The Artist's Awareness

I met with an acquaintance who writes poetry a week or so ago. When we were closer and he was just beginning to write, I encouraged him and helped him, in some small ways, to improve. After he moved away I continued to follow his work in various publications. Then it stopped, and I had no idea if he had quit writing poetry or taken up something else (for he was also interested in film and music.)

When I met him recently I was going to ask until I realized immediately that he was not the same man. Oh, he talked about writing poetry and a possible poetry/music/film project. He also let me know about a number of health issues. Throughout our conversation I could sense that the creative urge was still there but greatly subordinate to his mental and physical state. He seemed to me incapable of focusing on anything outside himself, as if he no longer had any interest in the world around him if it did not directly involve his well-being.

At first I was going to chastise him for abandoning his writing but I’m glad I did not. I have come to realize how much awareness must be a basic part of the creative process. I don’t mean a ‘hyper’ awareness, some sense more developed in artists than in others. I’m referring to the primitive consciousness that keeps the senses operating and the mind processing the information the senses receive. The sudden notice of a smell and all the associations it may bring; an awareness of how colours and shapes flow together; the way one thought leads to something other under certain circumstances; all these are part of how we interact with our surroundings and how we understand it.

That’s what poets work from, an awareness and understanding of the world around them. That’s what any artist has. It doesn’t matter if such awareness is called “the Muse” or insight or vision. It is nothing more than any person has. The artist, however, has come to use that awareness in creative ways to enhance what he needs to show, to say.

It’s very much like a muscle the artist or writer exercises almost unconsciously, one that more ordinary people tend to ignore and sometimes even actively suppress.

That calls to mind one beautiful morning not long ago. In the early morning quiet I had paused to sit in the nearby park, simply to think, perhaps make some plans, get away from any pressure in the house. Before the day’s impending heat could overtake the morning I enjoyed the play of sunlight and breezes in the trees and on my skin. I felt aware of my surroundings and even as one with the environment. And then a young lady came by, running along the paved track that circles the park.

You’ve seen them, the early morning joggers. This one was no different: proper footwear, light snug clothing, sweatband at the forehead. I’ll swear there would be a bottle of some special drink waiting where she had stashed it (probably in her car.) The dark glasses to protect the eyes. The ear buds leading up from the I-pod.

And it struck me; she had gone to a lot of trouble to negate all the things I was enjoying – the sunshine, the slight breeze, the movement of leaves on the trees, the singing and chirping of birds, the scurry of a squirrel, the splash of colour in a nearby flowerbed, the scent of a juniper bush. All these external stimuli and all the pleasure they give she was denying herself because she wanted to focus inward. Her feelings concentrated on perspiration and muscle fatigue; all she heard was whatever mechanically reproduced sounds she allowed herself to hear and perhaps the pulse of her own blood; all she saw was just enough to keep her on the chosen path. She certainly did not seem to notice me. In no way was she open to any outside stimulus.

That’s just a case of normal awareness being suppressed, for whatever reason. And what if such awareness is impaired, perhaps even lost altogether? What if I, as a poet, suddenly could no longer see the brilliance of colour, could no longer hear the small sounds around me? If I was unable to enjoy all the small miracles that make my life worth living, could I still write poetry?

I shudder to think of myself so wrapped up in myself that nothing else matters. To what sort of animal is the poet reduced when he has lost his Muse, his awareness of the intricate world outside himself?

Morning Light

They’re here again, those mornings with soft light breaking at dawn, hanging on for endless moments before burning its way into the day. I have always loved to sit out and watch the sun rise, more so than to watch it set. When I lived as a night owl I would stay up to watch a sunrise before going to bed; when I worked shifts I missed being available for either the rising or the setting sun. Such magic must be observed. There are enough days in a life without it.
The light available before sunrise seems to grow as if it were alive. Not only does it expand to fill space, it often seems to diffuse and enter into all the solid matter and for a short time gives the material world a spiritual essence. This is what makes the music of classical Indian music, especially the ragas written for this time of day, so moving for me. I have gotten into the habit of spending the time between the first coffee and a solid breakfast in meditation and contemplation. Once I used to do so with music playing, ragas or streams of Celtic instrumentations. Nowadays, unless a great number of irritations are present, I prefer the silence and the natural rhythms of birds and winds, and even the hum of traffic may blend in.

And then there’s the poetry. Since medieval times songs and words have been written for and about this time of day. Even in today’s English verse a lyrical poem about dawn, whether in praise or about love, with joy or pain or contemplation, is known as an aubade (from the French and Provençal). At times I write a poem directly influenced by one specific sunrise, but recently I was nosing around some of my earlier work, both published and unpublished, and marveled at how often the sunrise in one way or another influenced my poetry. Even without specific mention of the time of day, I could feel the serene effect through the images used. I had been writing aubades even before I understood what they were.

I continue to write poems under the influence of the rising sun. Sometimes they remain compact as haiku or tanka. Sometimes the imagery becomes incorporated in something other. And sometimes it becomes a complete lyrical expression of praise and contentment in and of itself.

As a poet and as a human being, I remain entranced by the rising sun. No wonder world religions use the symbol with great power.

Music or Words, the Presentation

I recently attended a concert of Indian music performed by the local sitar master, Neeraj Prem. I have enjoyed such music for a long time, since I first heard Ravi Shankar’s work on the sound track of Pather Panchali and purchased a recording of his performance in the mid 1960s. The depth of the emotional experience this music evokes continued to amaze me.

Ravi Shankar was the main exponent of bringing the classical music of Northern India to the Western world. His understanding and ability to explain won a following of Western musicians as diverse as Yehudi Menuhin, Jean-Pierre Rampal, John Coltrane, and George Harrison. But something Prem said about the music echoed what I had learned from Shankar. Western music is written down and precise, almost mathematical in harmony and counterpoint. It is based on scores to be followed. The ragas for sitar are based in mood, colour, and emotion as expressed by a basic pattern from which the musician works. A form that approaches this is the jazz soloist improvising over and around the basic chart of his piece of music.

So often in these entries I find myself talking of music. What has this one to do with poetry?

Well, late that evening as I was lying in bed preparing for sleep it suddenly struck me that the way to appreciate the different musical performances was much the same as the way to appreciate different presentations of poetry. For poetry on the page, in a book, you need an analytical mind to see the relationships between phrases and images. The layout, line breaks, stanzas, all help to guide the mind into processing the words. But spoken word material, though coming from similar fundamentals, depends on the ear alone to register. The mind cannot take time to analyze, but must therefore react viscerally and emotionally.

This also may be a partial explanation why I have an unusual reaction when I hear someone else read my poems. Rather than the sender, I become the receiver but with a much different perspective than any one else. In a way I become both ends of a conversation.

The poem on the stage is not the poem on the page. Not even combining an audio-visual presentation would work; the visuals would overwhelm the audio. It always does.

The High and the Low

I went for a winter hike with some friends in an area known as the Niagara Glen. It’s a broad but rugged place in the Niagara gorge, a place of tumbled rocks strewn from an ancient tributary. Like so many others, I’d traveled along the edge of the gorge and never imagined that a completely other world existed there. Not that it’s unknown; people explore there, fish there, play there. It’s just that looking down from the top you focus on the river below and forget the space between. So often someone in our party would exclaim, “I never knew this was here!”

The terrain is rugged but not inhospitable. Its great attraction is in its difference: it is neither the roar and swirl of the powerful river nor the civilized parks and roads above the rim. In its way, it reminded me of poetry and what poetry should be.

I will grant that sometimes poetry will look down from the refined rim of the abyss and try to explain what lies below. Or again, poetry may be part of the raging variability of the river where it grabs the banks. But who but a poet can show and explain the one to the other, can explore the complexity that lies between and still joins them.

In the human condition it is the artist, the poet who must clamber between the highs and the lows, to seek the realities that are ecstasy and profundity. To that end nothing can be more symbolic, more metaphoric than a winter hike in the gorge of the Niagara River on a clear winter afternoon.

Religion and Poetry

I purchased a copy of Margaret Avison's Listening, the collection of her poems that she had almost finished when she died, and which was published posthumously. I have been aware of and admired her work from the beginning when she kindly consented to be included with a bunch of no-name poets in a small anthology of modern Canadian Christian poetry put together by Harry Houtman for Wedge that also included my work.

I admire how her faith shows through her work. It doesn't matter if she deals with spiritual matters openly or in a roundabout way, the strength of her convictions always shines through, even when wrapped in symbolic language. She is never sentimental nor dogmatic yet you are always aware of the spiritual values upon which she bases her life. She wrote as she lived, as a servant of God among her fellows.

Certain happenings, small and large, that have recently touched my life have made me stop and think about what I am and why I am. These are not easy questions to answer, and the answer seems to keep changing. No, not in basic ways but in small peripheral perceptions.

I consider myself a poet. That's how I express myself. But it is also the way I can share the image of God, to share our common divinity with my fellow man, express my reason for being why I am. Through a holy gift holiness may be shared.

But the gift also depends on the giver. My poetry, I feel, keeps developing and I will not let it become stagnant and trivial. Sometimes I fear my faith and my love for this Creation does not shine as strongly as it could. In times like that I turn not to Scripture or to dogma but to the writings of people like Avison.

That's when I have to reflect on my place in this creation. How I have to express the creative spirit that flows through me. How, with strength but not with force, I too can be a symbol in and to the world.