SENTIMENTAL NON-DUALITY

Disclaimer: I’ve come to the time and place where I just want to call things as I see them — neither poetry or prose, just “pensées.” I read Olson and admire his fiercely practiced skill to face facts, then take note of what he sees, remembers and reveals. His poetry is a mind laid as bare as a beach or any clearing in even the most crowded of midsts. I take comfort from, more than consultation with, his example. I just don’t have his genius of perception, his skill of observation, his power of coherence. I cannot elevate my discourse into points of origin the way he can. I accept a fate of didacticism, not dictation. I ask you to read what I send with no expectation of gradual or sudden skill improvement. Art is Perfect made Practice. Verse is Practice trying to make itself Perfect. These are just records of a life spent talking all the time. Even meditation has failed to shut me up or out.

In most cases these pandemic days, things come to mind, the products of indoor living. I freely admit to the cardinal Zen sin of “pushing arrows” rather than letting them just fly. I still take aim and see things as targets to be hit. Hence I can only hope for an occasional click of insight, a flash of wit, words worth making. But I can’t give up the habit. I can’t turn myself in to the Authority the way Olson and Spicer did. I know that’s what I ought to do. True poetry is an act of surrender. But it’s hard to put your hands up when you feel compelled to write things down. Their compulsion had increasingly little to do with writing.