My experience of the word has always been
inextricably linked to art. I find myself having more in common with
the visual artist or pianist, than with the English or philosophy
major. Words for the poet are as paint, charcoal, piano keys, chisel
and stone are for other artists. Thus, poets are presented with a
queer dilemma. Other artists do not use the medium of their craft in
the mundane everyday business of life. The poet, however, uses words
to communicate the grocery list, the brief greetings of hello and
goodbye. To elevate that use is the intention of the poet. So, all
poets must ask themselves, "What is poetry?" We demand a definition
and keep it present as we move through the myriad phases of our
creative process. Constantly reevaluating our ideas and biases, we
are forever redefining, looking for the answer. More often than not
the answer finds us; at least that has been my experience.
This past October poetry defined itself twice for
me, the first time during my monthly visit with Sarah Carlisle
Towery, an original student at Black Mountain College, the second
while reading a book she had given me called Search for the Real
by Hans Hofmann. The definitions are quite different in tone and
have taken on two completely different voices. I present them
together, not in opposition, but as an example of the "active mutual
forces" that exist on the plane of creation. To me this is what
Mêlée is all about.
Experience
(Transcribed from an interview with Sarah Carlisle Towery, 2006)
"He came in my studio and taught me. We had
little studios. Students up there, at the college, built their
studios because they had to do everything. Nobody gave them
anything. They were criticized, even by the little local people, the
local paper would be critical of them. They had a hard time cause,
well, now, I don’t how the townsfolk sized things...but anyway, what
I was going to tell you about Joseph Albers, Lord, I loved him. He
would give an individual critique after we had class. We’d go down
in the basement of his studio, big studio; everyone had a little
studio downstairs. They’re still there, private little sections, not
big, small, where you could work. He would come into your studio,
knock and ask if he could come in. Then he’d see your work, the way
he’d speak English was different, but cute, you know. The model that
day had been a nude, posed. He had me at his smiling, just standing
there looking at my painting. He said, ‘Her bosoms look like bags of
water. Your bosoms are not bags of water. Stand up. Stand up.’ I
stood up. He ran around and touched me. He started pushing in the
center of my chest grabbing my arms, my neck. I was embarrassed. He
wasn’t severe, but he meant it, grabbing me like that, ‘This tube is
a tube that fits in this tube. This arm fits in this tube, this one
in this.’ He kept pulling my arms, grasping my neck, pushing against
my ribs and back, he laughs all the time he is saying it. At some
point, I must have said, ‘Oah, Oah, Ouch.’ I thought he would choke
me. He said, ‘I hurt you on purpose, but if I would have just said
it--that’s a tube that fits in that tube and that tube--you don’t
remember it.’"
Process
(Paraphrased and adapted for the poem from Search for the
Real, Hans Hofmann, 1948)
The relative meaning of two words in an
emotionally controlled relation create the phenomenon of a third
fact of a higher order, just as two musical sounds, heard
simultaneously create the phenomenon of the third, fourth. The
nature of this higher third is the non-physical. In a sense, it is
magic.
Take a sheet of paper and write a letter on it,
"T" for instance. Who can say whether this letter is part of any
word? Who can say what its intention is? But when on the same sheet
of paper, you write a word containing the letter "T," you can see
immediately that the letter is part of something. You can make sense
of it. Was it necessary to change the letter? No, we gave it meaning
through its relation to other letters; thus, we gave simultaneous
meaning through the act of writing it. Now, add another word, its
relation to the first gives it new meaning. We not only have one
word or idea, but also a complexity of inter-relations.
But is this all that happened when you wrote the
two words? You may think so, but that is by no means the case. You
started out with an empty piece of paper intent on writing a poem.
The paper is no longer empty.
Is there nothing but words, some combination of
letters with meaning, in relationship with each other on an empty
sheet of paper? Certainly not! The fact that you placed one word
somewhere on the paper created a very definite relationship between
the word and your intent to write a poem. (You were not aware
perhaps that intent is the first word of your composition.) The form
has already begun to be dictated by the poetic intent.
From the beginning, your poem is limited, as all
combinations of words are limited by context or rules of certain
languages, also, as letters are limited to their sounds. Within
these confines is the complete creative message of the poet.
Everything you do is directly related to the poem. Your own process
of writing becomes an essential part of your composition. Its own
meaning, as a limitation, is related to the multi-meaning of your
words as they are presented in sequence, form, or spatially on the
page. The more the work progresses, you create sentences, use
images, impose form of rhyme or meter; the more the poem becomes
defined or qualified. It increasingly limits itself. Expansion,
paradoxically, becomes contraction. Expansion and contraction in a
simultaneous existence is the characteristic of space. Your poem has
actually been transformed into space.
Your two words carry multi-meanings.
They move in relation to each other.
They have tension in themselves.
They express active mutual forces.
This makes them into a living unit.
The position and sound of this unit bears a relation
to the process of creation.
This again creates tension of a higher order.
Visual and spiritual movements are simultaneously
expressed in these tensions.
They change the meaning of your poem as it defines
and embodies space.
Poems must be vital and active—a force-impelled word
space, presented as a spiritual and unified entity, with a life of
its own.
This entity must have a life of the spirit without
which no poem is possible—the life of a creative mind in its
sensitive relation to the outer world.
The poem is firmly established as an independent
object;
Outside of it is the outer world.
Inside of it, the world of the poet.