Black Voice News Online - Presenting Poetic Ideas

Presenting Poetic Ideas

Thursday, 21 June 2007

Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.

All of our words originate from notions, ideas, imaginations, or thoughts concerning the relative Tangible plane (with matter as part of its coating) and from our direct or imaginative experiences with them. By being the home of all clear and precise descriptions, Concrete (IIIC) words do a good job of conveying a Poet's message with its two dominant features of Poetic Thinking-Imagination and Synthesis. Poets know that the cultivation of both starts by preparing the "seed" inside each concrete poetic word so that the embryo message, the tone and intent of the message, and the meaning or definition contained inside the "seed" can burst out of its material world coating box to run freely and harmoniously within the Poet's purpose. The embryo message can come from musical notes, from formulae (like mathematics), from meanings symbolized by just about anything (e.g. art), from imagination, or from assessing objects. The substance of the embryo message is a crystallized thought, an idea, or a notion (the earliest stage of a developing idea and therefore a vague, partially formed image). The best chance of these becoming "free" derives from "heart" feelings expressed in words which paint mental pictures. For example, the term "wedding ring" calls to mind a mental picture which symbolizes "bonding" and by-passes the need to use a " thousand words" or at least an entire long sentence to describe it accurately and clearly.

Whereas Concrete words for the Partially Bounded Plane (IIIB) are clumsy and, at best, present only hazy mental pictures, for the Unbounded Tangible (IIIA) and the Intangible (Sublime) (II) Planes, they are completely incompetent. To by-pass these problems, poets describe a lofty atmosphere in which their pertinent meanings can flower and fruit by resorting to the symbolic figure of speech language of Lofty words, of metaphors (equating unlike things), and of similes (a figure of speech using "like" or "as") to make their poetic message concise, clear, effective (what works) and efficient (done quickly).

For the Immaterial Plane (I)--the plane of "the heavens"-- it is impossible describe or even to speak of its attributes or qualities. Anything said about these is against the truth because the Immaterial is an "Unknowable" plane of existence. People who claim otherwise are deceptive. So, when attempting to convey meaning in lofty realms, what do skillful poets do when faced with the problem of reaching into a word storehouse and only being able to pull out inadequate or incompetent words? Here, the poets' dilemma is to discover ways to fashion "common ground" in lofty (beautiful) realms to convey transcendent experiences. An answer comes from recalling the objective that Poets have for their audience, readers, and themselves alike. That objective is the enlargement of the consciousness of beauty by presenting a unified idea of reality. Perhaps the process is like this. When human senses react to real or imagined phenomena, sights, smells, taste, touch, and sounds, they are somehow translated from those realms of perception into that of the brain/mind interface to be molded accordingly. Within the mind they become psychic events capable of cultivation. Merely cultivating and expressing the keen experience of the sense of Beauty tends to expand consciousness while shifting its lower plane of seeing things as separate into a higher plane of awareness in which the keynote is Unity. The degree of elevation towards loftiness one can reach is directly proportional to the intensity and duration of the stimulus as well as to the degree of that person's "Pure Heart" and "Pure" Feelings.

website: www.jablifeskills.com

Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.