[Philip Quinlan]

Mark said: "Interesting, this lack of response to your thread, Philip.

Is it possible that the ecstatic voice is a little embarrassing for some of us? A little too earnest for our tastes?

The dominant tone today seems to be one of reserved irony."

YES. YES. YES.

But with reservations...

I'm not sure the ecstatic voice necessarily equates with earnestness, more a childlike sense of wonder for me, unmasked by cynicism or irony.

PQ

[Mark Allinson]

I think there is a very genuine sense in which people these days are embarassed, as Mark says, to say what is in their heart (although I imagine it is no longer OK to speak of the "heart" as the seat of emotion in the same way that, as I was recently advised in these pages, it is no longer "good form" to speak of the "soul" as the seat of other sensibilities).

That's right, Philip. Given the prevailing social atmosphere of rationalism and materialism, any experience beyond this tight and impoverished consciousness is bound to cause embarrassment. The rational ego must believe that it is the captain of the ship, and so any rumblings from below deck must be suppressed. Like a rumbling tummy at a sophisticated dinner party, such uncontrolled rude noises are not to be mentioned in polite society.

In the same way, expressions of strong emotion are embarrassing to the rational, Apollonic ego.

It says: "Poor form, old bean. I say, do try to keep a stiff upper lip old chum, you're letting the team down."

There is always a chance that the current economic crisis will be good for poetry - as Les Murray says, "Rich cultures can't afford poetry/ Poor ones can." Wealth (or as we now realise, the fantasy of wealth) is conducive to superficiality and thinness of consciousness.

[Andrew Frisardi]

posted by Mark:

There is always a chance that the current economic crisis will be good for poetry - as Les Murray says, "Rich cultures can't afford poetry/ Poor ones can."

Yup. Just like in the Middle Ages, where the only ones who could afford to marry for love were the serfs and peasants. Land owners had too much to lose, marriage had to make Good Economic Sense.

It’s just like you guys are saying, the dominant aesthetic of our time is rationalistic, secular humanist--post-“Enlightenment.” And the dryness of the official culture, the economic machine, the education system, has to be compensated for with drugs, pharmaceuticals, the “entertainment industry,” porno, big-money sports. The ecstasy will out, one way or another, even if it has to settle for taking a shower with the raincoat on.

That’s why I don’t totally agree with Mark’s assessment. It isn’t just about emotional catharsis, it’s about emotion with presence of mind, an expansion of consciousness, not just shooting one’s wad. Unconscious wad-shooting is what consumer society is all about.

The topic of ecstasy in poetry that Philip brought up here (for which, thanks, Philip!), has to do with Dionysus and Apollo getting together: to make a poem. Apollo is about form, remember, archetypal form. The rational ego you talk about, Mark, is just Apollo in the unemployment line. His real role, his divinity, is in his gift of form that comes from the nature of things themselves. That's an ecstasy in itself.

[Philip Quinlan]

Mark

Vis-a-vis the conscious and the unconscious I have this to say:

In the modern mind we think of consciousness as the thing we share and the subconscious as private. I believe the reverse is true. Our conscious minds are very individualistic and ego-bound. The subconscious is, in effect, our storehouse of racial memory and primitive responses to the basic shared experience of the human condition.

On the subject of wealth:

My brother is a banker. I said banker. He tried to convince me once that transferring numbers from one screen to another equated to the creation of wealth. I told him that there was no material wealth that wasn't ultimately dug out of the ground (usually by some poor sap on low wages). Right here and now I feel somewhat vindicated in that view.

In the same way, for me, there is no spiritual wealth worth sharing that isn't dug out of the subconscious (again by some poor sap, like me, albeit on rather less modest wages!)

I think I shall replace my "hawk" avatar with a dove...

:-)

Philip

[Janet Kenny]

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

Janet - I am genuinely (hopefully you know me well enough to accept that) interested in what you hint at here.

1) Examples of alleged expressions which embarrass us?

I can't produce one immediately. I mean noisy rapture and excitement rather than speechless suspension in another state.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

2) As someone who has experienced ecstasy in a rather singular way I find the idea of being silent about it difficult to understand.

That moment in a concert hall before the applause breaks out.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

But as for poetry in general. I think it is unreasonable to expect the reader to get out what you did not put in. Not everyone wants the reader to experience ecstasy - and that is fine. But if you do want that response there is no way in the world to craft it into being - you have to genuinely feel it.

It is often through the text in a way that is not possible to describe. Better so, usually.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

To have one's poetry of that kind judged by others, though, is in a way to "put one's self on offer". And that is the difficult, albeit rewarding, bit.

Always. But you don't explain or describe it. It is a state of being.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

If one sets out merely to obey the rules of craft and form then one only stands to be judged by one's success at adhering to them. Which to me feels safer. But adherence to rules of form and craft by no means excludes the expression of true emotion or ecstasy. Hopkins was most certainly a formalist.

So was Bach.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

I think there is a very genuine sense in which people these days are embarassed, as Mark says, to say what is in their heart (although I imagine it is no longer OK to speak of the "heart" as the seat of emotion in the same way that, as I was recently advised in these pages, it is no longer "good form" to speak of the "soul" as the seat of other sensibilities).

I'm not. I'm just embarrassed by a whipped up false rapture that is mistaken for the real thing.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

Chinese and Japanese (classical) poetry are great examples of how ecstatic emotion can be conveyed simply and without reort to wailing or chest-beating or free-form confessional.

So is much plain poetry written by our near contemporaries.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

What is a haiku but the ecstasy of the moment encapsulated in what is a very exact and demanding form? Ecstasy doesn't have to declare itself from the rooftops, it can be inherent in a quiet (if not silent) and reverential way

I'd better be honest here and say that on the whole I dislike English-language Haikus.

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

Edited in to say: of course one can be stunned into silence by the truly beautiful, but later (when it is recollected in tranquillity perhaps?) there is very often a case for saying something about it.

But the saying is done after the experience. Nothing against that.

I have a poem coming out soon which does all of the above. I hope ;-)
Janet

[Philip Quinlan]

Dear Janet

I find much of what you say agreeable (as usual).

Bach - ah yes. A supreme example of emotion through form. Did he not say that everything he did was done to "the greater glory of God"?

I do not share his faith but if that was his motivation and his music the result I applaud it utterly. I have been listening to his Cantatas lately. Divine in both senses.

The C Minor Passacaglia for instance - exactly the right notes in exactly the right order!

Philip

:-)

Edited in - "So is much plain poetry written by our near contemporaries.". Yes indeed. Mary Meriam's "Leaf" was exactly an example of such quietly and simply stated ecstasy.

"I have a poem coming out soon which does all of the above. I hope ;-)"

I hope and expect so too.

[Mark Allinson]

Thanks, Philip, and Andrew.

Andrew, I am sorry if I gave the impression that merely blurting out something emotional was the answer. I agree, there has to be a deepening of consciousness. Pure acting out (or blurting out) is childish.

One of my Gods, D.H.Lawrence, who is snorted at globally these days, was often accused of inciting emotionalism, to which he once retorted in a poem ("Flowers and Men"):

Oh leave off saying I want you to be savages.
Tell me, is the gentian savage, at the top of its coarse stem?
Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?

And he also warned that:

"If we do not rapidly open all the doors of consciousness
and freshen the putrid little space in which we are cribbed
the sky-blue walls of our unventilated heaven
will be bright red with blood."

Which I believe absolutely.

But where is consciousness to be expanded? Certainly not into "higher" and more rarefied levels of "spiritual" consciousness, in order to become disembodied angels - but downwards into the darkness below the present threshold. Lawrence writes:

Lucifer

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
But tell me, tell me, how do you know
he lost any of his brightness in the falling?
In the dark-blue depths, under layers and layers of darkness,
I see him more like the ruby, a gleam from within
of his own magnificence,
coming like the ruby in the invisible dark, glowing
with his own annunciation, towards us.

- D.H. Lawrence

We recall that "lucifer" is "the bearer of the light". The darkness bears the light. All light and no shadow (the current ideal) makes for two-dimensional flatness of consciousness.

[Philip Quinlan]

I wrote a poem once, which is published and "out there", about which I feel acutely embarassed because it was a bit of a "wad-shoot", although no-one has ever said as much.

I set out to let the words have their way with me without too much conscious intervention, but I have to admit I'm still trying to figure out what it means. One thing is for sure - I could have said it in a far more rational and measured way. I recently had the opportunity to rewrite or remove it from the book for its second edition but chose not to.

In making that choice I was reminded of RVW's statement about his 4th Symphony:

"I don't know if I like it, but it's what I meant"

Once in a while I figure that is an OK philosophy.

Philip

[Andrew Frisardi]

But where is consciousness to be expanded? Certainly not into "higher" and more rarefied levels of "spiritual" consciousness, in order to become disembodied angels - but downwards into the darkness below the present threshold.

But Mark, why would higher and spiritual have to mean disembodied? Christianity, for one, would be appalled at such an idea. The point is the vertical dimension, which rationalism leaves out. But vertical means up and down, and which direction all depends on the person, the time, the life circumstances. I’ve been places in my life, and others I know have too, that downwards into the darkness was the last place we needed to go. Things were already dark enough. Sometimes, the light is just the thing. Ask Lawrence’s gentian.

I do love those quotations, by the way. Lawrence, I agree, is a good example of a poet who approached the ecstatic with his eyes open.

Pound, another anathema in certain precincts, did it himself sometimes:

So that the vines burst from my fingers

And the bees weighted with pollen
Move heavily in the vine-shoots:
chirr - chirr - chir-rikk - a purring sound,
And the birds sleepily in the branches.

ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS!
With the first pale-clear of the heaven
And the cities set in their hills,

And the goddess of the fair knees

Moving there, with the oak-woods behind her,
The green slope, with white hounds
leaping about her;

And thence down to the creek's mouth, until evening,
Flat water before me,
and the trees growing in water,
Marble trunks out of stillness,
On past the palazzi,
in the stillness,

The light now, not of the sun.

Chrysophrase,
And the water green clear, and blue clear;
On, to the great cliffs of amber.

(from Canto XVII)

[Shaun J. Russell]

Just my quick $.02:

I don't for a moment believe that one has to be in ecstatic mode to convey great passion or emotion. Indeed, I think strong emotion is more powerful when it is meted out in an even tone...much in the same way as a person who speaks quietly when angry is often more fearsome than one who yells.

I'm not knocking ecstatic poetry -- I like Shelley too much for that -- but too often it has the feeling of being contrived, as Janet points out. If what you say is heartfelt and important, an exclamation mark is redundant. In my opinion.