Seeker or Jihadist ?

Arrived back in Providence last night, after 5 weeks in St. Paul.  It's been a long time.  First thing I did after removing luggage from car was to shovel enormous mountain of snow out of driveway so I could actually park.

This week Pres. Obama is hosting a big conference at the White House to discuss ways to counteract appeal & tactics of terrorism.  Obama sounded the right note when he stated that government alone cannot solve these problems, but must work with individuals, families & communities.  In fact, with respect to Islamic terrorism at least, this may be doubly true.  Government, at least in Western nations, is necessarily, and rightly, secular : yet perhaps the most profound approach to the problem of religious fundamentalism is an approach which is itself grounded in religious belief, in theology.

Why?  Because, from a religious perspective at least, the root of the problem of violent religious extremism is this : its perpetrators have lost, or have never found, God.

The lead propagandists of the ISIS phenomenon - cynically or fanatically, I'm not sure which - uphold a kind of caricature of God as an avenging judge.  Allah & Muhammad serve as dual totem, or mythical facade (like the warlike friezes on Aztec temples), for an essentially political will-to-power, which is characterized by oppression, by tyranny, by the domination, victimization, and enslavement of others.  The movement is akin in some ways to other totalitarian movements in history : it flourishes in the soil of a utopian, all-encompassing vision of unlimited power & glory on earth, and vindication in the afterlife.

This utopia of vengeance, violence and military glory is the essence of its seductive appeal to alienated young Muslims in both the Middle East and the West, and elsewhere in the world.  One of the ironies is that ISIS may in fact be driven by aggrieved former officers of Saddam Hussein's regime - a regime which was characterized by a kind of Stalinist reign-of-terror program, cloaked (in later years) in faux-Islamic propaganda.  If this is actually true, it would help explain a certain creepily parodic, surreal aspect to its gruesome demonstrations of public cruelty.  This is an enterprise which uses violence as a tactic - as provocation, symbol, propaganda - with the dehumanized coolness of a Stalin or Hitler.

It seems to me that one way to defeat ISIS is to offer a clear public counter-message with a theological basis.  Obviously this is something that Western governments are not in a position to do.  But it is something that individuals and faith communities - Jewish, Muslim, Christian - can do, in different ways and in different spheres, on their own.  They can offer to alienated, angry young men perhaps the one thing they need most : a true understanding of God.

The true Abrahamic image of God is that of a loving Creator, who loves all the marvels of a universe s/he has brought forth from nothing.  This God has made humankind in his/her image; God's desire is for human beings to live in the benign shade of the divine wisdom, goodness, lovingkindness, righteousness.  God wishes Man to draw near, by putting away the things that are not God, and recognizing the divine wholeness & goodness of all things.

One of the distinct historical endowments to the theological knowledge of God was offered right here in Providence, by the teachings and example of Roger Williams.  Williams called himself a "Seeker".  His imposed exile from the theocracy of colonial Boston hinged on the central emphasis of his preaching : that no government could impose belief by force.  "Enforced belief" represents an oxymoron, a theological contradiction in terms, since God's greatest gift to the human person is free will.  A person must choose wisdom and righteousness; they cannot be imposed by political means.  Faith and wisdom are spiritual gifts offered directly to the person by God.  Williams called this sense of things "soul liberty".

This spiritual orientation is obviously in direct opposition to the theocratic/propagandistic vision offered by ISIS and related groups.  For Williams, it is the primal need for God which drives Man to become a spiritual seeker.  Yet the God he finds is not a vengeful ruler or tyrannical authority : God is the opposite of all this.  "God is Love."  God is the root of human freedom and moral choice.  Williams' newfound political entity (the colony of Rhode Island) was chartered - for the first time in history - on universal religious tolerance, and the separation of church and state.

Maybe what's needed in the U.S. and Europe today are three-person teams of "Abrahamic" spiritual advisors.  A priest, a rabbi, an imam, working together with troubled youth, specifically to offer a different, more humane (& accurate) vision of God.  This might be the most direct way to counteract the totalitarian/utopian propaganda of violent political jihadism.

Jesus Thoughts (26) : fatherhood near & far

Is religion redundant?  Is the idea of God a terrible waste of human thought, time & energy?  A fantasy, a projection of weak-minded, feeble people - looking for Mommy or Daddy in the sky?

There is so much to do just to keep the world in half-decent working order... food to grow, tools to make, houses and machines to build and maintain, clothes to weave, illness to treat, crime & violence to subdue, poverty & injustice to resist, alleviate...

There are so many subtle, practical decisions to be made inside each active human association, each group out there devoted to carrying out some necessary task...

Where does religion come into play here, if it does at all?

For some reason as I was trying to get to sleep last night I was thinking about my father, some of his ordinary "manly" qualities : his work ethic, self-discipline, responsibility, probity, diligence, sobriety, prudence, devotion, humility, enterprise, stoicism.  His "salt of the earth" aspect... thinking of him, in his 80s, sitting at his little card table paying his bills, taking care of other people....happy simply to be able to keep his own free house in order, every day... (and of my mother, who sustained him through many dark hours...)

& thinking of the symbolic image of "the Father" - this activity of providential providing (Robert Frost's line comes to mind, "Provide, provide!").  This image of the sustainer, the solid Rock... one who has been given responsibilities to carry out, and who, in order to do so, must make a habit of self-denial.  The guardian, the manager, the caretaker... the servant... (there's another word I'm trying to think of in this regard - ? stewardship).

& the spiritual freedom of the one who acts and serves creatively, energetically, in these ways - freed from his or her own merely egotistical self-indulgences, by way of helping others...

So again, though : where do religion, God, Christianity come in here, if they do?  Aren't we talking about ordinary virtues, human qualities of character - making good with the cards one is dealt?

 What a hard question to answer!  And there is no simple answer.  On the one hand, many people are guided and sustained by a moral universe informed by their faith in God.  On the other hand, there is no doubt that secular and non-religious people can be just as loving and morally upright as any of their God-fearing neighbors.

I like what I think was Roger Williams' perspective on this questions.  I think he might assert two basic things about it.  First, he would say that God offers spiritual light, by which we can actually see : and what we are able to see are the manifold goodness and virtue in people everywhere - a whole world of varied tribes & faiths, yet sharing in this universal inheritance from God : the inherent propensity to love and do good.  Not that all are good : but that Mankind in general has been given the capability to be and do good.  Second, I think he would say that faith in God, and in Jesus Christ, is itself a gift of divine grace to the believer.  It is something extra - a dose of spiritual joy direct from God, direct from the kingdom of heaven.  Yes, life can be good on earth, for those who love and do well : but what Jesus offers is the "good news" : the message of everlasting life.  The essence of this playful extra is intellectual joy - is spiritual glee - is (in Roger's term) soul liberty.

"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."   "No one comes to the Father but by me."  So Jesus in the Gospels declares.  Does this represent merely an outmoded, superstructural ideology, mythology?  A psychological compensatory mechanism?  A false consciousness?

Ultimately your answer to these questions depends upon the roots of your worldview.  My own answer (today, anyway) draws again on my own understanding, ie. : 1) the cosmos we experience is inextricably bound up with mind and consciousness; 2) meaning and consciousness, in turn, are rooted in identity, in Personhood; 3) there is a substantial, cosmic, shared Personhood, of which our own experience is only partial, only a foretaste.  Such basic ideas, for me, provide a kind of intellectual ground for this further, more mysterious perspective : that our life on this planet is a drama, a "miracle play", a divine comedy.  It is the play of a Creator who works to restore this particular creation - by coming in person, and asking us to join him in one Spirit (children of God).

We are finally "at home" on earth, and in the universe, when we can hear this "still, small voice" - this speech which emerges from and penetrates through mankind as a whole - this "prophetic" sound of a loving Maker - this Logos, this order - hidden, manifest, living & dying in us and with us.

Jesus Thoughts (9) : Election affinities

As it's Election Day here in the U.S., I will endeavor to steer this imaginary conversation toward the galaxy of spiritual election.

Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible.  I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.

Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator.  As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man.  The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme.  And this feature lays the groundwork for :
 2) this God is a Savior.  This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land).  The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry).  Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal.  The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.

When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah).  The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.

I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation.  The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator.  We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.

One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God.  The barrier is beginning to be broken down.  But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority.  The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round.  Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos).  The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized.  The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.

Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God.  But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship.  The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities.  The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews.  What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State).  The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.

The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority.  It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand.  Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty."  Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.

I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).

Lanthanum 9.24

24
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors

Providence, ye forest of whispering hands.
Compassionate mutter-potter generations’
unknown grey purring multitudinous dove-
downy town (integrity of heartfelt hopelands).

At the eastern cliffside, under an arch
of Westerly granite, eyeing the interior,
facing the labyrinth... RW. Our double-
you, double-ewe. Cézanne might touch

yon roughened fatherly profile with horsehair
warmth of color, bare outcrop of vivid green;
who glimpsed a hopeful artichoke-yet-unseen.
Those who’d impose belief by force have never

known my companionable Lord... in the end
their faith’s in tyranny itself (lost to a God
of shepherds & of lambs). Thy rod, & thy
staff, they comfort me (not destroy : defend)

affectionate friend. & as chloride + sodium
blend into salt of earth – as +&- interfuse &
waltz in each golden atom – as those pillars
(Jachin, Boaz) stand (portals of Jerusalem,

brothers) so th’twin tablets of your Coke-in-
still’d Law unite (at ladder-foot of universal
scale). Nature’s donated golden rule of civil
commonweal (simply : fair, kind & true) folk

(Turk, Greek & Jew) can follow, understand;
& if they climb yet further, might take hold
of that steel cruciflex-anchor (as he foretold) –
bells’ pain-carved gate. Heights’ helping hand.

3.6.12

Poetry, Religion... Maximus

Poetry & religion, two different things... I think of religion as social-collective behavior - a cultural phenomenon made up of countless social orientations, commitments, actions. It is belief consolidated - substantiated in social formations : ethical traditions. This is obviously not poetry. Poetry is the verbal expression of the artistic imagination (or simply, the imagination). There is no sanction or requirement for the vagaries & dreams of free imagination.

Poetry (some poetry) might be closer to theology, though. I think of theology as intellectual reflection upon (& maybe insight into) the "givens" of religious tradition. There's a range - let's call it "vision" - where such endeavors can overlap.

In the modern era, religion is often represented as irrational, oppressive, & silly. I suppose modernity could even be defined as "the critique - & mockery - of religion." Novels & various discourses since the Enlightenment abound in satires on Medieval ritual, dogma, superstition, & the general moeurs of churchgoing folk. Certainly much of the critique was (& is) indeed liberating & enlightening; but the secular ideological-political formations which then sought to replace religion resulted in the vast desolations & conflicts of the 20th-century. So who gets the last laugh, so to speak (aside from the Devil...)?

Our local hero, Roger Williams, was an avatar of a different kind of cultural equilibrium between sacred & secular. By advocating tolerance of all faiths, liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, and the separation of civil and religious Authority, Williams set the stage for the Enlightenment, and for the balance of secular government & religious freedom as we know it today. Yet Williams' Puritan innovations had deeper roots in the cultural development of the West. Even medieval Catholicism recognized that peace & order depended on harmony between the "two swords" - the two Powers of Church and State, Church & Empire. The authority of the Church was an ethical counterbalance to the power of the King : they were never fused into one. This balance of the two had a scriptural basis in the New Testament - in Jesus' command, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, & to God what is God's". The apostle Paul, in his letters, took up this theme, when he described how God's Providence works through all things, including the State & its ministers, "for our good" (an argument often used to justify passivity & conformity in the face of State-sponsored evil : but not necessarily or entirely false, in spite of this.) It was this conception of Providence working through all things, Christian & non-Christian, sacred & secular, which informed Williams' political vision.

And one could trace this tradition back much further. It's possible to think of Judaism as a religion which is a theological reflection & critique - a re-working, or overturning - of Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion. The God of the Hebrews - the primal & universal Creator of all things, who allies himself personally, not with the rulers of mighty nations, the immortal god-kings atop their ziggurats & pyramids, but with humble shepherds & slaves. This God does not merely issue obscure demands (though He does issue demands) - but comes down to dicker & argue with his adopted people. & the main aim of this Hebrew God is to provide liberation from oppressors, & from human wrong-doing in general. So we can see the historical consequence of this basic stance of Biblical religion : a theological challenge is offered to oppressive rule. A line is drawn between sacred & secular. The authority of the divine is set up in opposition to, rather than conjunction with, the secular or theocratic power of nations. Thus the seeds of individual conscience - the ethical demand of a divine & infinite universality, above and beyond any earthly power - were planted, long ago.

Recurrently in my poetry (esp. in Lanthanum) the figure of "Maximus" shows up. This could be taken as an allusion to Charles Olson's epic persona of the same name, but I'm referring to another Maximus : Maximus the Confessor, a Byzantine theologian. This Maximus was enmeshed in controversies over the Trinity and the nature of Christ's Person, with which Orthodoxy, centered in Constantinople, was engaged for centuries. A profound & creative thinker, Maximus synthesized Greek philosophy & Christian faith, to produce an affirmation of the Orthodox sense of the union of divine & human Persons. That the universal Godhead would manifest on earth as a particular human person was a mystery, a conundrum & a scandal from the very beginning - a scandal involving first of all the splitting apart of Judaism and Christianity, & then, within Christianity itself, at least a thousand years of polemics over its exact meaning (& of course, those debates have not yet concluded).


But poetry per se is not so formalized (logical) or realistic (descriptive) as theology claims to be. Poetry, as an (artistic) end in itself, is to some extent free from the claims of realism and denotative meaning. It's more concerned with modelling or representing "possible" realities : and in doing so, poetry is able to express deeper, more elusive, less systematic, more subtle layers of sense, feeling & experience. These "free, unsponsored" dimensions of psychic & emotional life themselves reflect back on the formal, "official" records of history, & dogmas of religion, & assertions of ideology, the oppressive superstitions of hide-bound culture. & that "reflecting back" is the substance of poetry's immemorial radicalism : the prophet's challenge to arrogant priesthoods, the poet's rebuke to overweening state authorities, the critique of "realism" offered by the imagination.

But protest and politics aside... I see a sort of harmonic affinity between theology and poetry, in the likeness between : 1) Maximus' synthesis of divine and human consciousness within the form of the Person - ie. the whole reality of experience is keyed to a human scale, and 2) the Petersburg/Acmeist poetic tradition of Gumilev, Akhmatova, Mandelstam - hewing to Mandelstam's idea of poetry as "domestic hellenism" : the humanizing, civilizing, & domesticating of life on earth with a "teleological (human) warmth." Both represent an architecture of existence based in confidence : a deep confidence in "Providence", in the eventual working-out of "faith, hope & charity" (history as Redemption).

A video of the April 23rd reading at Brown, with Anny Ballardini & Peter S. Thompson, is now on the web. You can view it here.

It's about 90 min. long. I open with a Shakespeare sonnet, in honor of his birthday (and because "Let me not to the meeting of true minds" made me think of the art of translation).

(& I know, I need to work on my delivery...)

Pondering (in the shower, on way to work, etc.) next week's events with A. Ballardini.

We'll be reading in libraries (RWU, John Hay). Yesterday visiting British poet John Cayley orchestrated a performance piece in my library, via linked computers, called "Impositions" - involved chanting, singing alphabetical algorithms - very unusual ambience for "the Rock"...

the poet in the ancient matrix of texts...

reminded me of the also-ancient, generative duel between the poet and writing, texts. (I've tried to deal with this before.) Poetry's roots in oral performance and personal presence set up a kind of rivalry with the more-distinct separation of speech & text represented by prose. cf. Whitman on/in Leaves of Grass : "this is no book... but a man". There must be a rhetorical term for this kind of exaggeration - certainly a paradox, anyway. Of course, it is, in fact, a book you are holding in your hand... but Whitman's statement - his persuasive, beguiling poem generally - plants a doubt in the reader's mind.

So I was thinking about this, and then about Pound's Cantos. Pound set himself as the heir to Whitman. With the "beak of his ego", as Olson put it, he attempted to bring old documents, old texts to life - by setting them in vivid, poetic juxtaposition. The poet setting the "beak" of his person within the dry nothingness & vast wastes of history & historiography - & in so doing, identifying himself with the lifegiving Osiris or Orpheus - bringing the millennial vision of springtime renewal into earthly history. This is how Pound set out to "re-do" the epic task of the epic poet, in the path of Homer & Dante.

& he saw his approach as specifically marshalling the special rhetorical powers of poetry, in order to challenge the displacement of the epic role in literature, from poetry to prose fiction & other forms of prose discourse.

So I was thinking about some of this this morning, in relation to the talks & readings I'll be giving with A. Ballardini. Back in the early 80s, I started to glom onto these special long history-documentary poems - Pound, Williams, Olson, David Jones, & others. They had an immediate appeal to someone like me, who has been avidly reading history since early childhood (I remember that big terrific Random House series for young people - the "We Were There" books, the history of science books - which I devoured when I was about ten or so).

& I started walking in that path, of the long history-epic poem. & now, due to Anny's translation/interpretation of In RI, I'm starting to think of these things in the context of translation. If poetry, in its rivalry with prose, is manifested under the sign of embodiment - of personal presence - how does this relate to translation, & specifically to In RI?

Just as there is more than one way of considering translation, there is more than one way of considering presence or embodiment. A. Ballardini provides an example of 2 types of translation, as I've noted previously - linguistic (English into Italian), and conceptual (text into interpretation - ie., her essay on the poem).

The Bible, correspondingly, offers at least two kinds of presence - both of them hovering near the sign of translation. In the King James version, Elijah, when he rides his burning chariot into the sky, is "translated" into heaven. Secondly, in the New Testament, there is the paradigmatic event of Pentecost, or Whitsuntide. Here, the ghostly presence of the Third Person of the Trinity is manifested by an explosion of translation - the famous "speaking in tongues", when the disciples from many nations saw flames flickering over each other's heads, and, though speaking in many languages, immediately understood each other. (This is a representation of the dual aspect of translation - linguistic & conceptual - fused together.)

We could say that this narrative of personal (or Personal, or supra-personal) presence - ordering and translating language into a new efficacy - is analogous to the role of poetry, in which personal presence manifests, vivifies and celebrates linguistic meaning.

So I was thinking of these things this morning, and of how A. Ballardini's attention and understanding of the text of my poem to some extent brings it to life; just as a poetry reading brings text to (celebratory) life.

In the context of In RI, we are talking about the epic tale of a "hero" (Roger Williams) who was, in many ways, both the product and the agent of translation. The new "counter-state" of Rhode Island, for which founding he was most responsible, was in a sense the outcome of a clash between the medieval & renaissance culture of autocratic state and enforced civil religion, on the one hand, and the radical, anarchic power of the newly-vernacularized Scripture on the other. When ordinary people could read the texts for themselves, forces of liberation were set in motion : forces which Williams, perhaps more effectively than anyone else, marshalled on behalf of the actualization of real political liberty. (p.s. some scholars have suggested that the term Williams used to identify RI as a "sanctuary state" - defining it as a "refuge" - might have been borrowed from an old report, in Italian - the first European description, by explorer Giovanni da Verrazano - of Narragansett Bay as a pleasant "refugio".)

So I was thinking about these things... and also about the title of the poem, In RI - which has a sort of double meaning. You see it in many medieval & renaissance paintings, as an inscription printed by the Romans over the crucified Jesus. Here is a counter-symbol, the polar opposite of that of Pentecost : an authoritative text inscribed over a dead body. At end end of her essay, A. Ballardini quotes an email I sent her in this regard :

"[The poem] is political. About founding a "counter-state", based on rights and popular sovereignty, which themselves in turn depend upon human empathy, fairness, openness, solidarity. Thus the title "In RI" sort of telescopes two things: an abuse of judicial language, and a special place (RI). By the abuse I mean the inscription 'IN RI' written by the Romans over Jesus' crucifixion. They had a procedure of writing the crimes of the condemned in this way, on the very instrument of execution. 'In RI' stood for 'king of the Jews', thus accusing Jesus of rebellion vs. the Roman state (actually a sort of stand-in for Barabbas). The political foundation of that "special place" (Rhode Island), through the agency of Williams, effects a sort of reversal (in world history) of the type of injustice represented by the inscription "In RI" (a mirror-image of the founding of Rome in Virgil's Aeneid...)."

So... anyway, I've been thinking about the role of poetry & the poet, in the context of a centuries-old literary predominance of prose. & how these varied elements of presence & translation - embodiment & ghostly transposition - are somehow activated by poetic performance...

Starting to prepare for Anny Ballardini visit & readings. (We'll also be reading at Brown, in the John Hay Library, on April 23rd, 3-5 pm).

Looking over In RI, which lengthy chronicle she translated, the whole thing. This visit has a lot of work & history behind it.

In RI is sort of an anomaly among my other poems. A prose-poetry amalgam. Something like WC Williams's Paterson (or the Bible). (A piece of it appeared in Apex of the M #4, way back when.)

The last epic poem which fulfilled the ancient generic expectations was Milton's Paradise Lost. Since then, prose fiction happened. Epics became "personal" (Wordsworth's Prelude). Pound set the template for the modernist experimental epic (The Cantos).

In RI is modelled on Pound, Williams, Olson, for the most part. However, in some ways it's more like a straightforward "epic chronicle". The state of Rhode Island is, curiously, a kind of city-state - founded by a bona fide "epic hero". Roger Williams was a city-founder in the Virgilian mode - courageous, magnanimous, visionary. His story of exile, struggle with authorities, relations with the Narragansetts & other tribes, travels, war, and state-founding radiates ancient epic values. In RI sort of balances aspects of epic, chronicle, and personal reminiscence & anecdote (the poet "sinking" or dissolving into local history & personal history together).

It's a palimpsest, a mish-mash. The story of Anny's translation of In RI into Italian (a language Milton introduced to his friend Williams, while RW was in London - in exchange for Williams teaching Milton a little Narragansett) combines the pre- and post-Gutenberg situation; that is, on the one hand, In RI reminds me of those old texts & compilations - rag-bags, incunabula - you find in early printed books; while on the other hand, this translation-collaboration was made possible by the internet.

I'm what they call a Person of the Book, I guess. Not only have I been a bookworm forever, & worked in a library for almost a quarter of a century : my own ponderings & writings are all caught up with metaphysics & religion & scripture. My life took a sharp & fateful turn when I read the Bible at age 19. I was baptized Episcopalian from infancy; at age 50 (old sinner by then) I started finally going back to church.

This is all prelude to saying that there can be people in the world like me who are not part of the global pious-moralist-fundamentalist-superstitious cultural pressure of our era.

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." What is faith? As I understand it, faith is an inner conviction (despite the lack of complete knowledge or information) that something is true. It's a prudent, considered hunch, a choice between possibilities rather than firm facts.

One's view of the substance of experience in its entirety can be focused by such faith-judgements - even if they are understood to be provisional, subject to change.

So my personal poetics or metaphysics or understanding of history or anthropology are all colored by these hunch-beliefs. There is no getting away from it. My artistic development has been shaped by the prior shaping of my worldview.

NONETHELESS. ALL THAT BEING SAID... the fact remains that I am an adopted Rhode Islander (there are two Gould Islands in Narragansett Bay) and a partisan of Roger Williams.

Williams had a concept he called "soul liberty". Which, as I understand it, refers to the free activity of the individual mind in search of grounds for those inner convictions understood as "faith". Williams, simply put, devoted his entire life to the defense of soul liberty. He understood that the inner union between a person and the divine had to be one of true conviction and free choice. Any manifestation of what he (& others) called "enforced religion" was a grotesque 3-pronged insult : an insult to the authentic substance of faith; an insult to intellectual freedom; and an insult to the peace of a (self-governed) community, made up of people holding to diverse beliefs.

This particular conviction of Williams was the historical origin of the separation of church and state as we know it; of the concept of religious tolerance as we know it; and of the oldest surviving secular state in the Western world - Rhode Island.

One of the key elements of Williams' philosophy was an idea related to the medieval concept of natural law (as a young man, Williams was a student-assistant to Edward Coke, the great English barrister, famed for his defense of Parliament and "ancient right" against the encroachments of the Crown). The idea is that humankind, as made in the image of God, displays the God-given, natural capacity to know right from wrong and to achieve self-governance in lawful, peaceful commonwealths. Williams, the friend of Narragansett chiefs, loved to harp on the idea that non-Christian nations (such as the Narragansetts) could be wiser, kinder, gentler, more civilized, more peaceful than many so-called "Christian" nations. (Of course, according to RW, such refined virtuous gentle & civilized pagans would sadly miss out on the Kingdom of God and eternal life, but that was an utterly separate issue.)

This history is part of the "epic theme" I dealt with in my sort of Olsonesque poem In RI. Written back in the early 90s.



(this post was inspired in part by Frederick Wiseman's documentary, shown on PBS last night, about the ordinary workings of the Idaho state legislature... a fine film! Reminded me of my time (back in the early 80s) as a VISTA volunteer, when I worked for community groups as a "legislative analyst" at the RI state house.)

I'm reading one of the best-written books I've ever read :

The Lion and the Throne : the Life & Times of Sir Edward Coke, 1552-1764

by Catherine Drinker Bowen (author also of Miracle At Philadelphia, about the Constitutional Convention)

Coke was the young Roger Williams' employer & mentor. Basically a master & saint of the Law (vs. tyranny). A key element of English legal tradition : right of accused to fair trial, no matter who, no matter what.

Here are some interesting Bowen quotes about writing.

& how did I get to this? Thanks to ol' Ez, whose Cantos extoll Coke as one of the wisest of men. Highly ironic, since Pound's whole temper & personality (violent, arrogant, irascible, contemptuous, brave, foolhardy) would have set him amongst those noblemen full of contumely whom Coke, time & again, excellent legal hound that he was, sent to the scaffold.

But don't lump me with the legionnaires of politic piety, or the latest hobgoblins of superstition & forced conformism. I'm in Providence. I'm with Roger Williams.

Going back to comments here of 3.18:

I wonder how the Biblical concept fire - as in, "you shall all be salted with fire"; "I baptize you with water; but one is coming who shall baptize you with spirit & with fire" - compares with the Romantic notion (Coleridge, Blake, maybe Yeats) of vision.

Roger Williams' parochial battles, late in life, with the Quakers & the followers of Anne Hutchinson. He advocated a kind of scriptural realism (Christ's work was a particular historical activity & event) vs. the dangers of spiritual solipsism (pride, vanity), which he believed were lurking in the Quaker's radical antinomian "inner light".

The imagination inhabits a borderland between subjective & objective.

In what way is faith dependent on imagination? A believer would say that faith proceeds from, is a gift from, the Holy Spirit. But there is a sort of co-operation between the mind/imagination and that "inspiration". The imagination as the vital activity of the mind - the "integration" of human capabilities ("personality").

Readings in Maximus (the other Maximus, the Byzantine theologian) - about the "divinisation" of mankind by means of the Spirit.

Maybe the outcome of the co-operation of Spirit & imagination is - fire.

& what is fire? Light, for one thing. The instantaneous recognition of something which represents both the limit and measure of ordinary time/space. That light of which (in the old-fashioned typological sense) physical light is the image.

Roger Williams:

"the essence or being of the immortal, invisible, infinite, eternal, omnipotent and omniscient, and wise, we know no more than a fly knows what a king is."

Still reading Perry Miller's Roger Williams. In tandem with this week's New Yorker article, about religious right's pressure on separation of church & state.

Roger would have had a lot to say about that. The aggressive proselytizing, which makes Christianity a cultural binding agent rather than a spiritual shriving & quest. A certain worldliness attaches itself to the million-dollar legal & ad-propaganda campaigns. (Then again, who in this world doesn't exude a certain worldliness? Not many.)

The absurd, tragicomic melodrama of relations between religious practices and the practices of society at large... Williams loved to use the "garden & wilderness" metaphor (the church is the garden, the wilderness is the world). This is a useful distinction, which goes back (you might say) even before Christ, to the rite of baptism - which is the sign of repentance, of turning from the ways of the world to the love of God, of recognizing oneself as a child of God before anything else.

There is always this temptation to impose one's landscape (the garden) on the world; to erase that difficult distinction; to create a kind of Christian-imperial fantasy-culture. Williams, on the other hand, loves to point out that the sign of the true Christian is the lamb : the persecuted, not the persecutor.

The power of rhetoric over free inquiry. The willingness to judge & condemn the opponent, the "enemy", in simplistic terms, ruthless castigations (practiced everywhere now, on every side, on every issue).

The first Roger Williams I knew about was the '60s pop musician. I played his fancy version of "Autumn Leaves" as a piano recital. (This was the sheet music:)

From the library window I can see the riverbank where Williams planted Providence.

(Sloop Providence, sailing upstream)

There's a sweetness & humanity in Williams' A Key Into the Language of America. The idea is to get people to learn Narragansett so they'll actually go be with them. & in the process discover the wild Indians are at least as kindly & "civilized" as, or more so than, the saintly English. & what that says about church government. See Perry Miller on this.

Williams, Blake, Yeats, Mandelstam.... scholars of the wheel of fire.

"Ye shall all be salted with fire. Salt is good; therefore have salt amongst yourselves, & be at peace with one another."

What does this mean, scholars?

According to Williams, throughout human history there was & will be only one true, real, authoritative social covenant established by God with Man, and that was through Moses; and that covenant was dissolved by the crucifixion & resurrection. [This, it should be understood, is not current standard Christian doctrine, which holds that the covenant has never been abrogated - but rather taken into a new dimension, a new step in the process of divine unfolding.]

Thus all human government - especially theocracy, perhaps - is error-prone, a blind muddling-along, & sometimes utter pretense, fraudulent. This from one credited with establishing the first civil state based on precepts of free speech & complete liberty of conscience.

(Then William Blackstone, ensconced with his moldy manuscripts on Study Hill, looks into his alchemical flask & asks... but how, in fact, was that 1st covenant established? Who laid the cornerstone behind Shakespeare's Head? Where is Atlantis, Hart Crane? The rest is silence.)