Mark,
I agree with everything you say (and I love the Tao te Ching quote), except your point that poetry necessarily completes abstract philosophy. The things that the Tao says in that quote are also said by some of the best philosophers who wrote in more abstract terms--for instance, John Scotus Eriugena, whose writings were banned by the Church in the Middle Ages because of their pantheistic implications. Or Plato in his very difficult dialogue the Parmenides. Or Heidegger. I agree with Wendy's point that reason and intuition and revelation--the whole shebang--should be brought into the mix. I should specify that I mean inspired reason, reason that has dipped into the Muses' well. Certainly reason as a mere function of ego and the limited horizontal perspective cannot go very far in philosophy. I don't think that poetry is what the greatest philosophers would have written if they could have. To each their calling.
Wendy made a good suggestion: contemporary philosophical poems. Mary mentioned Susan Howe, whose work I don't know. Robert Hass has written some good poetry in a philosophical vein, although I don't have anything of his onhand to quote from.
In my opinion, much of postmodern philosophy has kicked the shit out of philosophy as a discipline. It has cut it off at the roots, leaving it to dry out. Philosophy reduced to clever manipulation of words and notions. The attack on post-Enlightenment reason has in fact been a hyper-rationalistic enterprise.
I completely agree with Mark about emotional intelligence, the middle realm of soul that Hillman talked about, the imaginal, as Henry Corbin called it, where meaning takes on form and form takes on meaning. It needs to be revived, and poetry can play a part in that. But philosophers can too: Mark, as you know, intellect is not the same as reason, in ancient and medieval philosophy; it refers to intuitive, immediate grasp of things, essential things. That's necessary too, and for that there has to be a metaphysical discourse, not only poetry per se.
A recent, though not contemporary, philosophical poet was Robert Duncan (a favorite of Hillman's, by the way):
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.
Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.
She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.
It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun's going down
whose secret we see in a children's game
of ring a round of roses told.
Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,
that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.
[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 29, 2008).]
|