Compos Mentis

Dilatory Poetry Rambles

"What if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?"

E.E. Cummings

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for E.E. Cummings. I know a lot of people don't like his kind of modern poetry, especially his poetry for the eye, but its something that just appeals to me. I've never quite understood why people try to fit their art into little boxes, and make what use of the boxes they can. On the other hand, there are people like Wordsworth or (of course) Shakespeare who just take their idiom and take it beyond the realm of human scope. All of us, no matter how much we practice, no matter how beautiful our verse, we will never write sonnets like Shakespeare, any more than we could compose fugues like J.S. Bach or paint landscapes like Monet. I listened to a lecture on the originality of Beethoven yesterday, and how people have spent centuries trying to understand his music, to fit words around it like other, lesser composers. But you can't. There are things in art that transcend our words and probably even our experience. And the fact is, that only Beethoven could compose the Eroica symphony. Only Picasso could paint Le Troix Mademoiselles. Only Shakespeare could write The Tempest. These men (and women, too, though I haven't mentioned any.) sometimes seem out of our reach, out of our range of possible contributions to what humans consider beautiful. But it is at times like that that our minds are too full of themselves. We are not meant to be another Beethoven or Shakespeare. There is no need for them. They have already poured out their souls on the human stage. The thing is, we don't need to write or compose or paint to add to the human play. If we find something, within ourselves or with direction, that we find we can pour out what we are, what we have to offer, then mankind is better off for it. It's what we are meant to do.
Another E.E. Cummings:

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

millie befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea

posted by Emmett @ 01:37