While We Were Sleeping
September 22nd, 2006 by Richard CockrumA multitudinal muchness
Did I say muchness? I meant suchness
But suchness isn’t multitudinal. It’s attitudinal.
A bit of the soul peeping out between the scenes
Of the world that we have dreamed
As we lay awake in bed at night
Eyes lidded from the light
That bumbles in with the quiet rumble
Of streets travelled by girls and boys in
Their toys fleshed from the whims
Of wizards in Detroit, Korea, and Japan.
Wending where it would, the soul of man
Lays dreams to earth, clothes the suchness
That underlies with quiet mirth
The exuberance that gives us birth.
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September 23rd, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Hmm, I’m an…essentialist? as far as poetry is concerned, at least in two distinct aspects I’m thinking of right now. The first is, that every single word should count, that the word Has to be there and indeed Has to be that word or the poem would be less. An example of this might be converting your first two lines to
, oh and concreteness is wonderful as well. And oh, this particular poem is not bad, but it feels to me like a somewhat unfocused beginning of a poem.
A multitudinal muchness. Suchness?
or something like that, what is lost in doing that? if in fact some thought or feeling is lost, can it be regained in fewer words? More exact words? The second action I am thinking of is that the relationship of these words, there grammar and perhaps presentation is such that the sum of them is perhaps more than you could have imagined. I love ambiguousness, allegory, analogy and metaphor. The words I feel should relate strongly, and in a way that opens up many possibilities…perhaps I can be clearer about this if you’d like a conversation about it, but I need to eat now
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Thank you for taking the time to read and think about “While We Were Sleeping”, Summae. I hope you enjoyed your meal.:-) Sometimes I reply to comments quickly, at others, especially on the weekends, I respond very slowly because I’m out of the house from morning until late in the evening.
I agree with you on the first two lines of the poem. I like your version better. Each word should do its work. Where one will do, don’t use two.
I’m not really clear about what you are saying in your second point. I hear you saying that poetry is radiational, that a true poem can be read on several levels, some of which the original author may not be aware, I agree. A poem is a very dense form of the written word. If not, even if it has verse form, it may not be a poem. I’m not clear if you think this example meets that criteria or not.
Concreteness is something I’m working on. Much of what I write about is abstract, but the unconscious levels of our minds thinks concretely, with imagery taken from the senses. If you want to reach that level of the mind, you have to talk to it in forms it can understand. Since I have the visual artistic skills of a two year old, I work with words.