I read a post this morning on Montevidayo–“MY HEART IS A BOMB! (Some thoughts about Romanticism)”–by Johannes Göransson, and it got me thinking about the constitution of Romanticism, and about my “I.” See an excerpt below and go here to read the entire post.
“Romanticism still seems to play such a large part in how we view poetry: there’s something inherently Romantic about poetry, something we have to discipline because it is also of questionable morality. There was that movie the other year about Keats: how his pale body was covered in butterflies drawn by the smell of rotten fruit (butterflies which I then lured to my room for The Sugar Book).”
The struggle of poetry is one of identity. As with human being. If the point of view zooms out enough, everything seems to fit. But the closer you look, the more distinctions become apparent. So what’s the problem, right? If you want to appear the same, then back up. If you want to seem unique (even to yourself), then close in. This is a simple dilemma.
But aesthetic identity is forever wrangled in historical identity, social identity, and moral identity (which is usually referred to as the personal, or personal identity). And thus the insidious, incessant questions come to be: Who am I? (What am I?) How did I become this? (Is it my fault?) Where do I fit in? (Do I want to?) Am I good? (any good?) Am I bad? (all bad?)
Most of the work involved in answering the questions above is the work of outward looking. Perhaps the “I” is primarily a mechanism of looking out (at nature, they would say).
The poet Paul White was coaching me on how to sell poetry on the street a few years ago, and this is what he told me:
“If you want to sell poetry on the street, you have to tell them something about them, not something about you [I].”
At the time, I heard this statement as an echo from our graduate school workshops. And perhaps it was, most of us concentrating to drown the Romantic, or Confessional, urges which brought us to the table in the first place (Confessionalism being inherently Romantic because of the psychological prerequisite that one mythologize the inward-gazing self). We thanked our sensationalized selves for the ride and tried to ditch them at the elevator door. But to our befuddlement we could not so easily wrest away the authority which had been granted to them, by our selves.
A Romantic Conceit: This and That
My youngest son’s first consistent word usage was “this.” Usually “this” was articulated as one of two questions and combined with a gesture of reaching outward:
1) This? (Do you want this?) He offers the object in hand.
2) This? (May I have this?) He requests the object with an open, empty hand.
I have frequently remarked that “this” (instead of “that”) being his first consistent word usage either illustrates good (inclusive) parenting, or my son’s innate sense of entitlement, as if he sees “this” as also “that,” or “this” in the framework of the innocent, Capitalistic fantasy of all “that” belonging to “this,” from the beginning.
In any case, once “this” becomes a statement by the child about the child a transition has occurred, and a key distinction has been illustrated. William Blake (the grandfather of Romanticism, John Milton being its godfather, and Mary Shelley being its exemplar) depicted this distinction as innocence disposed to experience in his Songs of Innocence and Experience. The lore surrounding this publication, however, tells us that the original consisted of two handmade and self-illustrated volumes in limited editions. We are told that Blake refused to sell the Songs of Experience to anybody who had not experienced the Songs of Innocence. We are to believe that Blake wanted to appear to be so absorbed by the ideal that he could not help but exemplify its conceit in the publication process, first by isolating the two states into separate volumes, and then by instituting the claim that innocence necessarily precedes experience. Whatever Blake believed about the distinction, and however strongly (or softly) he believed it, the aesthetic choices he made turned out to be a brilliant marketing strategy. I don’t know what Blake actually believed. I only know what he made. When somebody tells me something, I only know they told something.
After all that, this deserves an example of the experienced version of “this.” I have two I want to give you, and then I will let you go.
The first example was an utterance by a poet, PW, from years ago in a bar: “This is getting drunk.” I won’t disgrace the line by unpacking it for you. I know you see the point.
The second example comes from a Jimi Hendrix song, “Are You Experienced [by anyone]?” The essential question from the song is, “Have you ever been experienced?” And the answer is, “I have [am being experienced by you right now].” In order to be experienced by someone else, “this” must be not only present in the society of “that,” but must also be apparently so.
As an old philosopher told me, “This arises. That becomes.” All that is required for poetry to resolve itself is a single line of poetry. The poet may absolve itself of the “I” with every given line, with every outward gesture.
CP
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