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Madness Prowls Poetical
Dustin Pickering
Biography
30.05.2021
DIOGEN pro culture magazine: "Please, read what International Fulbright scholar Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee says about Dustin Pickering poems in The Stone and the Square! After that check some of the poems. Worth reading."
By Dustin Pickering
11.11.2020
Mimesis and Mark Twain
In order for something to exist, there must be a space of Nothing for it to occupy. The placeholder must be Nothing to maintain its sanctity. Nothing is holy and pure. For a space to be Nothing, it must be contrasted with Something—that is, it must perform dialectically between positive and negative.
Such is language. The hypothesis concerning the development of recursive imagination as forerunner to language itself appeals to mimesis—a strong natural process in human culture.
Mimesis is the repetition of another’s act or speech. In other words, it is “copycat”; Mark Twain wrote that a cat touching a hot stove will naturally not do so again, and he advises the reader not to “copycat.” What is he suggesting about human nature? That we defy learning? Or perhaps that we apply our own judgment to learning? Do we need to touch the stove to know its heat?
Mimesis, the process of imitation and conveyance via our social nature, is a process of taking Something and duplicating it. Therefore I ask the reader does this suggest that in order for Existence to prevail logically, must there be an Essence?
Nothing exists to be filled with Something because a cup cannot remain empty if it is to fulfill its purpose. Having been created to hold liquid by human hands for human hands, the cup will not remain in its stationary field; rather, it will attend the flux crossing through it and around it.
Therefore, to “copycat” one must adapt a pattern and share it. Therefore learning is a process of imitation, whether conscious or unconscious.
Perhaps what Twain meant is we satisfy ourselves at the lode—instead of copycat, we risk independent inquiry and truth. The statement should not be taken literally. What can it offer my original thesis?
Action—whether intangible or tangible— does not exist within a Void; rather, it leaves the Void. Mimesis exist to shape form of formlessness. All act and thought must fill Nothingness, a Nothingness only it can fill. Individuality is purposeful and within consistent conscience.
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20.7.2020
I Too Dislike It
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
-Emily Dickinson
Poetry creates a semantic space for the reader. In approaching this space, if one meets with an authentic spirit one will know it.
A great deal of poetry is mindless drabble. The poet is missing from the poem. It is tripe and lacks the struggle and spiritual self that is everpresent in our reality.
Poetry creates a safe space for God—the meaning and foundation of Being—to live, breathe, and triumph. As Heidegger once stated, “The poets are in the vanguard of a changed conception of Being.”
Marianne Moore in her poem offers us distance from language, that spell beyond us, into the realm of the conceptual. After all, to be authentic in the poem one must be human as “we do not admire what we cannot understand.”
When we recognize a place for imagination, we see the “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”, the bugbears of the spirit that address us with certain apprehensions. The raising of the hair: of which nothing is more human.
In these desperate times, a renaissance is sure to build conceptions of our troubles and doubts. Facing the human soul, one on one, the light shines with darkness. The mystic dark night facing humanity will bring us to tears but in the meantime we wait for the harmony of soul and body.
The war between the spirit and the flesh is present most in poetry. No wonder Christ himself was a poet. Galatians 5:17 (ESV) reveals, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
It is ironic how our own desires can annihilate the heart of our desire. “Indeed, those who have believed and done righteous deeds will have gardens beneath which rivers flow that is a great attainment.” (Surah al-Buruj 85:11) What one does can certainly clash with what one truly desires. A poet is a name, and in a name is character, fate, a mode of being, a foundation.
What is it we react to in reading poetry? It is a meeting with one’s self in uncertain terms.
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28.06.2020
Seeking Justice, Not Absolutes
Contrary to popular belief, Freud was not hostile to religious experience. He writes in his essay On Narcissism, “…an anchorite of this kind, who ‘tries to eradicate every trace of sexual interest’ (but only in the popular sense of the word ‘sexual’), does not even necessarily display any pathogenic allocation of the libido. He may have diverted his sexual interest from human beings entirely, and yet may have sublimated it into a heightened interest in the divine, in nature, or in the animal kingdom, without his libido having undergone an introversion into his phantasies or a return to his ego.” His focus in criticism of religion seems to stem from a clinical perspective. The experience of God is not forbidden, but substitutes are an illusion.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in his oft quoted speech states with fervor:
“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them…”
This is from Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery” scene. Is it appropriate for this sudden expression of the death instinct to come insulated by religious intimation? Is Hamlet shunning Ophelia in an attempt to divert his sexual passions? Why does he place this line of demarcation between himself and his love?
“To be or not to be” also implies Aristotlean logic. In de Interpretatione Aristotle writes, “Universally, indeed, as has been said, one must treat ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’ as the subjects, and these others must be joined on ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’ to make affirmations and negations.” He further notes distinctions between “possible-not possible, etc” therefore offering that, logically speaking, something cannot both be and not be. However, in Buddhism there is an expostition of truth involving the famous liar’s paradox. Something can be both true and false as in the statement, “This statement is false.” The statement is true because it is self-referential. However, it creates a shady area where its reference is actually its opposite as well.
When it comes to states of being, however, can something truly be both possible and impossible? For instance, can there be an afterlife? We are not aware of one from positive experience, but it may exist. How could it be proven otherwise? The burden of proof lies with the skeptic. Life is composed of binaries: plus and minus, female and male, war and peace, destruction and creation. The contemporary world now juxtaposes such binaries and confounds them in such examples as transgenderism. In the words of Heraclitus who states war is the father of all things, “All things contain their opposites.” Even in depth psychology the male contains the feminine and the female, the masculine.
Perhaps there are gray areas that Western logic has not considered thoroughly. We are busy separating the chaff from the wheat in our moral distinctions. The politically correct engage in the most embarrassing irony when they court cultural relativism. They acknowledge the grayness of moral distinction, but still engage in a battle of absolutes. “All is permitted,” they may offer, “except tradition, except what we have come to know.” Revolutions are messy and apparently not entirely without their logic.
In this period of universal turmoil and uprising, it may be wise to consider the future we wish to establish. Human nature is a diverse, often delinquent and dismissively prejudiced thing. In itself, it is relativistic and people suit their relations to their environment—perhaps? Or perhaps, not? Who knows?
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24.5.2020
Literary Entropy
Voids occur when matter cools to the point of no longer being in motion. Combine this with the Big Rip. Dark matter wins against gravity by replicating itself (continuously adding to itself) as gravitational pull stretches it, straining energy from it. This exerts on the system, thinning its energy and creating numerous voids between fluid motions. This in turn creates continuous motion, rapid and moving back and forth in time. This process leads to the Big Crunch.
Since spacetime is infinite, this can occur on a micro scale at many regions of the grid.
Of course, as in all things in astrophysics I speculate. Let me continue to something more concrete, of this earth.
I believe it was Plato who first suggested banishing the artists, seeing poets as destructive with their language. My friend did his master’s thesis on the subject and concluded that Plato was being ironic. I think this is because in Ion Socrates describes the poet as a "winged and holy thing" and uses the metaphor of the lodestone to describe the phenomenon he later describes as a problem of representation— that art is derived from nature, and nature from the forms, so art is thrice removed from the forms. Perhaps he is being ironic in using a poetic device-- Socrates-- to first praise poets as divine, origins of the forms themselves, then later flipping the entire thing on its head to say the forms are misrepresented by the poets. This, in essence, is literary entropy. The bastardization argument that many uses to discredit poetry derived from this misunderstanding, I think. People have said about each innovator, including T.S. Eliot, that he was mishandling the English language - that poetry should stick to classical forms. Yet few noted at the time that Eliot employed structure and form in dramatically new ways, not entirely dismissing it. I think people are highly protective of language because subconsciously it is the driving force of our humanity. It is what binds us. I said many years ago-- late 90's-- that people would start using acronyms to communicate, and that it would lead to declining vocabulary and intelligence. It seems to be so now. I might say that Chinese uses logograms which may appear simple to those who use English, but their language has more characters than ours. Our alphabet is 26 characters, and the Chinese alphabet has thousands. So, from simple things come complex phenomenon. It may not be a bad thing, and poetry certainly isn't destroying culture. It is the root of culture which is why some minds are overprotective of it.
many thanks to Dru Watkins and Pearline Priscella for posting this question
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21.4.2020
The Shadow and the Other
Look at the moon. Why do the people accept fascism? Moral integrity through a strongarm…policing the foreign darkness.
We only know two lights. Within is a terrible dread. Existing is fragile and unassuming. Within me is hideous darkness, a shadow. I don’t know it but I hide. It digs deeper into me. I am a question with no answer.
Force me to believe. I cannot see my body. The space between my thoughts and my actions is like water, flowing in immensity. Against the night, a backdrop.
A man from another country. He is identified with the weakest spot. The night hovers, an imperturbable wreck. The moon is a ship. Thought is a circle. No one understands.
I am shamed. My eagles will not return. Archeology strains the past, lets the air sink into a cave. Holes are dreams. Made for remnants of loss.
Terror is the historical fragment buried within. We gaze into it, stranded fishermen with hooks rusted like nails. Dreams. The darkness is made for me. I am a falsehood approaching psychosis. Sleep. The heart knows its own failings. We don’t know what makes us eagles.
I am not a victim. I will tolerate my worst humanity. I am a hunchback. Proud but vacant eyed, I lift the stem of night as only a fiction could. There is nothing of me. I desire tyranny. It denies me.
Does the shadow eat the dark? I want to control it so I project its fear. The fear it arouses. Distance. I become an angel and tilt the world. A place of rest. What I call Otherness is me truly—my heart shaping the mirror, intertwined with intelligence. The sage will know why I hide from myself. The darkness is difficult to tame. Hideous beast. A frog that will be prince. You must expect your nightmare. Live within it for light is shallow. When you confront the dim force deepening, you will see what is truly foreign.
I can’t control it. I am inseparable from it. That is why I am afraid. The sun is peeking through but it doesn’t know me well.
I can’t face who I am or the accidents I contain because there is no control here. But someone must be accountable. It is a myth I create—I become an animal, naked: a violent masochist. If I assume responsibility I must face the shadow again.
This is why love is difficult.
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19.03.2020
"Learning to love by loving"
According to the Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, loneliness is “the distress that results from discrepancies between ideal and perceived social relationships.” This dimension to loneliness seems to parallel Kant’s noumenon and phenomenon. Kant distinguishes between the thing-in-itself and the object our senses perceive, noting that we cannot know the thing-in-itself. Is there knowledge beyond the senses and perception? What then can language define? Why is translation so tricky? Some words have compact, specific meanings that do not translate well into other languages. As Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” Language is a meaning specific construct of the human mind. It both binds people who share common requisites, and divides people with its layers of complexity. The mysterious Tower of Babel myth suggests that common language unifies people, but language also has the capacity to divide. The loneliness of language is a mysterious thing indeed.
In A Defense of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley writes that poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” This strange and powerful statement invokes the necessity of language both as a social engine and as a medium of creativity. Poets restore language. They create mythologies and beautiful mysteries with words. Anthony Storr notes in Solitude that the modern focus on interpersonal relationships may be the reason for failures in marriage. When we idealize something as the ultimate road to happiness, it disappoints us and we turn against it with bitterness. How then can language restore us to the thing-in-itself? Is it the strange mystical power of poetic sense to suggest and intimate rather than define categorically? What does the solitary mind of a great poet offer a world that does not hear? Stories survive, and in fact love itself is co-narrative. Schopenhauer wrote, “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.” What is the objective of the solitary mind? What freedom is sought in solitude? Scientific American recently suggested in “The Inconvenient Truth about Your ‘Authentic’ Self” that to feel authentic, a person may have to betray their nature. Our humanity is revealed in conformity to social standards. The article concludes, “However, until we learn more about whether being authentic reaps the same benefits as feeling authentic, we are left with a tough decision between loyalty to our true selves and conformity to social convention.”
This strikes a note concerning attentiveness. Aldous Huxley wrote, “There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.” Clearly love is in doing, in patience, in work. Lao Tzu seems to agree: “The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.” Knowledge plus will equals love. Love rules as a force rather than an emotion. Love turned against itself is the source of pain, deprivation, and evil. As C.S. Lewis notes, dark is light's absence. However, the sublimation of pain is humility-- when passion becomes concentrated into dense mass and settles by inward force. Words also follow this logic.
Poetry is love, abstractly speaking. However, a definition must do more than point and isolate; it must investigate and segregate. To define is scrutiny. How then do we define poetry? Is it restoration, is it ornament? Why is poetry not clearly defined? What differentiates poetry from prose, from rants, from fiction? It’s strangeness in beauty and thoughtful conceptualizing are what bestows the laurels. How does poetry astonish?
All the arts contain poetic device. Poetry is the mantle of the arts. Harmony of vision, beauty, and awe are poetry’s bread and water. It’s severe truth appeals to the loneliness of the human soul. As Rilke observed, “Works of Art are of an infinite loneliness.”
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03.03.2020
Its sun is too bright, excessively blinding
Antagonists to the Canon propose that timelessness in literature is merely collective invention propped by the guardians of western literature. However, I suggest timelessness is more a state that emerges from a poem’s centered referential and their relations to each other. For the poet Being is Becoming but, in the end, there is death. A poem must end though the process is never complete. Poetry is combustible energy in flames, entropy dodging its suite, released in the world before Possibility grafts it’s tenor on the empire of the Actual. The Canon is mere ashes if the modernists were right. Poetry perplexes by its resistance to initiate it into a caste or offer structured definition. It is the soul’s Athens in dispute with Jerusalem. It is substance casting shadow, attaining thought before thought materializes. Definitions are tautological descriptions. As tautological descriptions, they initiate hierarchies. Poetry confounds definitions by obfuscating the tensions of power. By restoring democracy of language, poetry offers tranquility. Recalled emotions are mental holographs. Light plays as a phantom.
The phantom is in your mind. The Shadow must reconcile with other psychic compartments. It does this by integrating Possibility and Actuality, aligning Time as a mesh of experiences divulged through fear and trembling. The poet is revolutionary opponent of the philosopher king. In his own kingdom, the philosopher king is usurped by the poet’s concealed revelation. Obscurity romanticizes truth and castigates weakness. Anarchy challenges the vanity of totalistic systemizing.
Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives.” In order to challenge his patient, Frankl asks why have they not committed suicide. This counterintuitive approach to therapy challenges the patient to reflect on their values and aspirations. In the process, the patient discovers their own will to meaning.
By challenging the patient, Frankl draws them closer to their core values and the purpose of their life. In doing so, the patient is grounded in what makes them authentic and is led to confront existential conflicts. As Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus, “A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world.”
Camus further writes, “A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape.” In this statement rests an irony of the absurd. The Absurd is exemplified poetically by Sisyphus who engages in a struggle to push a rock over a hill for eternity while the rock constantly returns to the bottom of the hill. The struggle is meaningless but necessary. Existence is in the state of becoming, thus usurping the divine privilege of Being. Life is chaotic and its temperament is volatile. In a state of flux, the world of Chance and Necessity intertwine to create a stable world of permanence.
The irony of this prospect is that it is self-annihilating under the guise of the quest for meaning. The state of humanity is sought in such an irony—we struggle for permanence through abstractions. The Ideal world is one of ideas and essences. Perhaps it is wise to suggest that the Canon is arbitrary and tyrannical in its presentation. Revolution is disposing of the Old Guard with its pursuits, and reinventing purpose. However, this is yet another hill for Sisyphus to climb. The irony of flux is its permanence. It is ever-present in our world of disgraced humanity.
“Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity,” Camus writes. Hence the never-ending nihilism of the changing guards. A totalistic system leaves no room for engagement.
Its sun is too bright, excessively blinding.
The phantom is in your mind. The Shadow must reconcile with other psychic compartments. It does this by integrating Possibility and Actuality, aligning Time as a mesh of experiences divulged through fear and trembling. The poet is revolutionary opponent of the philosopher king. In his own kingdom, the philosopher king is usurped by the poet’s concealed revelation. Obscurity romanticizes truth and castigates weakness. Anarchy challenges the vanity of totalistic systemizing.
Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives.” In order to challenge his patient, Frankl asks why have they not committed suicide. This counterintuitive approach to therapy challenges the patient to reflect on their values and aspirations. In the process, the patient discovers their own will to meaning.
By challenging the patient, Frankl draws them closer to their core values and the purpose of their life. In doing so, the patient is grounded in what makes them authentic and is led to confront existential conflicts. As Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus, “A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world.”
Camus further writes, “A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape.” In this statement rests an irony of the absurd. The Absurd is exemplified poetically by Sisyphus who engages in a struggle to push a rock over a hill for eternity while the rock constantly returns to the bottom of the hill. The struggle is meaningless but necessary. Existence is in the state of becoming, thus usurping the divine privilege of Being. Life is chaotic and its temperament is volatile. In a state of flux, the world of Chance and Necessity intertwine to create a stable world of permanence.
The irony of this prospect is that it is self-annihilating under the guise of the quest for meaning. The state of humanity is sought in such an irony—we struggle for permanence through abstractions. The Ideal world is one of ideas and essences. Perhaps it is wise to suggest that the Canon is arbitrary and tyrannical in its presentation. Revolution is disposing of the Old Guard with its pursuits, and reinventing purpose. However, this is yet another hill for Sisyphus to climb. The irony of flux is its permanence. It is ever-present in our world of disgraced humanity.
“Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity,” Camus writes. Hence the never-ending nihilism of the changing guards. A totalistic system leaves no room for engagement.
Its sun is too bright, excessively blinding.
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Design: Sabi / Autors & Sabahudin Hadžialić
Design LOGO - getrhythm as of 1.7.2018O
Design LOGO (2009 - 1.7.2018) - Stevo Basara.
Freelance gl. i odg. urednik od / Freelance Editor in chief as of 2009:
Sabahudin Hadžialić
All Rights Reserved. Publishers and owners: Sabahudin Hadžialić & Peter Tase
Whitefish Bay, WI, United States of America
Diogen pro kultura magazin (Online)
ISSN 2296-0929
Diogen pro kultura magazin (Print)
ISSN 2296-0937
Library of Congress USA / Biblioteka - Knjižnica Kongresa SAD
Contact Editorial board E-mail: [email protected];
Narudžbe/Order: http://www.diogenpro.com/diogen-all-in-one.html
Pošta/Mail BiH: Sabahudin Hadžialić, Grbavička 32, 71000 Sarajevo i/ili Dr. Wagner 18/II, 70230 Bugojno, Bosna i Hercegovina
Pošta/Mail USA: DIOGEN pro culture, 5023 NORTH BERKELEY BLVD. WHITEFISH BAY, WI, 53217, USA