Something Important to Remember

t’s not just what’s being said that matters; it’s how it’s being said. I could say Walter has a really big head, but that would be quickly forgotten. But if I said Walter had a head as big as a Texas sky, that detail would be less likely to be forgotten. This lesson should be taught first along with the lesson that people have to be reminded of common things to keep them in the forefront of their minds. Teaching the Classics helps to reinforce the basics of civil human life. Also, writing about the Classics is a must, because it helps to teach students how to communicate ideas and learn how to write.

Why Poetry Must Become More Philosophical

Since the 2006 publication of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, there has been a massively renewed interest in whether God exists, whether humans have free will, whether there is an afterlife, and whether artificial intelligence is attainable any time soon. This influx of interest, this sudden fire of controversy, has meant a staggering success for Youtube as well as an onslaught of atheist/theist debates. It has made people rich and has created a kind of thinking republic of the world. One would think poetry would have cashed in on this, but little seems to have changed.

While it is true that isolated poems like John Hennessy's "Convenience Store Aquinas," as published in the March 2015 issue of Poetry Magazine, have begun to address concerns over whether the business of living is an accident, a happy coincidence, a mistake, an emergent property of God, or something there is no word for, I have yet to read more than one or two contemporary poems of vital significance that comment on what any of this existence forebodes. Yes, all poems are about just that, but few of them tackle the issue in a way that directly confronts the kinds of dialogues playing out all over the world. None of them debates the issue relentlessly and exactly enough. None contends for more than consolation, at least not to my satisfaction. Is Richard Dawkins right to suggest the universe ultimately has only blind, pitiless indifference to offer us? What I find to be most curious is that $200,000,000.00 can't make a difference.* It has finally been proven that all the money in the world can't make poetry relevant. 

What does this say about human nature? About poetry?

I'm not suggesting poetry that moves me to weeping or laughing is anything less than divine. I'm not implying consolation is not great in its own terms. I'm saying that lyric poetry is bigger than any of those things. In my poem "Such a Bright Future," I begin by saying, "If freedom means anything / it means one thing. Be free from want / then do what you want." Those lines are mere attempts. Lyric poetry is more than just emotion. Narrative poetry is more than just story. I want to see more eternal poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," but I also want to see more poems like "The Man With The Blue Guitar."

Thinking for its own sake is thinking for the sake of the world as well. One promising paradigm might be Metamodernism. Though I'm not sure terms need to be defined that neatly. Whatever the terms and conditions of poetry, they need not imitate nature. There is no need to believe poetry is subject to entropy. There is no need to see gravity as the opposite of levity, for that matter. Some of the best poetry is that in which sanity is called into question: either the sanity of the poet, the sanity of the reader, or the very idea of sanity altogether. Reconciling opposites—which is one of the major themes of Metamodernism—is important. So is drawing a fine line between two related things. Poetry is a kind of logic. "I'll write my story / so deep in myself / no one will hear it / in my voice."

The end of thinking may be either tragedy or joy. One may realize in his thinking a zenith or a nadir—but at least he will know where he stands. This is usually the case. Thinking clarifies one's life, but it can only be done within a context. It can only be managed within a need. If there is no need there is no need to think. Poets must bring to mind the need that never alters its course, the star which all the other planets revolve around. How do I know what I need? If I'm hungry I need food. If I'm thirsty I need water. Poetry cannot live without the one desire we all have in our natural state, which neither dissipates nor dissolves. Remind the reader of that, but do it in a way that accesses the soul by means of the brain, just as Emily Dickinson did.

*This is the amount of money the Poetry Foundation originally acquired from the Ruth Lily Endowment.

*Originally published in Eclectica. 

Some of my poems may be found in my book, Late Alabama, which is available through Amazon. 

From a Letter to a Friend

I'm doing well. My poetry is doing better than ever before. I've recently had five poems accepted for publication--one more in Eclectica, two in Antigonish Review, and two in The Michigan City Review of Books. Anyway, I recently submitted a chapbook to the Black Lawrence Press Chapbook Contest. Publishing chapbooks and full-length books is not my goal. My goal is to get as many poems published in magazines and anthologies as possible. I think I will be getting paid by the Antigonish Review. Getting paid is also good. Maybe I will get paid ten dollars for the two poems. It will be nice to finally cash those checks. These are all fine magazines, but Antigonish Review is especially good. They are located in Nova Scotia. I think this will be the first time I have been published outside the United States. They have an exceptional website. I just heard about The Michigan City Review of Books recently. I like their selection of poems. They are a very small operation. And, of course, I have been published in Eclectica many times. You can search for some more of my poems and one of my essays in their back issues. Just look up my name. 

My first book of poems, Late Alabama, is available through Amazon. 

Peace,

Joel

A Poem

Friendships

All the friendships I make
I make with myself first.  My body grows
tense with handshakes.  Every man
I come to know makes knowing him
the hardest thing imaginable,
the deepest excavation, the dirtiest
dig.  The rope that leads out of me
does not lead away from me. 
Anyone who can climb me does.
Strangers watch me acquaint
myself with music, each of my fingers
touching the sky when I touch
my chest.  Women sit around me
and look at their toes.  I am beauty
that only becomes.  What’s missing
is the knowledge of having lived,
that old root cellar of reserved
gestures.  I wake in the morning
and run.  My punishment consists
of miles, the hard luck of laughter,
an enemy’s insolence, wilderness
in a child’s voice, the spot
on the map where everyone comes
to cry.

*Previously published in The Florida Review.

Passive and Active Thinking: Reasons for Reading Poetry

The best thing a person can do, as far as his position in life is concerned, is learn a skill or develop an innate talent. This is why I don't talk about IQ anymore. It merely indicates potential. However, it is necessary to say that every child should learn two languages beginning at a very early age, and every child should learn to play music beginning at the age of five or six. I wish my parents had taught me these skills.

If a certain shape follows from other shapes on an IQ test question, which note follows from a bar of music? There are good notes, bad notes, and perfect notes. Logic is not merely linguistic. There's logic in math, in music, and in visual art.  And logic, as a system of patterns, is the master of ideas. All ideas follow logic. Certain things are right and others wrong. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug."--Mark Twain --If you don't know the difference between a right word and an almost right word you will have a harder time conceptualizing and collating the world of ideas, since ideas are encapsulated primarily in the Logos.

So why read poetry? Because, as I always tell people, the greatest thoughts are passive thoughts--thoughts that strike one like a sudden bolt, epiphanies, thoughts that occur to us. It occurs to me I should wash my car. Plenty of naturalists had seen the beaks of finches, but in a sudden moment the idea of natural selection occurred to Darwin by thinking of different kinds of beaks. Darwin could not have seen natural selection simply by making himself see it. He didn't know what he was looking for. The faculty of passive thinking can be increased and perfected so that more great thoughts occur to us. Not everyone who makes great observations reads poetry, but if you can learn to read and digest poetry, it will help you read and digest prose, and it will cause you to be generally more observant. So, I would say one way of increasing passive thinking ability is by reading poetry. When you read a poem all sorts of images flood in. Poems contain ideas that are presented in bite-sized form. This is not as much the case with prose, where every aspect of the idea is fleshed out in the way that the author wants you to think about it. With poetry you get to think about it your own way.

“Thus, though we cannot make our sun 

Stand still, yet we will make him run.”—Andrew Marvell, from "To His Coy Mistress" 

We cannot keep from crashing into the wall, but we can control our speed. This is a compromise between free will and determinism. Who has an original thought today? I'm not supposed to say secrets are encrypted into the lines of poems, but I must say it, because it is high time we poets confess to it. Anyone who’s read Emily Dickinson knows this. But that is a great reason to read poetry. It's not supposed to be the reason we read. We are supposed to turn to poetry in times of struggle and grief, but there's more than one reason for reading. In fact, there are as many reasons as there are people.

Why do I say reading poetry can increase passive thinking capability? Because it has done so in my life. Because many of the things I notice in the world are either part of the contents of poems or settle and sift through me in the same way a poem would--wandering, but with a certain end that the thoughts move toward. We cannot anticipate when a great insight will come, but roses grow best in a garden.

It is also good to write poetry, or to at least attempt it. Different people go about this in different ways. You can learn to write sonnets. You can imitate the Greats. But whatever you do, you will always be looking for the right words and the right lines. By gaining a feel for this organism, you will be learning a logic like music. The more forms of logic you learn, the greater your passive thinking ability. Again, some people have a great knack for this, others not so much. But it is possible to change the brain, and the best way to do that is to learn logical systems, because they lie at the base of idea formations.

Finally, we must consider that the world is losing almost all of its craft thinking, which is simply the kind of thinking that goes into producing a work of art. Most things are done in a formulaic way today. We sort and stack all day in a way that is tedious and articulates no knowledge of an artisan verity. The modern mind is no longer dexterous. It no longer shapes unique worlds. It merely repeats actions by route. A factory job comes to mind, but today formula thinking, with its humdrum repetitions, permeates every part of society. This creates a mind that is blind to alternate possibilities. Little wonder that the fine arts have suffered so tremendously by the steep rise in formula thinking. IQ is a quick answer to what intelligence is. A slower answer—a more patient and nuanced answer—is skill and skill development. Be good at one thing.   

Joel Fry

Formula vs. Craft: The Root of America’s Problem

It is often noted that American society is vacuous, and that our culture is poisoning the whole world, with the possible exception of Bhutan. This is all true, of course. Often people cite pornography and advertising as being the root problem. Sometimes they cite Hollywood. But as Nietzsche notes in Twilight of The Idols, people often confuse the effect with the cause.

Very few people today know how to fly fish. Certainly, fly fishing never enters many people’s minds. Very few people are genuine Jazz musicians. Very few are poets. We have almost no audience. These activities, these arts, involve craft. Craft involves a long apprenticeship in which one learns how to create beauty (or vibrant ugliness). Once the artist has learned the craft, he makes the art his own. He creates something new and unique, something to enrich the souls of those who wish to partake and drink deeply of the art.

Formula, on the other hand, is something quite different. Formula merely involves following rules to get a set result. Repairing a computer requires a formula to perform and complete, as does working on an assembly line. Humanities professors used to be able to teach what they wanted within reason, but increasingly their occupations are becoming formulaic. They are told what to emphasize and how to emphasize it. Mostly this has been done by slow process.

Everywhere we go craft is being stripped out of the minds of people and being replaced by formula. The result is a Republican Party who sees a jackass as a savior and a puritanical Democratic Party that wants to use political correctness to de-platform speakers they don’t like and limit freedom of speech by shaming opponents into submission. This total lack of common sense is due to formulaic thinking, which sees nothing but its own interest.

The world hasn’t always been like this. During the Renaissance artists like Michelangelo were sponsored not by a state bureaucracy, but by individuals and by the church. During Shakespeare’s day there were people known as patrons who didn’t have to work within the tentacles of labyrinthian university systems to fund poets and playwrights whose work they enjoyed. Those days are long gone. The odd thing is that no one questions the vanishing.

I have often said that the inculcation of poetry allows readers and writers to notice things they wouldn’t otherwise notice. I can’t be sure whether that’s right. But maybe it could keep us from destroying our neighbors with single-minded greed and blind self-concern. Privilege, as it’s discussed, is supposedly a problem for us. Is privilege a problem in India? Does anyone care? Police brutality is supposedly a problem for us. Does it exist in Indonesia? Does anyone care?

When the state is expected to solve all problems, when that is the formula for success, individuals give up agency. But as we see with the riots in France, the state can’t solve the Climate Change Crisis. Formula thinking leads to stagnation when people are faced with nuanced problems that require novel solutions. Novel solutions require craft thinking. But craft is mostly the domain of the Humanities, which have been stifled by political correctness. 

If you can’t see anything but the task in front of you—if completing that task is just like repairing a transmission rather than trimming a Bonsai tree—you will be trained and inculcated into seeing no new solutions. Children should be really taught music in schools—not just the appreciation, but how to play it. They should be taught to read slowly, instead of devouring books. They should be taught to read a variety of books, but also how to read key books and the classics.

Intelligence is more than IQ. Intelligence is also perspective. Once, when I was 24-years-old I took a Sociology of Law class at the University of Alabama. On the first day of class the professor went on and on about how superior the Japanese school system was than the American school system. This was an old tenured professor. He knew his sociological data.

I went home that day and thought about the problem. Then the thought occurred to me--plenty of Japanese students come to the United States from Japan to attend American schools. If our schools are really inferior why would they pay three times as much to go to school here and learn a second language? What's the logic in that?

I told the professor some of this during the next meeting of class. He just smiled and said, "Not so much after 9/11." This was in 2004. See—he had the data on paper, and I'm sure his IQ was higher than mine, but he lacked perspective. Doubtless, if I were to talk to more people from other cultures they would be able to open my eyes to new realities as well, because they would have been inculcated differently than me.

This is why I propose that perspective be considered a type of intelligence. It is why diversity (to a certain extent) really is a strength--because different races and cultures have vastly different ways of viewing the world. However, if everyone in the world is following a model of formulaic thinking—that is, thinking without craft, we are doomed to get formulaic answers wherever we turn. Two heads are better than one, but that is exponentially diminished by formulaic thinking. 

To all this I would add that while there are definite rules for how to keep the Dharma, each Buddhist monk and nun has his or her own practice, which means there are as many ways of attaining nirvana as there are monks and nuns. This isn’t intelligence?

Joel Fry  

My First Book

This is a link to my first book of poems. I wrote it over the course of about nineteen years. Read the blurb, which was written by Dr. Harry Moore. It is a richly-imagined book full of wisdom. It will take you on adventures to places you have never been. Command the mystery; read the book. https://www.amazon.com/Late-Alabama-Poems-Joel-Fry/dp/1977220886