Musings from Yari Yari
On Poetry
It’s a wilful art of words defying expectations. It’s impulsive. It produces sumptuous feeling; enriched not by language structures (conceptualised rigidness and rules) but the deliberate abandonment of these. Or instead of being conceptualised (consciously) those structures become spiritualised in the stillness and composure. One is forced to “speak in tongues,” – if you like - at that silent, compelling command. Or perhaps possessed by the free language of spirit - I’ll call it “spiritised” language. And it doesn’t boundary or constrain but retrieves the limitlessness of creativity becoming a dancing art of ecstatic release. Bound spirits are freed. Stories aren’t told but “invoked.” This comes sometimes violently; a kind of intuiting violence that convulses the heart. It doesn’t concede modes of rationality but ruptures mind-fullness. I think it is produced in and from a kind of trance. For the mediation is imperative. It’s theatrical too; dramatizing and imagising everything. Inside the heart of bitter, beautiful or tormented experiences it selects the muse and moment for its expression. And it is impossible to refuse it just like drumbeat bounces head and tantalises body. It compels emotion; exorcising demons; magnetising deities of voices. Some erratic substance materialises – flailing lines of movement. You will know it by the place and mood wherein it takes or leaves you. The linear, like conceptual language is disrupted since it journeys too predictably. Feelings spin they do not strut from the boldness of imagination. The words arraying interrupted patterns are defiant in their wilfulness to delight and disturb. This “spinning” of feelings is an initiatory calling. It desires the muse to shape it somehow –and let it go. Or energise it into a living entity; freed from the wilderness of imagination but thrust into the substance of contending emotions. The calling is not a high or low, better or poor thing – for it refrains from borders that blight its power. It simply must be born; optimally from the soul tuned in purposeful contemplation. Timing – though not constraining – is precise. For it knows when to stir that soul. Pain and pleasures collide or maybe they are collaged in the shaping. There is a pervading ecstasy in the state of subconscious communication with the muse. Yet this ecstasy – or pleasure – is mirrored by the pain in releasing the spirit in the words. The contracting of structured language out of subconsciousness is a troubling feat and wonderment. So something palpably negotiated between muse and art manifests. One respects the other for without this neither exists. There might be sweet reluctance but the mediation brings a kind of empowering flightiness. By this, the muse delights in the madness permissible by the meddling spirit of their art. It does not aim to free nor constrain but perhaps to spark a discouraged soul. Emotional dalliances are the outcome. I mean – something seemingly secure is shaken. The rupture might aggrieve but something of it encourages action; this might be to dream new visions and believe therein. Fear takes a different place in consciousness - as the brevity of a gasp - for now something veritable has been released. Art and living merge. One enriches the other with awesome dependency; the muse must decide the order; recognise and accept the gift of thus being “mounted” (as it were) by this relentless, guiding spirit.
