the poet does not invent
I. Just a Reminder That Airplanes are Demonic
From, uh, a very reliable source:
The air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of our race who, having fallen from heaven, endeavors with the other evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to keep souls from the truth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying to follow it.
I actually love the sense of geography that medieval writers had regarding the supernatural. They saw as explicit what we've all happily deemed implicit (or nonexistent), but which if existent is surely salient. Thus: explicit is more accurate? Either way, we can all agree that TSA is from the devil.
II. From "Canzone," by W.H. Auden
Drift, Autumn, drift; fall, colours, where you will:
Bald melancholia minces through the world.
Regret, cold oceans, the lymphatic will
Caught in reflection on the right to will:
While violent dogs excite their dying day
To bacchic fury; snarl, though, as they will,
Their teeth are not a triumph for the will
But utter hesitation. What we love
Ourselves for is our power not to love,
To shrink to nothing or explode at will,
To ruin and remember that we know
What ruins and hyaenas cannot know.
(No one knew more forms and schemes, or performed them better, than Auden.)
III. Czelaw Milosz on Reception
Almost every poet I've read speaks of inspiration with sincerity. They're talking about reception, of course, about gifts near-transcendental. Something comes from somewhere else (they insist). Milosz says it precisely:
I see an inner logic linking my early poems written at age twenty to my latest volume, This, which appeared in its original Polish version in 2000 and is included in this book. It is, however, a kind of logic that does not agree with ratiocinations. I strongly believe in the passivity of a poet, who receives every poem as a gift from his daimonion or, if you prefer, his Muse. He should be humble enough not to ascribe what is received to his own virtues.
IV. Life, For Example, Is a Given
A poem by Katha Pollitt feels related to the idea of reception, to me, if only because being-in-the-world (bear with me!) is fundamentally something that happens to us.
...you are born into meaning
like a serf into a ditch—
this is your horizon:
a huddle of huts, smoke lifting
into a bloody sunset. So
culture is a kind of nature
(The whole poem is quite short, and worth reading.)
V. Opinion
My opinion is: Please, for the love of God, also read the entirety of this insane poem by W.H. Auden. (A poem? Aren't poems the vegetables of literature?) Not this one! This one's all about Cocaine Lil:
Did you ever hear about Cocaine Lil?
She lived in Cocaine town on Cocaine hill,
She had a cocaine dog and a cocaine cat,
They fought all night with a cocaine rat. [...]
Big gold chariots on the Milky Way,
Snakes and elephants silver and gray.
Oh the cocaine blues they make me sad,
Oh the cocaine blues make me feel bad. [...]
Along in the morning about half past three
They were all lit up like a Christmas tree;
Lil got home and started for bed,
Took another sniff and it knocked her dead.
The Scarface of couplets, basically. All the best to you and yours.