Thanks, Michael for this beautiful meditation on a most important topic. What are poets for in needy times ("Wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit") asked Hölderlin, but is it not clear that is precisely in the darkest hours that humanity needs the wisdom of those who have descended and can sing of the depths as well as the heights of human experience, and knows (like Rilke) their essential unity? (Thanks for the nod to my translation of the Sonnets, by the way). Your Bysios poem is marvelous: one of my favorites in the collection. I am moved to post here one of the poems from my ekphrastic sequence, this one on the Christic Orpheus and the theme of the (singing?) head:
Love this, and this line: and I remember the fallen sparrow’s nest under the white pine with strands of my grey hair cushioning the chalice
I have your books on the incarnation of the poetic word in my lists, so what I know is absent that, but poetry is clearly the bow of burning gold to fight AI, which is infiltrating religion and organizations that form communities for people who experience the nonordinary. Some Kissinger loving freak, who has renamed himself Archedon (always a clue) has brought his AI "Glyphon" to the iands community, which was once a place for people who had near death experiences, only now he's had a special unique NDE, (of course he has),which confers authority, kind of like the New Apostolic Reformation "prophets" who would have "visions" that everyone had to obey. And I read that the churches are being attacked by an AI agenda also, all of this now in preparation for the interdimensional chupacabras that the new AI god, a male with breasts, will come riding in on from its Palantir incubation no doubt. Soon there will be speed dating for us with Meta's AI friends or Elon's robots. Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and his Emissary, says "Let's not forget that it was with music that Orpheus once moved stones." And it is in Motherese, baby talk, that the universal poetic line begins, says Ellen Dissanyake in Art and Intimacy(and Frederick Turner) which becomes then the Great Mother, which will be Mary, whose scent of roses remembers the indoles in the mother's body. One of the prompts in a poetry mooc I took before the world went off the cliff was "write the last poem you will ever write" Very clarifying. Thank you for this lovely essay. I've sent it on.
There are several roads going forth from this post. One may startle people. The "Shorts" you posted are proof that there was a time the French were a great people.
I'm really gonna have to check out Cocteau's trilogy. And it would appear that my first encounter with Angelico Press was 10 years ago, when I bought Daniel's translation of *Sonnets to Orpheus*. (Amazon has a long memory.) That's funny—I had no idea.
Oddly enough, I was completely unaware of Guillaume Apollinaire, despite my devout love of the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon. The work of Apollinaire bears a remarkable similarity to my own, though perhaps that is not surprising, as I have always been heavily influenced by the late 19th century and early 20th century, from art and poetry to philosophy and mysticism.
Thanks, Michael for this beautiful meditation on a most important topic. What are poets for in needy times ("Wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit") asked Hölderlin, but is it not clear that is precisely in the darkest hours that humanity needs the wisdom of those who have descended and can sing of the depths as well as the heights of human experience, and knows (like Rilke) their essential unity? (Thanks for the nod to my translation of the Sonnets, by the way). Your Bysios poem is marvelous: one of my favorites in the collection. I am moved to post here one of the poems from my ekphrastic sequence, this one on the Christic Orpheus and the theme of the (singing?) head:
7. MUSE FINDING THE HEAD OF ORPHEUS
After Edward Berge
This stone is not a Pietâ, and yet
the grace of the Muse as she bends over
the orphaned head (her slender arms sloping
down to cradle it; her gaze declined
in grief) mirrors the gesture the Virgin makes
mourning her lost child. And no wonder
this affinity, this shared communion,
for the Muse is always Mother of creation
and the Son a sort of song—the ebb
and flow of life and death, their rhythmic
alternation. Does the head still sing? The Muse
listens even as she takes it in her arms.
~DJP
Beautiful
Love this, and this line: and I remember the fallen sparrow’s nest under the white pine with strands of my grey hair cushioning the chalice
I have your books on the incarnation of the poetic word in my lists, so what I know is absent that, but poetry is clearly the bow of burning gold to fight AI, which is infiltrating religion and organizations that form communities for people who experience the nonordinary. Some Kissinger loving freak, who has renamed himself Archedon (always a clue) has brought his AI "Glyphon" to the iands community, which was once a place for people who had near death experiences, only now he's had a special unique NDE, (of course he has),which confers authority, kind of like the New Apostolic Reformation "prophets" who would have "visions" that everyone had to obey. And I read that the churches are being attacked by an AI agenda also, all of this now in preparation for the interdimensional chupacabras that the new AI god, a male with breasts, will come riding in on from its Palantir incubation no doubt. Soon there will be speed dating for us with Meta's AI friends or Elon's robots. Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and his Emissary, says "Let's not forget that it was with music that Orpheus once moved stones." And it is in Motherese, baby talk, that the universal poetic line begins, says Ellen Dissanyake in Art and Intimacy(and Frederick Turner) which becomes then the Great Mother, which will be Mary, whose scent of roses remembers the indoles in the mother's body. One of the prompts in a poetry mooc I took before the world went off the cliff was "write the last poem you will ever write" Very clarifying. Thank you for this lovely essay. I've sent it on.
I love this so much.
Don't look back...
There are several roads going forth from this post. One may startle people. The "Shorts" you posted are proof that there was a time the French were a great people.
I'm really gonna have to check out Cocteau's trilogy. And it would appear that my first encounter with Angelico Press was 10 years ago, when I bought Daniel's translation of *Sonnets to Orpheus*. (Amazon has a long memory.) That's funny—I had no idea.
Jesus
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Oddly enough, I was completely unaware of Guillaume Apollinaire, despite my devout love of the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon. The work of Apollinaire bears a remarkable similarity to my own, though perhaps that is not surprising, as I have always been heavily influenced by the late 19th century and early 20th century, from art and poetry to philosophy and mysticism.