Dropping into the gap between what we say and what we really
mean.
Eleven September
Sunshine, eleven,
Lost eleven,
Dark cloud, darkness
Despair
Terrible sounds
Death
Loss
Shock
Sorrow
Discovered strength
Light
Wisdom
Light
Compassion
Hope
Letting go
More light.
Jeli Lala
Lost for words
In between the everyday, the mundane, and the moments of inspiration,
of heightened awareness, even of disaster, of connection to
our greater selves, is poetry. Poetry can in a few words say
more than twelve sheets of closely written prose.
Loved by lovers, used on greeting cards for every important
life event from birth to death, poetry is a way of slipping
into the gap between what the Balinese call ‘niskala’
and ‘sekala’ – the ‘seen’ and
‘unseen’. We can say the unsayable, express something
somehow in-between life and death.
Many people have a rather negative experience of poetry –
maybe you had it thrust down your throat at school? Or just
never really got into it? I invite you then, on this journey
of discovery to something that can be very beautiful, pleasurable,
and thought provoking. As well as being a very useful means
of contacting a deep part of ourselves and giving expression
to it. Here we go, then!
Crossing The Bar
“ Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to
sea…” I love the imagery of ‘Crossing The
Bar’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson. In this famous poem, written
in about 1850, Tennyson contrasts a lone journey at sea, rowing
his sailboat ‘across the bar’, (a sand-bar, maybe?)
with the lone journey of life - and death. Sounds melancholic,
yet actually I find it very inspiring: He makes his journey
willingly, with no expectations, just rowing, just open to
what may happen. The poem goes on: “Twilight and evening
bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness
of farewell, When I embark; ” Finally he concludes:
“…I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have
crossed the bar. “
‘ The Journey Of The Magi’ by TS Eliot is another
favourite of mine. It is a mystical tale of the journey of
the three wise men to find the baby Jesus. Yet it manages
somehow to also be a universal tale of a quest.
The story opens with the Magi or traveller narrating: “A
cold coming we had of it – just the worst time of the
year for a journey, and such a long journey - the ways deep
and the weather sharp - the very dead of winter.” That
always makes me feel ‘Christmassy’ and think of
snows! I especially like ‘the ways deep’ –
sounds just like the hard, frozen rutted ground of an English
Winter. He goes on to describe the difficult journey through
foreign lands “the night-fires going out, and the lack
of shelters, / And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
/ And the villages dirty, and charging high prices…”
The words just tumble out, freely and lyrically.
Eventually they arrive, tired and weary. The narrator’s
tone is quite despondent actually – almost like he got
much more from his journey than he bargained for. He remembers:
‘There was a birth, certainly. Of that we had evidence
and no doubt. I had seen birth and death before, but had thought
they were different; this birth was hard and bitter agony
for us, like death, our death.‘ The birth is ‘hard
and bitter agony’ – for him! He is being transformed
by the wonder of his experience. And he says the birth is
‘like death, our death’ suggesting that the person
he was before is dead – changed forever.
Then he talks about how he no longer belongs in his former
land ‘we returned to our places, these Kingdoms, but
no longer at ease here in the old dispensation, with an alien
people, clutching their gods.” (Perhaps Eliot himself
was feeling a bit lost at this time – he wrote this
poem during a busy year in which he became British rather
than American and also was confirmed as a Christian.)
The journey has irrevocably changed him – there can
be no going back. He ends ‘I should be glad of another
death…’ The poem has the same sense of resignation
and willing subjugation to a higher power as ‘Crossing
The Bar’ above. Somehow, in few words, he says a lot
about how the traveller feels individually, yet places it
in a universal context.
Eliot managed to combine being a poet with working as a bank
clerk (this endears him to me as I did something similar myself
for many years!). At least, he didn’t follow the normal
‘lilac coloured’ life of a poet – he had
some practical means to keep body and soul together!
The same could not be said for some of the other ‘romantic’
poets – Tennyson spent most of his life feeling he had
to struggle for money – he was in the ‘poor arm’
of a rich family, their problems compounded by epilepsy and
alcohol. He invested the money he did have in his favourite
doctor, who wanted to produce woodcarvings from steam driven
engines (really!). This went bust, leaving Tennyson without
enough money to marry his sweetheart, so he broke off their
engagement. (Or, was this just a commitment failure on his
part, perhaps?)
Idiosyncratically, Tennyson composed many of his poems in
his head, as he was extremely myopic and found it hard to
juggle monacle and pen in order to write them down. So his
best friends would sometimes scribble down his verses in order
to capture them for posterity (luckily for us!) as he declaimed
them in public from memory. Many of his verses were tragic
– in typical poet’s form he was fired by misery.
The ‘Fall of Arthur’ (a tale of the death of King
Arthur) – was apparently inspired by the untimely death
of one of the poet’s closest friends at only twenty-two
years old.
Tennyson wrote quite a lot of great medieval style poetry
(this era was much loved by the Victorian poets – poets
in Queen Victoria’s time in England -of which he was
one). Another wonderful and famous example of this genre is
the ‘Lady of Shalott’ – forbidden love affair
with Lancelot ends in maiden floating in watery doom. It’s
very evocative – the towers of Camelot etc. I suppose
I like this kind of poetry because the characters dare to
follow their hearts. They are doing what they really want
to do, however unwise that may seem. And yes, they get their
come uppance at times, but somehow that seems preferable to
me than sitting at home wondering ‘what might have been!
The poet Gabriel Dante Rossetti was just as bad when it came
to idiosyncratic shennanigans. From a wealthy Italian migrant
family, settled in London, he always seemed to be ‘one
relationship behind’ in his love angles. He took ages
to get round to marrying his first sweetheart, Lizzie Siddal
(and in any case, by then, had already fallen in love with
another, Jane…) Then Lizzie died after only twenty months
of marriage and so Rossetti got involved in a kind of love
triangle with Jane (who by then, was married to Rossetti’s
friend, William Morris!) Gosh! It’s a wonder he found
time to write poetry! Both women were a great inspiration
for Rossetti’s paintings (Proserpine, Pandora…)
and his prose, and he idealised them in swan necked, kinky
dark haired, doe eyed, pale skinned loveliness.
remember a verse to Jane, his later mistress (or, possibly,
feeling strapped for cash) he had the poems dug up from Lizzie’s
grave by a friend, disinfected them, and then published them!
Not very romantic!
Being a Romantic myself (I’m finally coming to terms
with it!) I also like the savage desolation of ‘La Belle
Dame Sans Merci’ by John Keats. Like the elegant Japanese
‘Haiku’ poetry (of which more later), it plots
events against the changing seasons: ‘Oh what can ail
thee, knight-at-arms, so haggard and so woebegone; The squirrel’s
granary is full, and the harvest’s done’. Lovely
use of language. This wandering bard ‘met a lady on
the meads, so beautiful, a faery’s child…’
and she sweeps him away on his horse to her ‘elfin grot’
(cave) where they enjoy an afternoon of passion ‘and,
(he whispers huskily) ‘sure, in language strange, she
said ‘I love thee, true’.
Then he falls asleep and dreams an horrific appocalyptic
dream warning him against his lover, then: ‘I woke to
find me here alone on the bare hills side.’ I suppose
I like this poem because it describes a chance meeting, two
people swept away on the wings of passion. Also a sense of
destiny involved. I’m not quite sure why I DO like it,
actually – it’s kind of depressing, even - doomed!
I suppose it describes the type of events which are at the
core of the Romantic’s Soul! Or, an awakening.
Although there is a prevalent image of the poet as ‘pale
and wan’, whisping around limply, dressed in lavender,
lying on beds dabbing kerchief to mouth, dying tragically
of consumption (tuberculosis), I do want to add that this
image is actually not an essential prerequisite for poets.
In fact, it is more of a ‘common misconception’.
It is entirely possible to write poetry, or do any creative
thing, without leading an angst ridden life. We do not have
to take on the louche excesses of the ‘typical’
poet in order to enjoy, and write, poetry! (Although I suppose
we can if we choose to!)
The Beat Goes On
The beat poets were similar to the Romantics in a way –
they were chaotic reprobates who often got into trouble. Or:
they were free thinkers who needed to escape the confines
of society in order to express themselves creatively. Same
thing, really. The movement started in the nineteen fifties,
with Jack Kerouac barrelling across America on buses with
his friend. They didn’t really have a destination –
they just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, nowhere. Looking
for something, not knowing what it was. Feeling free, staying
in cheap hotels, having adventures, drinking too much, running
out of money, encountering surprising and unlikely people.
All of which they wrote about in surprising, fresh, ‘stream
of consciousness’ poetry (they coined the term). ‘The
resulting book ‘On The Road’ by Kerouac is a classic.
Stream of Consciousness
‘ Stream of consciousness’ means just recording
whatever information comes streaming through your mind. Anyone
can do it. If you’d like to try, just get yourself a
writing book and pen, sit quietly, and write whatever comes
into your head. Don’t try to direct the writing. If
what comes to mind is ‘I don’t know what to write’,
then write that. It might be a shopping list, ‘must
remember to pick up the laundry’, mixed up with flashes
of prose, impressions, feelings…
Don’t censor it, just write it all down and let it
be as it is. This kind of writing (especially if done regularly,
say, every morning) can be a source of tremendous insights,
as well as sometimes engendering poems, prose, songs and art.
It is also a great way to get in touch with your intuition
or ‘psychic’ side. (Julia Cameron’s book,
The Vein Of Gold, is a great resource for this kind of work,
if you’d like to know more.)
‘ Howl’ is another famous example of ‘stream
of consciousness’ – by Allan Ginsberg, it’s
a long poem, a chaotic mixture of what the poet could see
around him combined with partly formed impressions, inchoate
yearnings, encounters, friends, anger and more. For this reason,
the beats are sometimes called ‘kitchen sink’
poets - just recording what was going on for them at the time.
There were ‘kitchen sink’ painters in London at
about the same time too who did the same thing, but in paint.
Here’s a taste of ‘Howl’: “I saw
the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets
at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning
for the ancient heavenly…” and so it goes on!
Beat Goes On
The ‘Beat Generation’ or ‘Beatniks’
were the precursors to the ‘Hippies’ – they
experimented with drugs, alcohol, sex, and freedom, in a way
that wasn’t the norm for American teenagers at the time
(who were mostly in that ‘preppy’ frame of pink
puffy dresses, the senior prom, popcorn, drive in movies,
dancing to the jukebox and college).
Kerouac dropped out of college. His work was discovered by
Laurence Ferlingetti, who promoted and published it, then
founded the City Lights bookshop in San Francisco. Still there
today, it’s a modern store, comfortable to browse in
and perhaps ahead of its time – bit like the ‘reading
café’ style bookstores that are opening in Europe
now. Ferlinghetti championed the beat poets and gave them
a platform by publishing their books, and creating performance
venues for them. This was very ‘avant garde’ at
the time, so much so in fact that ‘Howl’ was banned
for a long time and there were various court cases about it.
Rock is Today’s Poetry
Pop or rock songs are today’s poetry, and any CD songsheet
by a good artist will often turn up beautiful and clever uses
of language to enjoy.
I like this, by Paul Simon, from ‘Spirit Voices’
on his ‘Rhythm Of The Saints’ CD: ‘My hands
were numb / My feet were lead / I drank a cup of herbal brew
/ Then the sweetness in the air / Combined with the lightness
in my head / And I heard the jungle breathing in the bamboo.’
Very atmospheric. Suddenly he is at one with nature. He’s
talking about a visit to a spirit healer (known as a ‘Balian’,
in Bali). I was surprised to find a photo of a Balinese ceremony
in a jungle setting on the back cover of the CD!
I also love the line: ‘How long / has this been going
on?’ It’s such a simple phrase (the main line
from a 60’s pop song) yet it describes a whole situation,
so completely! The woman has obviously been unfaithful, and
the man is asking when the affair started, in a rather hackneyed
and oft-repeated phrase… A common enough story, yet
I love the way it tells you everything, so obliquely and yet,
succinctly.
I suppose, like good art, good poetry must engage the reader
– must push you to use your intellect, to get involved,
relate to it somehow. Like, if I paint a picture of blue flowers
in a blue vase and call it ‘Blue Flowers In A Blue Vase’,
you aren’t going to have to work very hard when you
look at it, are you? You may not even want to look at it for
very long. Yet, if I call it ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Thoughts
of You’ for example, you are more likely to look at
it for longer, ponder about it long enough to get to appreciate
it a bit more perhaps, and even, to begin to have a relationship
with it yourself.
(This is in great contrast to what I call ‘literary
fast food’ – the kind of written stuff you just
gurge through and then wonder what you’ve eaten –
and why you’ve eaten it! Ugh!)
If you like any of the poems I’ve quoted, I encourage
you to look up the full version on the internet. They are
well worth reading in full. Bit more on poetry in the next
issue.
Some websites you might like to try are:
www.toyomasu.com/Haiku/ - good Haiku site with ancient and
modern examples. www.americantanka.com - a site with thought-provoking
and relevant modern tanka. http://eserver.org/poetry/ - (no
‘www’ on this one!) a good poetry site for ‘starters’
- not too big a selection, but good stuff. The opening Maya
Angelou poem is brilliant and inspired. Brought a tear to
my eye!
NEXT ISSUE: Poetry - dropping into the gap between what we
say and what we really mean. Part II – The Beats, Haiku,
and the Earth Movers…
Jeli Lala created the ‘Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery
and Art’ at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud, with her
husband, Putu S. She has studied yoga and many other spiritual
practices for more than ten years. She writes “As a
life-long artist, I’ve been exploring my inner world
since I was a child. In this column, I will share some of
my personal experiences and spiritual methods – hopefully,
you’ll find this interesting, and maybe it will give
some ideas for your own journey”.
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
