On Poetry

On Poetry


The two pleasures I mentioned,
Satori and Mystic Vision,
depend for their existence,
according to their adepts and believers,
on the existence of a totally other
transcendent extra spatio-temporal being
or force such as an Absolute,
an Ultimate Principle,
a Universal Truth,
or Surpreme Being
or something that is transpersonal, non-human,
and not personal and private as the creation
or engenderment of the radical singularity
of a concrete particular individual
such as a poet.

Pleasures such as Satori or a Mystic Vision
take place in a spatio-temporal,
earthly realm and happen
to concrete particular individuals
and thus are certainties.
I would call such extraordinary experiences
“phenomenal realities”
but the reality or etiology of their causation
is indeterminate
and the existence of their ultimate origin,
problematic.

Poems are also phenomenal realities,
or semiotic realities,
or linguistic realities,
but are not dependent for their origins
in a belief in some form
of extra satio-temporal transcendent existence,
whether it be called a “Muse” or something else.
Poems are dependent on the radical singularity
of a concrete particular individual,
modified by historic time and place.


Duane Locke

Posted over on HTML Giant