you know how to ask Passamaquoddy I am certain they’re why I love the dawn so much Coyote and chickadee Flowers that some call paintbrushes, and the ice that taught me how to walk its frozen body through the texture of its cracking Mountain lion, whose eyes reached out from the shadows to caress my body at only eight years of age That’s how I learned death was erotic I began making love the day I was born No one needed to teach me It was all there stowed away in the sinews handed down to me like a pair of mocs worn for eons by Anubis, Glooskap, and Medusa My body This body, so soft and always ready for battle, bears scars Markings that speak of gender, ancestral hybridity, cultural assertion, and intergenerational pain They tell me I’m a “woman,” but I know I’m a creature A monster that cheek rubs Chaos and spills tears over dying bumblebees I went home, recently back to the forests that grew me Their towering embrace and flaring colors always held the promise of that rich smell that comes with decay Did you know that decidua is the uterine lining that’s shed after birth I think that’s what will happen when I die I’ll emerge from the roots of those deciduous elders, pressing my body through the fallen foliage to walk alongside those who come after me They call that mychorrizal, I call it belonging But those forests, the ones that grew me, are being cut down Nearly seven acres of my kin had disappeared exposing the creek beds I wandered when I was young I wish to say something profound To sound wise My ancestors tell me “Say it simple,” but I’ve been trained to speak it big, and that wound has a heartbeat my feet can barely resist But, here it goes These are the losses that I am here for Here and here again My body knows the heartbreak of beginnings and my soul knows no end by Tempist Jade (aka Amanda Fiorino) Picture above taken by my beloved of me cradling a freshly deceased winged. I've titled this image.
Utter truth, pure and raw experience shared and woven into poetry. Thank you. Thank you.
"It’s important to be dizzied by Chaos so that we can see the world from re/newed places of perceptual intimacy."
Interesting and curious statement.
Your grief writing is intriguing, and your imagination is extraordinary. I appreciate you! Margaret