I think it was my early, sort've obsessive readings in both western
and eastern philosophy brought me to poetry, too. In recent years when I'm in high lyric
mode, when I'm just ambushed by the poem -- I find myself moving from
observation to assertion, and feeling afterwards that I've touched
closer to my own sense of aesthetic. At the very least I feel less
wariness of producing what might be called lyrical argument. It's a
heady feeling and one I suspect Stevens became addicted to. Lust, vs
love of wisdom is a wonderful way to put it. Still, if it's assumed
the lyric and the mystic and inquiry are of the same origins, it's helpful to
remember that the greatest mystics were serious philosophers/teachers, and not
just observers of the world, as poets ( ie 'witnesses') often are.
Frost and Wilbur both strike me as grounded in, and transcendent of,
philosophy. Andrew, while I'm here, I've been meaning to tell you I
simply relished the History of Light. A marvelous book with images and ideas I'm still absorbing.
I confess a tendency toward reading the ded, so I wonder who it is
that people here would consider the credible living philosophers.
Annie Dillard, (no fluff nature-writer, she) springs to my mind,
though I can't emphasize enough that I don't mean her poems, or the
novels.
|