Where Are The Poets, Part I
geoffrey August 8th, 2008
Where are the poets? Where are the mentors of this age that take us deep, rip us apart, and heal us with those transitional words needed for an unsettled time? How are we to operate successfully in a world where those that speak with universal tongues are left silenced or relegated to a softer side of history?
We seek and sift through the dust waiting for those connections to form between us and generate those golden threads that break the gloomy dusk of lives being built without the strength, the vision – we seek those who speak in tightly packed moments of passion and vivacity.
Why is language lost, and not truly used as that art, that truth? I was emboldened one day when I came across a treasure trove nestled deep within nytimes.com – a multimedia presentation called “Three Poems” – it linked to an article entitled “Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry”.
As I listened and viewed the pictures, completely blown away by the power and substance of their expressions – these high-school students – my heart was uplifted and I truly felt the fire of words that truly galvanize. After reading the article and listening to the three poems presented, I thought of four things: 1) a Baha’i perspective on art and poetry, 2) the power of words to affect, 3) the immense potential of youth and junior youth, and 4) how the native or indigenous populations of a country have such a role to play in the eventual upliftment of their home land.
A poet named Roger White, who was a Bahá’í and has since passed away, once wrote:
Art has a message for us. It says: care, grow, develop, adapt, overcome, nurture, protect, foster, cherish. It says; your reality is spiritual. It says achieve your full humanness. It invites us to laugh, reflect, cry, strive, persevere. It says rejoice! Above all, it says to us: be! We cannot turn our backs on art. Art heals.
Artists…will be a vital force in preventing inflexibility in our [world] community. They will be a source of rejuvenation. They will serve as a bulwark against fundamentalism, stagnation, and administrative sterility. Artists call us away from formulas, caution us against the fake, and accustom us to un-predictability—that trait which so characterizes life. They validate our senses. They link us to our own history. They clothe and give expression to our dreams and aspirations. They teach us impatience with stasis. They aid us to befriend our private experiences and heed our unexamined mechanistic responses to the world…Art conveys information about ourselves and our universe that can be found nowhere else.
Poetry stirs deeply within us because of the nature of its composition. It has the ability to transcend, and can be used as that vehicle for the expression of the divine. It has been recorded that often times, though also due to the cultural conditions of the time, when early believers in the Baha’i Faith wished to express their devotion to its Founder, Baha’u'llah, they would write to him in a poetic fashion. It is true also that the Baha’i Faith first originated in Persia, and the Persian language is in itself quite poetic.
Here is an excerpt from a response from Baha’u'llah:
Every word of thy poetry is indeed like unto a mirror in which the evidences of the devotion and love thou cherishest for God and His chosen ones are reflected.
(Baha’u'llah, Tablets of Baha’u'llah, p. 175)
Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u'llah, also says in relation to art:
All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.
(Lady Blomfield, “The Chosen Highway”, p. 167)
A Baha’i perspective on art could be read to mean that art is a release of self. It is a cleansing. It is a way of expressing a sense of openness to reach out and touch some portion of Truth. As Baha’u'llah says in the example above, that individual’s poetry was enough to show Him how strong his sense of devotion was, and how ardently he loved his new found Faith. The key, as noted by Abdu’l-Baha, is that the sole aim of Art must be, if it is to be called Art, to show ‘forth the praise of God”. And this concept is in itself a topic worth exploring (which I may be able to touch upon in the next post).
But before anything else, make sure you listen to “Three Poems”.
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- Arts & Culture , Baha'i Concepts , Inspiration
- Comments(4)
Today the voice of the world are the voices of the youth. Unlike the generations of the immediate past, they are unafraid and explore, often unguided and undisciplined, the depths of their perceptions of life around them. They do not want others to speak for them, they wish to hear the sounds of their own voices, right or wrong, pure or defiled, victim or victor, and the cacophony is rising in intensity.
In Three Poems, the power of one becomes more empowered by the wisdom of the ancestors. The shepherd has asked for and been given the power to control the sheep.
Baha’u'llah has released the potentialities of the alphabet and we have the bounty of realizing the words.
As a writer who has passed the half century mark (that makes me seem quite old, doesn’t it? but it just means that I’ve seen alot) I’d like to assert that quest for self understanding and realisation doesn’t end in one’s youth. I, too, don’t want anyone else to speak for me – and take full responsibility for whatever choices I end up making because I know they are made through pure intent.
From my experience, the best, most realistic and moving writing (esp. poetry) comes from the uncensored self – which, of course, is usually then moulded, rearranged, embellished or polished several times afterwards to make sure there’s beauty, power and clarity.
Art, to me, is whatever we use to express our light and dark, the colours and complexities of our soul.
The voice of the poet is as silent as a lion’s roar. We speak through trumpets and megaphones… yet the masses are deaf to the perceived ramblings of emotional individuals. When one speaks with the spirit the listener must hear with his (spirit) or else the words are naught but ’syllables and sounds’ not meaning much to the desired receptacle.
Poets are shouting from mountain tops, but the ears are submerged in the chaos of reality t.v. and club music. But we will keep on shouting.
Dear Liz, Karen and Carl, thank you so much for your thoughts and comments. Personally, I’ve always felt a pull and attraction to poetry or spoken words that seeks to combine, authentically, the voices of the past with those of the present and future. In Three Poems, that is what I felt more than anything else. Liz, you are right on point with that: “empowered by the wisdom of the ancestors”. And Karen I agree completely, poetry swings one on a pendulum that is ever rising as we move through this world. Poetry is that intensive inward search manifested.
Carl, keep on roaring.