only fools rush in where angels fear to tread poetry slam

 

    Ok, youngugs, ole Grandfossils' not sure how to wrap up all of these tales- perhaps I begin with something beautiful and raw from Erik Rittenberry's Poetic Outlaws yesterday, and my an another reader’s discussion of it:  

Stanley Kunitz: A Poem has Secrets that the Poet Knows Nothing Of

APR 17, 2024

“The deepest thing I know is that I am living and dying at once, and my conviction is to report that dialogue.” 

— Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz is certainly one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century. 

He received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice (in 1959 and 2005). His works often explored the vital kinship between nature and the human experience. He had a profound awareness of the natural world and often used it as a metaphor for human emotions and the passage of time. 

Kunitz’s poetry is steeped with images of loss and regeneration, aging and mortality, and a sense of grappling with the ultimate questions of spirituality and transcendence. 

Before we get into Kunitz's most notable poem, “King of the River,” I wanted to share with you what inspired him to write this profound piece. This poem explores the cyclical nature of life, the passage of time, the spiritual dimensions of an “upstream” struggle, and “the inexorable process” of his own fate. 

Below is a brief exchange Kunitz had with an interviewer who asked him how this brilliant poem came into being.

Hope you enjoy it. 

Interviewer: My favorite poem of yours is “King of the River,” and I believe my reason is that the salmon, ostensibly the subject of the poem, is half-fish, half-Kunitz. Could we talk a little about how the poem came into being?

Kunitz: What triggered “King of the River,” I recall, was a brief report in Time of some new research on the aging process of the Pacific salmon. I wrote the poem in Provincetown one fall—my favorite writing season. The very first lines came to me with their conditional syntax and suspended clauses, a winding and falling movement. 

The rest seemed to flow, maybe because I'm never very far from the creature world. Some of my deepest feelings have to do with plants and animals. In my bad times they've sustained me. It may be pertinent that I experienced a curious elation while confronting the unpleasant reality of being mortal, the inexorable process of my own decay. Perhaps I had managed to “distance” my fate—the salmon was doing my dying for me.

A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of. It takes on a life and a will of its own. It might have proceeded differently—towards catastrophe, resignation, terror, despair—and I still would have to claim it. 

Valéry said that poetry is a language within a language. It is also a language beyond language, a meta-medium—that is, metabolic, metaphoric, metamorphic. A poet's collected work is his book of changes. The great meditations on death have a curious exaltation. I suppose it comes from the realization, even on the threshold, that one isn't done with one's changes.

The King of the River

If the water were clear enough,

if the water were still,

but the water is not clear,

the water is not still,

you would see yourself,

slipped out of your skin,

nosing upstream,

slapping, thrashing,

tumbling

over the rocks

till you paint them

with your belly's blood:

Finned Ego,

yard of muscle that coils,

uncoils.

If the knowledge were given you,

but it is not given,

for the membrane is clouded

with self-deceptions

and the iridescent image swims

through a mirror that flows,

you would surprise yourself

in that other flesh

heavy with milt,

bruised, battering toward the dam

that lips the orgiastic pool.

Come. Bathe in these waters.

Increase and die.

If the power were granted you

to break out of your cells,

but the imagination fails

and the doors of the senses close

on the child within,

you would dare to be changed,

as you are changing now,

into the shape you dread

beyond the merely human.

A dry fire eats you.

Fat drips from your bones.

The flutes of your gills discolor.

You have become a ship for parasites.

The great clock of your life

is slowing down,

and the small clocks run wild.

For this you were born.

You have cried to the wind

and heard the wind's reply:

"I did not choose the way,

the way chose me."

You have tasted the fire on your tongue

till it is swollen black

with a prophetic joy:

"Burn with me!

The only music is time,

the only dance is love."

If the heart were pure enough,

but it is not pure,

you would admit

that nothing compels you

any more, nothing

at all abides,

but nostalgia and desire,

the two-way ladder

between heaven and hell.

On the threshold

of the last mystery,

at the brute absolute hour,

you have looked into the eyes

of your creature self,

which are glazed with madness,

and you say

he is not broken but endures,

limber and firm

in the state of his shining,

forever inheriting his salt kingdom,

from which he is banished

forever.

Sloan Bashinsky

That poor salmon,

what did it do 

to deserve

reminding the poet of his

own self? :-)  

Ethan

Try it the other way, what did the poet do to feel that his self resembled a salmon? 😉 

Sloan Bashinsky

Or, what the poet didn’t do, which caused him to feel he was no different from a salmon that did what it had to do? :-)  

 

Ethan Summers

Truth is Sloan, that you asked a very good question. I didn’t manage to understand the poem until I started to think how to answer to you. So, imagine that you’d be slowly, gradually, morphing into a salmon trying to swim against the stream towards your birthplace, and then try to read the poem with the eyes of a fish. Ultimately read the title and you might just feel poet’s admiration for those who against all hardships, battered, with the blood dripping from their belly, fight to their last breath against the current, only to meet their fate, unwavering, almost defiant in their steadiness  

Sloan Bashinsky

Erik’s title is what caused me to post my question: 

"A Poem has Secrets that the Poet Knows Nothing Of”.

Kinda reminds me of the heart has its own reasons which reason knows nothing of.

It Kunitiz didn’t uncover the poem’s secrets, how can we?

The Sockeye, or any saltwater-freshwater salmon, makes that arduous return because its genes demand it, it has no choice in the matter, and it reaches its spawning ground, or dies trying, naturally, or killed by a fisherman, bear or eagle. 

There’s a religious theme in this poem, heaven and hell, and swimming against a current without assistance of greater knowledge, perception, awareness, understanding, by rote, a computer program, like a salmon. Or a lemming, as each salmon has the same genes as its own kind driving it.

Salmon are herd creatures, they do not deviate, until they are killed, or they die of exhaustion, although some kinds of salmon do not die spawning, such as the Atlantic salmon and the Siberia salmon, I think.  

 

Ethan

True, I wonder though, are we more free than the salmon is, or just as constrained by our genetic structure as it is? Is our freedom a real or just an illusion?

Sloan Bashinsky
The salmon and human genetic codes are one thing, human social, religious, political, educational programming, egos and karma are something else altogether.😎 

 

Ethan

Obviously, our world is far more complex than the one of a fish for our body is a far more complex machine and has a far more complicated structure than the one of a fish. 
What I suspect though is that our emotions could be entirely explained by the work of hormones combined with the amount of oxygen delivered to the brain. Little modifications in how the hormones work, anomalies, malfunctions and you have a different individual altogether. My thought is that we are not as free as we think we are, and in this regard we subtly resemble that fish after all. 

But even in those conditions, the title of the article is challenging indeed, just as you said, and could easily be the object of a separate discussion 😃

Sloan Bashinsky

For the reasons you and I stated, for most people, freedom is an illusion. Look at the qualifiers in the poem, mocking freedom.

 

    In early 2004, I started attending a very different kind of church service in an office building in Boulder, Colorado. No collection plate was passed. Each Sunday, someone different spoke for a little while, and the meeting ended. 

    One day, someone else came forward at the end and said, “Close your eyes and ask what you can do to best serve God?”

    I closed my eyes and saw a beautiful white quill writing pen, tears came to my eyes, and got up out of my chair and walked out of there and drove home.

    That night, sitting in the easy chair in my and my wife’s bedroom, staring out the window at large, bare-limbed black willow tree in moonlight, I opened my writing journal and put my pen on the pater and one word came, and another word came, and I started balling my eyes out, as more words came, each a poem, but not cast into verse, and that went on for several weeks, and then it slowed down, and then it stopped.

    Here are two of the poems, which I remember verbatim.

He is the paper, the ink his blood, the pen his soul, and the poet is God.

Although he sometimes tries to write fiction, every character is a character in himself, ever plot a plot a plot in himself- there are no surprises, only his to discover parts of himself he has lost, forgotten, thrown away, or ever even knew were there. Perhaps in that way he and God are somewhat alike- they both create to discover just who and what they really are. 

    Then, this fell out of me:

Only fools rush in

Where angels fear to tread,

But if there were no fools, 

Who’d lead the angels?

    That evening, I felt something huge and wonderful-feeling trying to wiggle its way into me. It was a really tight fit. There were lots of tears. that went on for about two weeks. 

    Every morning I took the same walk of about 4 miles.

    One morning, when I reached the turn around point and headed home, I felt angels' presence, and then I heard in my thoughts, “This thing coming into you is your angel twin. All people have an angel twin, and yours will live out this life with you.”

    I thought, “That’s neat!”

    Then, I heard, “By the way, this is your son.”

    I nearly collapsed to the ground.

    My 7-week-old son had died of sudden infant death syndrome just before I entered my last semester at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa. His death had so unhinged me that I was not able to fit myself into the plans and molds my father and this father and my mother had made for me, nor into any plans and molds I had made for me.

    In 1988, I had gone to his unmarked grave several times carrying a yellow peace rose like the one on his simple oak coffin. I cried oceans of tears and snot at his unmarked grave. When no more tears and snot came, I had the cemetery put a marker on his grave, on which was engraved: “Infant Son: He opened out hearts and set us on our journey.”

    I put all of those poems into a floppy disc document and took it to a copy center and they made it into a saddle stitch pamphlet, which I named A Crazy Person’s Bible. It was anonymous. I gave away hundreds of copies by leaving them in cardboard boxes at Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.

    Many years later, after my goodmorningkeywest.com, goodoodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningbirmingham.com went to a cyber cemetery, I created afoorldworkneverneds.blogspot.com and started writing their most days.

    I wrote there after I moved from Key West back to Alabama in late 2018, and I continued writing there through the Covid-19 shutdown.

    By then, I had reverted the first half of the blog posts to draft. 

    Then, I started new blogspots, which became books at archive.org. This blogspot will become a book there. As will redneckmysticlawyerforpresident.blobspot.com, a mock campaign on the Unicorn ticket.

    Yesterday, I felt it might be time to return to writing at afoolsworkneverends.blogspotlcom, because its title fits me better than anything else. I wondered what was next? How could I best serve God. A dream around dawn today impressed I’m not done with the mock campaign.

    Meanwhile, from The Christian Science Monitor today: 

 

She’s worth $1 billion, but can Taylor Swift write poetry? We ask experts.

Do poems and lyrics serve the same function in art? Or are they entirely different mediums? We asked poets (and Swift fans) for their analysis of Taylor Swift’s wordsmithing.

Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” comes out April 19.
By Stephen Humphries Staff writer
@steve_humphries

Taylor Swift occupies a position in popular culture that makes Beatlemania seem like a passing fad. Her every move is scrutinized.

The April 19 release of her new album has been shrouded in a blackout. No advance singles. Zero interviews. But Ms. Swift’s 11th LP does appear to follow a poetic theme. The album’s tagline is “All’s fair in love and poetry.” It’s being released during National Poetry Month.

Consequently, “The Tortured Poets Department” is heating up a debate that’s been simmering since before Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016: Can lyrics qualify as poetry?

Historically, poems were often performed aloud with musical accompaniment. The etymology of “lyric poetry” is the Greek word lyrikos, which means “singing to the lyre.”

“There are people out there who would argue that a pop star can’t be a poet,” says Elly McCausland, who teaches the “Literature (Taylor’s Version)” course at Ghent University in Belgium. “She’s deliberately pushing back against that and also asking us to examine  own attitudes. What is poetry? What can poetry be?” 

 

    Any damn thing it wants to be, Elly. Any damn thing it wants to be. 

For who, yes please tell me, just who invented the rule that poetry must rhyme, have pentameter, be cast into verse? Surely it wasn’t the maker of the first stone- otherwise there’d be no stones to break all those slaving rules!!!

    After reading all of that above, half my age tech friend Bob, who does the tech work for my books at archive.org and The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast watched on all over the world on Torrent platforms, sent me:

In 1992, Kris Kristofferson comforted Sinéad O'Connor when she was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan anniversary concert.

Sinéad O'Connor, just 25 years old at the time, was introducd on stage by American singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson.

He later wrote this for her. 

"I'm singing this song for my sister Sinead

Concerning the god awful mess that she made

When she told them her truth just as hard as she could

Her message profoundly was misunderstood

There's humans entrusted with guarding our gold

And humans in charge of the saving of souls

And humans responded all over the world

Condemning that bald headd brave little girl

And maybe she's crazy and maybe she ain't

But so was Picasso and so were the saints

And she's never been partial to shackles or chains

She's too old for breaking and too young to tame

It's askin' for trouble to stick out your neck

In terms of a target a big silhouete

But some candles flicker and some candles fade

And some burn as true as my sister Sinead

And maybe she's crazy and maybe she ain't

But so was Picasso and so were the saints

And she's never been partial to shackles or chains

She's too old for breaking and too young to tame"

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

it has gotten to the point that some Americans behave like Islamic jihadists toward people who disagree with them and their leaders

    Ok, younguns, some really serious shit today.

    Where to begin?

    Perhaps with something I read that a German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: “Silence in the face of Evil itself is Evil, God will not hold us guiltless.”

    Bonhoeffer is best known for his book, THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, in which he compares what he called “cheap grace” with the real thing. I think every Christian should read that book.

    Bonhoeffer and other German men planned to assassinate Adolph Hitler and were caught and that was the end of them.

    It has come to the point in America where one person has gathered a huge following that behaves like Islamic jihadists when they don’t like what someone says about them and their leader.

    I had my first taste of that vibe when I was invited into something, and the instigator had a change of heart and left me in a serous lurch and threatened to call the police on me, and I warned her, if she did not back off, I would publish her and my emails and our Facebook messenger chat at my blog, so people could see what really happened, and she called the police on me, and I published her and my correspondence, and she sued me, and lost, and she sued me again, and lost. I defended myself, because I was homeless and could not afford a lawyer.

    A man I knew well, who joined the instigator by bashing me online, had kidney failure and was put on dialysis. A blogger, who joined the instigator by bashing me on his blog and reported me to the Alabama elder protection agency, got a wellness visit from a district attorney and law enforcement and shit his pants, and his lawyer brother, who had joined in, was fired by his state agency employer. Covid-19 made the instigator an invalid.

    The other day, the fellow who operates the refreshingly delightful Free Radio Rulu Newsletter, https://freeradiorulo.substack.com/, invited me to send him a “fictitious” letter to the editor. I replied, be careful what you ask for? He said to let fly.

Ahoy, Wonder Bread truck free radio station Rulu, Nebraska...

I have to say, you are a cornhusker wonder to behold.

I do not say that lightly as a long-time Alabama Crimson Tide fan.

I say it as someone who has shot off his mouth and pen for a very long time, disturbing the self-deemed precious  STATUS QUO.

The HEAD UP WHERE THE SUN NEVER SHINES religion, or should I say, cult?

The POLITICOS and the RELIGIOUS, who FEATHER their and their friends and families' NESTS.

And their LAWYERS’ nests.

I am a lawyer, by the way. Or was one. Well, it's probably terminal, like Ebola. But IT takes much longer.

In the past I ran ten times for local public office, claiming God told me to run, if I knew what was good for me.

I detested politics, but I was dragooned in a dream to roll up my sleeves and dive into that raunchy sewer. So, I dove.

I never came close to winning, so I didn’t have to ask for a recount.

I always was the minority report, out of the box, the pissant, some might say.

But, my goodness, it actually was some fun, when I wasn’t moaning about it.

I named my good morning blogs in salute to the VERY SUBVERSIVE “Good Morning Vietnam” movie, may Robin Williams, the Vietnam war dead and those blogs all rest in peace.

It was many years after that war that I considered JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcom X all got shot dead after they came out against America at war in Vietnam.

I had a pretty big reader following at my blogs.

I spoke hundreds of times at city and county commission meetings, school board and other local government meetings.

I got quoted in local newspapers, one of which likened me to Don Quixote in an editorial cartoon.

I got interviewed by local radio and TV stations.

I gave real estate developers and their lawyers and their captured city and county commissioners hell, and then some.

But dang, I never dreamed of having my own Wonder Bread truck radio station.

I don’t now recall how I stumbled across you and instantly recognized a fellow kamikaze pilot, balls to the wall, no sacred cow left un-poked, skewered, drone-missiled.

And to beat all, you are a POET!

The SCANDAL!

Once upon a time, when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, I met a woman disc jockey in Salt Lake City, who had her own morning call in show. She interviewed me several times by telephone, and the Christians and the Momons in Salt Lake lit up the station’s phones.

One day we were to entertain the Salt Lake folks, she called around breakfast to ask if I had heard what was on the news and did I still want to do the interview? 

The news was the federal assault of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

I said, of course. Just tell your audience ahead of time that you will be interviewing the Devil in Waco.

She laughed.

She did the promo, and oh my God, the station’s phone lines started lighting up after she asked me who I was, and I said, The Devil, and where I was, and I said, In Waco, Texas, and why was I there, and I said, to see how people make my work so easy for me that I mostly hang out on Maui staring at half naked beautiful women on beaches.

I dunno. It just now occurs to me that maybe that was my first plunge into national politics, or any kind of politics.

Now, I have to tell you this.

Back when I wuz running for local office, you could shoot off your mouth about politics and religion without worrying much about somebody shooting you. But as you have observed, times have really changed, and while I keep shooting off my mouth here and there, it won’t surprise me to walk outside some day and look down to see red laser dots on my chest.

So, while I hope you keep on poking the places that deserve poking, this 81+ grandfossil the Smithsonian is still trying to recapture, after it let me out for a walk one day and I snuck behind a bush and gnawed off the hind foot with the tracker on it and grew another hind foot and hightailed it, also hopes you have plenty of Kevlar and a band of battle angels backing you up, who truly appreciate fools who rush in where angels fear to tread, but if there were no fools, who’d lead the angels?

    Not long ago, I mentioned in one of my tales to you younguns that a 4-year black of the soul began to lift in 1995 after I had three visions, and that I might share those visions with you later on. I think this might be time to do that.

    I spontaneously lived these three visions in about 4 days' time while oceans of tears and rivers of snot ran out of me. You can view the visions as parables, but they are far more than that, and are free for you, and anyone, to claim and use.

of men, wolves and eagles … 

Once upon a time there lived a man named Joseph, who grew tired of living with people and left his village and went into the woods to live. 

By and by, a wolf pack discovered Joseph and over time got to know him and that he was not like other men, and eventually they took him into their pack. The leader of the pack was a red wolf named David, and soon David and Joseph became fast friends, and they hunted and played and slept together like . . . wolves. 

Then one day, the men in the village where Joseph had lived learned from hunters that Joseph was living with wolves. The men decided it was not right for a man to go off and live in the woods and run with with wolves, so they got their guns and set off to find Joseph and bring him back to the village, to live like a man. 

The men came upon the wolf pack sleeping in the sun next to a bluff. The wind was blowing off the bluff, away from the wolf pack toward the men, which prevented the pack from scenting the men as they approached. By the time the wolf pack realized the men were there, the men had the pack surrounded, pinned against the bluff. 

David wanted to order the pack to attack, but Joseph said, “No, I am a man, they will listen to reason, let me go and speak with them.” Although David did not like this idea, he agreed to it because Joseph was a man. But the men would not listen to reason and they shot and killed the entire pack and took Joseph heartbroken back to the village. 

Joseph languished in the village for many weeks, blaming himself for the death of his pack. 

Then, Joseph has a dream, in which he sees David’s face. David is angry, but says nothing, just stares. Finally, Joseph blurts out that he did the best he knew how to do, and he’s so sorry for the way it turned out! David says, “Better that we attacked and died like wolves, than be slaughtered like sheep!” 

Then, Joseph is back with the pack, against the bluff, surrounded by the men. David says he wants the pack to attack. Joseph says, “And I will lead the charge!” Then, they hear a voice, the whole pack hears it, say, “There is another way, ask for another way.” Never before have Joseph, David or the pack had such a thing happen, but Joseph asks for another way. 

Suddenly, a great bolt of lightning strikes the ground between the pack and the men, stirring up a huge cloud of dust. As the the dust begins to settle, it begins to take the shape of something huge. The wolves and Joseph then see a pair of golden eyes peering from the bushes behind the men. Then a second pair of golden eyes. Then a third pair. Then ten pair. Then a hundred pair. Then a legion of . . . wolves’ eyes. The men are moved by some force to turn around and see what the now delirious pack already see. 

Then, the men turn back around and find themselves face to face with a great towering eagle, whose piercing golden eyes penetrate their hearts. Then, they hear, “These are my battle angels. You may leave this place and go back to your village, taking your guns with you, on condition that you tell everyone what has happened here today.” 

To this condition the men readily agree, and they return to their village and tell everyone what happened, and they go to nearby villages and tell it.

something about lions …

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Alya. She was the medicine woman in her tribe, using herbs and poultices and spirit ways to help her people. Yet she had one flaw: she hated lions, because a lion had killed her father. Her hatred caused her to cast spells against lions, which caused her husband great concern. He often told Alya that her war with lions was going to get her into big trouble, but she was a medicine woman, she knew the ways of the spirits, and she did not listen to her husband. 

One day while Alya was out gathering herbs, she spotted a lion sunning himself in tall grasses on the savannah. She hatched a scheme in her mind to sneak up on the lion and cast a spell on him, which would enable her to steal his spirit and have it for herself. As she crept closer to the lion, she began chanting softly and seeing in her mind’s eye her spell taking over the lion. However, she was so focused on what she was doing, that she did not see in her mind’s eye the lion’s mate returning from hunting. Nor did she see the lioness catch her sent, drop her kill from her mouth to the ground and circle around behind. Too late, Alya realized her peril, just as the lioness took her from behind.

Next thing Alya knows, she is in the spirit world, standing before the Lion Spirit. Trembling with terror, Alya wants to run away, but the Lion Spirit speaks to her heart, says, “There is something you do not yet know.” 

Then, Alya is back on the savannah, watching a hunter from her tribe sneaking up on a nest of lion cubs, whose parents are away hunting. The hunter has a twisted spirit, and decides to kill the lion cubs just for the fun of doing it, even though killing any animal just for sport is taboo in his tribe, which worships the Lion Spirit. On returning to his village, the hunter tells no one what he has done. 

When the lion and lioness return to their nest and find their dead cubs, they are enraged. They catch the hunter’s scent and track him back to the edge of the village, where the lion hides in a thicket and begins roaring and bellowing out his rage over what has happened. The hunter knows why the lion is there, doing that, but still he tells no one.

 

Alya’s father, the tribe’s leader, prepares to go out and face and kill the lion, because it his duty to protect his tribe from marauding lions. And so he sets out to face the lion, even as the hunter lets him go without saying what has happened to bring this about, and that a lioness is also out there with the lion. 

Alya’s father quickly finds and confronts the lion, and is preparing to kill it with his spear, when he is taken from behind by the lioness. In her horror, Alya helplessly watches on, even as she now realizes that her hatred of lions was completely misplaced. She feels awful.

 

Then suddenly Alya is back on the savannah, stalking the lion whose spirit she once wanted to steal for herself. The lion looks up, stares into Alya’s eyes. She shakes all over, is terrified, but does not look away. Then something takes hold of her, she says to the lion, “I have lost my father and you have lost your cubs. I will be your cub.” The lion looks deep into Alya’s spirit, nods, says, “And I will be your father, and will always protect your front.” Then beside the lion is the lioness, who says to Alya, “And I will always protect your back.”

the gift …

A sleeping man dreams he sees the back of a young yogi meditating in the lotus position. Before the young yogi appear two cobras, raised up, hoods flared. One cobra is pure white, the other pure black. Both beautiful. The white cobra says to the young yogi, “We came to you once before because you were innocent, and you knew we brought a gift and you believed you had to choose one of us and you chose me.” The black cobra says, “We come before you again because you now are wise.” The yogi, now very advanced in years, weeps, chooses them both. The sleeping man, now an old man, awakens, crying.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com