Open Moment

 

Over by the door shell-suited layabouts
Catcalled the swanky clientele;
Strange signals from flirty fashionistas
In far out drag, voyeuristic, futuristic,
It was like some film noir melodrama
Glittering lights and a roving spot
She took the stage with a sequined flourish
All hot hair, sparkly nails and
Up line coffee charisma.
Displaced neo-nihilist blues warped into
A screw-loose spectacular
Whammo! Bammo! Thank You Mambo!
Number, infrequent and moderate violence,
PG Certificate unsuitable for children.
Radical chicanery:
The lippy bootylicious beautician
With a smokey eye look,
And a string bikini,
Nostalgic for the age of silent cinema
That open moment when there were no
Swinging soundtracks, Psych or Garage,
Enjoyed a foxy line in booze and bop.
While a hotel receptionist at a corner table
Pouted longingly at her wild child escort
A phantom picked up earlier on the Metro,
A sleazy crooner in a stained tuxedo
Well, yes, actually!
Ignoring her obligatory dirt-poor upbringing
The orchestra swung into another cool strip-o-rama
Jazz head chronic turbo hand-held number
On easy-roll locking castors.
And another thing
The Divine Touch Unisex Salon
Is where it’s at baby. On-trend?
Ask our experts.

This is a frozen waste of emotional destitution
Dark, sordid backstreets,
Pulses of rain,
Cheesy nights out,
Crosswords and puzzles off the menu,
Kaleidoscopic montage of interior shots
Mirrors, chrome, lost time
Half asleep in the early hours
Resplendent in a box-pleat maxi
And peep toe heels
She re-writes the art of the real as
An Open Moment.
Thank you.

illus: A Solitary Dream, 2002

Arcanum Paradoxa

Ostensibly the forerunner of modern chemistry and usually considered a ‘pseudo-science’ Alchemy first emerged in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. At roughly the same time, a form of Alchemy associated with medicinal aspects of Taoism emerged in China.
The general objective of Alchemy was the creation, through transmutation, of some type of marvellous, quintessential substance, often considered a miraculous elixir, a panacea, for curing all ills, bestowing immortality or spiritual enlightenment.
Known as the art of Khemeia, Alchemy had its theoretical basis in metallurgy, Zoroastrianism, Stoic pantheism and Aristotle’s Four Element theory of matter. The first significant exponent of Alchemy was Bolos ‘Democritus’ of Mendes (circa 200BC) whose treatise, Physika et Mystica, dealt with dyeing and colouring, the creation of gems, silver, and the transmutation of metals, specifically the transmutation of lead or iron, into gold. One tenet of alchemical doctrine was that the prime matter (prima materia) or raw material of transmutation comprised the least valued, most disregarded, of all the elements. Common or ‘despised’ material, both ‘contemptible and precious’, formed the basis of The Work, the opus alchymicum.

There is a secret stone, hidden in a deep well, worthless and rejected, concealed in dung and filth... (Johann Daniel Mylius: Philosophia Reformata, 1622)

Khemeia did not flourish during the Roman era, as various Emperors, notably Diocletian, feared that the transmutation of base metals into gold would undermine economic stability. A notable exponent of the Work in later times was the mystic Zosimos of Panopolis (Akhmim) whose Hermetic Encyclopaedia (a 28 volume compilation of existing and original texts) is dated 300CE. However, as Khemeia was considered ‘pagan learning’, much ancient knowledge of the art was lost during the Christian riots in Alexandria in 400CE.
The Arabs revived interest in Khemeia in the seventh century, as part of a general fascination for Greek science and thought. In the Arabic language the word ‘Khemeia’ became ‘al-kimiya’ and it was this form of the word that became the European term ‘alchemy’.
To define Alchemy as a pseudo-scientific forerunner of modern, scientific chemistry is an oversimplification. From the earliest times Khemeia comprised a resonant, symbolic framework for imaginative speculation. This speculative aspect of the art soon overshadowed its ‘practical’ metallurgical objectives, leading to a well-deserved aura of obscurantism and uncertain interpretation.
In the period between Bolos and Zosimos, Holmyard observes, ‘alchemical speculation ran riot’ as diverse practitioners created a complex body of doctrine, ascribing symbolic meanings to the sequence of metallic colour changes, incorporating all contemporary strands of speculative thought into alchemical theory, including Egyptian magic, Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Babylonian astrology, Christian theology and pagan mythology.
Works of Khemeia were invariably couched in an ‘enigmatical and allusive language’ and often ascribed to semi-legendary or mythical authors such as Hermes Trismegistus, Plato, Moses, Miriam (the legendary sister of Moses), Agathodaimon, Theophrastus, Ostanes, Cleopatra and the goddess Isis. Thus, almost any contemporary, metaphysical speculation was assimilated into eclectic alchemical thinking: many sayings, stories and myths were endowed with alchemical interpretation, or incorporated into the Hermetic worldview.
By the Byzantine era Stephanos of Alexandria, a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who flourished during the reign of the Emperor Herakleios I (610-641), had come to view Khemeia as primarily a ‘mental process’. Following F. Sherwood Taylor, E. J. Holmyard quotes Stephanos’ denigration of practical alchemy as a "burden of weariness", observing that by this time (the seventh century) alchemy had ‘very largely become a theme for rhetorical, poetical and religious compositions, and the mere physical transmutation of base metals into gold was used as symbol for man’s regeneration and transformation to a nobler and more spiritual state’.
So, well before the rise of medieval European alchemy, the tendency to regard The Work as an internalised, psychic process or phenomenon was established. Khemeia could easily be dissociated from physical chemistry and metallurgy and defined as some kind of ‘spiritual’ discipline. Now, the objective was not the transmutation of external phenomena, but the transmutation of the adept himself, and this transformative process was expressed in an obscure, introspective, mythic vocabulary of symbols and complex terminology.
In modern times a fascination with alchemy as an internalised, mental process has been continued by the Surrealists and the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). During the inter-war years and roughly around the same time both Jung and the Surrealists claimed Alchemy as significant in their respective investigations:

…let us not lose sight of the fact that the idea of Surrealism aims quite simply at the total recovery of our psychic force by a means which is nothing other than the dizzying descent into ourselves, the systematic illumination of hidden places and the progressive darkening of other places, the perpetual excursion into the midst of forbidden territory… (Second Manifesto of Surrealism, 1930)

Jung and the Surrealists (particularly Andre Breton and Max Ernst) were operating against the backdrop of a revival of interest in alchemical symbolism in France and Germany. The works of Zosimos had been translated into French and published by Berthelot and Ruelle in 1887-1888. Herbert Silberer, who proposed a connection between alchemical thought and modern psychology, had anticipated Jung’s researches.
In France the Surrealists were influenced the alchemical novels of Francois Jolivet-Castelot and the esoteric writings of Fulcanelli and Grillot de Givry. De Givry drew attention to the hermetic influences at work in the art of painters like Bosch, Bruegel, Cranach and Baldung. Initially Andre Breton saw alchemical thought as a way of re-investing poetic language with a sense of mystery: this soon evolved into a more ambitious proposition, the deployment of an ‘alchemy of language’ to transform consciousness, and by transforming consciousness, change life.
On the other hand Jung’s interest in alchemy was triggered by an ancient Taoist text called The Secret of the Golden Flower translated by Richard Wilhelm and for which he wrote a commentary in 1929. As a result of this work he was motivated to research Western Alchemy, which he subsequently defined as ‘the historical counterpart to my psychology of the unconscious’, and a bridge between Gnosticism and the modern world.
The culmination of these explorations was Jung’s attempt to correlate the ‘transpersonal’ element of his psychological paradigm with modern physics. The ultimate acausal reality or, to use the medieval term, unus mundus, forming the underlying transformative matrix of alchemical processes, can be understood, he argued, as simultaneously both psychic and material. This underlying unus mundus is both the indeterminate universe of psychic symbols and the pre-geometric, ‘implicate order’ of high-energy physics.
At the heart of Jung’s Analytical Psychology is the process of Individuation or self-becoming. Individuation is a non-linear, centralizing developmental process culminating in an enhanced synthesis of the conscious and the unconscious spheres. This synthesis also incorporates a paradoxical harmonisation of contradictory elements, a union of opposites – including, for example, the masculine and feminine principles, the animus and anima – correlating with the alchemical coniunctio as symbolised by the hermaphrodite or androgyny.
Jung felt that elucidation of the opus alchymicum would shed light on the symbolic structure of the Individuation process, because the alchemist’s hope of creating philosophical gold was only a partial illusion: ‘for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great importance in the psychology of the unconscious.’
If the alchemists projected the process of Individuation into the phenomena of chemical change, then the same is true for the poet who, likewise, by a synthesis of automatism and active imagination, projects the same process into the phenomena of poetic (artistic) creation. He or she initiates a transmutation of the ‘prime matter’ of language into the aesthetic ‘gold’ of poetry.
Part of this process is a sustained regression into the sphere of the unconscious (the ‘dizzying descent into ourselves’ mentioned in the Second Manifesto) during which imprints of the individual’s psychological and biological development are uncovered in symbolic form. Thus, the alchemical process, by engaging with the Individuation process, establishes a psychobiological frame of reference for both psychological development and imaginative, poetic creativity (‘inspiration’).
Alchemy, viewed from the Jungian perspective, can be seen as a quest for inner psychic unity and wholeness (actualisation) achieved through a non-rational mode of self-knowledge. However identification of poetry (or perhaps the poem itself) with the alchemical arcanum paradoxa and defining poetic inspiration in the context of a psychobiological, existential substrate, highlights a conflict with conventional ideas tending to categorise writing and/or poetry, as ‘literature’.
Academic and other definitions of poetry as ‘literature’ displace the poetic act of imaginative creation from the interior psychobiological universe to the external world of cultural-linguistic structures where the preferred paradigm is communicative. Furthermore, the current ‘postmodernist’ cultural-linguistic aesthetic model presupposes that everything depends upon language and linguistics to the extent that ‘being’ itself becomes literally indefinable in non-semiotic, extra-linguistic terms. This inevitably inhibits understanding of artistic creativity as in innate psychoactive phenomenon effectively blocking access to sources of inspiration in the indeterminate quantum vacuum of the unus mundus.
The raison d’etre of the ‘literary’ paradigm is communication. In contradistinction, the raison d’etre of the ‘alchemical-surreal’ paradigm is transformation: transformation energised by inspiration, where ‘inspiration’ is defined in terms of psychic energy. In this paradigm of transformation the Jungian valuation of symbols (distinguished from ‘signs’) as ambiguous emanations of non-linguistic or extra-linguistic or even pre-linguistic being is a key factor.
For Jung the psychic presence of symbols (including ‘archetypal’ symbols) is always experienced as ‘numinous’, a categorical term he borrowed from the Kantian-Friesian religious thinker Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). Otto was seeking to extend or deepen the epistemological scheme of his predecessor Jakob Friedrich Fries. This scheme included the notion of Ahndung, a German term which can be translated as ‘aesthetic sense’. Otto expanded the meaning of Ahndung ‘beyond the merely aesthetic’ by introducing the category of ‘numinosity’, the alleged quality of the sacred.
Otto argued that numinosity is the prime characteristic of the collective experience underlying all religions. This experience can involve a sense of overwhelming power, the mysterium tremendum. The mysterium stands as the first cause of all ‘religious awe’, and, in certain respects, if one follows Jung in the matter, accounts for the sense of power and autonomy apparently exhibited by unconscious contents and symbols.
The association of archetypal symbolism with cross-cultural mythic imagery on the one hand, and Otto’s numinosity concept on the other, was one way that Jung, through his writings and researches, endowed psychological processes such as Individuation with ‘spiritual’ qualities. Part of the attraction of Jungian psychology is his overt identification of self-becoming, or personality formation, with the model of the spiritual quest, articulated through an all-pervasive symbolism shared with the alchemical magnum opus, other mystical belief systems or even mainstream theological precepts. As Anthony Storr explains, Jung was able to do this because he identified the integrated Self with an archetypal symbol of totality identical with the underlying reality of Judaeo-Christian monotheism, the imago Dei.
If the raw material of poetry is language, the essence of poetic practice is active imagination or artistic creativity. It is inevitable that imaginative creativity, in pursuit of inspiration, will engage with that innate process of psychological integration Jung called Individuation. From this perspective the poem may appear as a by-product of the process. For the poet, as for the alchemist, the psycho-activity of inspiration arising from the process of self-becoming is the prime factor. It is this psycho-active effect which dissolves the barriers between the conscious and the unconscious, exposing the subject to the autonomous ‘power’ of symbolic otherness, enhancing creative capability.
For many this dissolution is most satisfactorily defined as an ‘archetypal’, visionary, even mystical, experience. Indeed, for some, even the most wilfully mundane or blatantly secular poems can still radiate, however feebly, an aura of the ‘numinous’, investing the text with all the fascination of an alien artefact.
Grounding poetic practice in a fundamental, psychobiological, ontological matrix de-emphasises, even dissociates, ‘pure poetry’ from the cultural-linguistic epiphenomenal ‘foreground’ superstructure of modern ‘literary’ discourse. It is also the case that, contrary to Jung’s position, pro-active engagement with the principium individuationis from an aesthetic perspective may not accord with traditional ‘religious’ paradigms of human perfectibility or divine purpose.
Thus, the alchemical process of inner purification may well amount to a Promethean affront to doctrines of redemption and predestination. Then, the poet, like the alchemist of old, may stand accused of Faustian occultism – or even the heresy of the Free Spirit, interestingly defined by Vaneigem as ‘an alchemy of individual fulfilment’. The declaration of intent in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism to attain the ‘total recovery of our psychic force’ through a ‘systematic illumination of hidden places’ and excursions into ‘forbidden territory’ must be understood in the context of Romantic metaphysical revolt in the tradition of Miltonic Satanism, Byron and Sade. It is not an affirmation of the ‘spiritual quest’, or the unio mystica described as the supreme desideratum by Jung and other exponents of perennial, pan-religious syncretism.
Furthermore Jung’s identification of the integrated Self with any ‘divine’ reality or purpose is open to question in the post-religious context that is the present evolutionary situation of society. Primordial being may exert or radiate a ‘numinous’ attraction of otherness, or the subject may experience such an inspirational effect. It does not follow that experience of this effect is experience of the ‘sacred’. This is true, even if the effect or experience can be shown to be the result of a quasi-objective incursion of, or from, the unus mundus. Only those predisposed, perhaps by cultural conditioning, to a totalising ‘religious’ reading of fundamental experiences can promote such an interpretation without fear of contradiction. Again, if the raw matter of the procedure comprises the least valued, most disregarded, of all the elements, such common or ‘despised’ material. Stuff ‘of no price or value’ (Dyas Chemica Tripartita) will also form the basis of the poet’s Work. Such poetic work is unlikely to meet with approval from the custodians of cultural probity, the proponents of canonical, high-minded artistic or literary greatness.
Is the true poet an exceptional individual?
If the answer is yes, then poetry will reflect the compulsion of such individuals to seek their own path and forge their own identity through an oracular, alchemical poetry, which, like the ancient works of Khemeia, may well appear enigmatical and allusive to the uninitiated.
Digital art: Inner Alchemy III, 2001
Arcanum Paradoxa was published by Atlantean Publishing in The Monomyth Supplement 44, January 2009
Hermetic Art Gnostic Alchemy Of The Imagination (1985) on The Alchemy WebsiteOstensibly the forerunner of modern chemistry and usually considered a ‘pseudo-science’ Alchemy first emerged in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. At roughly the same time, a form of Alchemy associated with medicinal aspects of Taoism emerged in China.
The general objective of Alchemy was the creation, through transmutation, of some type of marvellous, quintessential substance, often considered a miraculous elixir, a panacea, for curing all ills, bestowing immortality or spiritual enlightenment.
Known as the art of Khemeia, Alchemy had its theoretical basis in metallurgy, Zoroastrianism, Stoic pantheism and Aristotle’s Four Element theory of matter. The first significant exponent of Alchemy was Bolos ‘Democritus’ of Mendes (circa 200BC) whose treatise, Physika et Mystica, dealt with dyeing and colouring, the creation of gems, silver, and the transmutation of metals, specifically the transmutation of lead or iron, into gold. One tenet of alchemical doctrine was that the prime matter (prima materia) or raw material of transmutation comprised the least valued, most disregarded, of all the elements. Common or ‘despised’ material, both ‘contemptible and precious’, formed the basis of The Work, the opus alchymicum.

There is a secret stone, hidden in a deep well, worthless and rejected, concealed in dung and filth... (Johann Daniel Mylius: Philosophia Reformata, 1622)

Khemeia did not flourish during the Roman era, as various Emperors, notably Diocletian, feared that the transmutation of base metals into gold would undermine economic stability. A notable exponent of the Work in later times was the mystic Zosimos of Panopolis (Akhmim) whose Hermetic Encyclopaedia (a 28 volume compilation of existing and original texts) is dated 300CE. However, as Khemeia was considered ‘pagan learning’, much ancient knowledge of the art was lost during the Christian riots in Alexandria in 400CE.
The Arabs revived interest in Khemeia in the seventh century, as part of a general fascination for Greek science and thought. In the Arabic language the word ‘Khemeia’ became ‘al-kimiya’ and it was this form of the word that became the European term ‘alchemy’.
To define Alchemy as a pseudo-scientific forerunner of modern, scientific chemistry is an oversimplification. From the earliest times Khemeia comprised a resonant, symbolic framework for imaginative speculation. This speculative aspect of the art soon overshadowed its ‘practical’ metallurgical objectives, leading to a well-deserved aura of obscurantism and uncertain interpretation.
In the period between Bolos and Zosimos, Holmyard observes, ‘alchemical speculation ran riot’ as diverse practitioners created a complex body of doctrine, ascribing symbolic meanings to the sequence of metallic colour changes, incorporating all contemporary strands of speculative thought into alchemical theory, including Egyptian magic, Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Babylonian astrology, Christian theology and pagan mythology.
Works of Khemeia were invariably couched in an ‘enigmatical and allusive language’ and often ascribed to semi-legendary or mythical authors such as Hermes Trismegistus, Plato, Moses, Miriam (the legendary sister of Moses), Agathodaimon, Theophrastus, Ostanes, Cleopatra and the goddess Isis. Thus, almost any contemporary, metaphysical speculation was assimilated into eclectic alchemical thinking: many sayings, stories and myths were endowed with alchemical interpretation, or incorporated into the Hermetic worldview.
By the Byzantine era Stephanos of Alexandria, a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who flourished during the reign of the Emperor Herakleios I (610-641), had come to view Khemeia as primarily a ‘mental process’. Following F. Sherwood Taylor, E. J. Holmyard quotes Stephanos’ denigration of practical alchemy as a "burden of weariness", observing that by this time (the seventh century) alchemy had ‘very largely become a theme for rhetorical, poetical and religious compositions, and the mere physical transmutation of base metals into gold was used as symbol for man’s regeneration and transformation to a nobler and more spiritual state’.
So, well before the rise of medieval European alchemy, the tendency to regard The Work as an internalised, psychic process or phenomenon was established. Khemeia could easily be dissociated from physical chemistry and metallurgy and defined as some kind of ‘spiritual’ discipline. Now, the objective was not the transmutation of external phenomena, but the transmutation of the adept himself, and this transformative process was expressed in an obscure, introspective, mythic vocabulary of symbols and complex terminology.
In modern times a fascination with alchemy as an internalised, mental process has been continued by the Surrealists and the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). During the inter-war years and roughly around the same time both Jung and the Surrealists claimed Alchemy as significant in their respective investigations:

…let us not lose sight of the fact that the idea of Surrealism aims quite simply at the total recovery of our psychic force by a means which is nothing other than the dizzying descent into ourselves, the systematic illumination of hidden places and the progressive darkening of other places, the perpetual excursion into the midst of forbidden territory… (Second Manifesto of Surrealism, 1930)

Jung and the Surrealists (particularly Andre Breton and Max Ernst) were operating against the backdrop of a revival of interest in alchemical symbolism in France and Germany. The works of Zosimos had been translated into French and published by Berthelot and Ruelle in 1887-1888. Herbert Silberer, who proposed a connection between alchemical thought and modern psychology, had anticipated Jung’s researches.
In France the Surrealists were influenced the alchemical novels of Francois Jolivet-Castelot and the esoteric writings of Fulcanelli and Grillot de Givry. De Givry drew attention to the hermetic influences at work in the art of painters like Bosch, Bruegel, Cranach and Baldung. Initially Andre Breton saw alchemical thought as a way of re-investing poetic language with a sense of mystery: this soon evolved into a more ambitious proposition, the deployment of an ‘alchemy of language’ to transform consciousness, and by transforming consciousness, change life.
On the other hand Jung’s interest in alchemy was triggered by an ancient Taoist text called The Secret of the Golden Flower translated by Richard Wilhelm and for which he wrote a commentary in 1929. As a result of this work he was motivated to research Western Alchemy, which he subsequently defined as ‘the historical counterpart to my psychology of the unconscious’, and a bridge between Gnosticism and the modern world.
The culmination of these explorations was Jung’s attempt to correlate the ‘transpersonal’ element of his psychological paradigm with modern physics. The ultimate acausal reality or, to use the medieval term, unus mundus, forming the underlying transformative matrix of alchemical processes, can be understood, he argued, as simultaneously both psychic and material. This underlying unus mundus is both the indeterminate universe of psychic symbols and the pre-geometric, ‘implicate order’ of high-energy physics.
At the heart of Jung’s Analytical Psychology is the process of Individuation or self-becoming. Individuation is a non-linear, centralizing developmental process culminating in an enhanced synthesis of the conscious and the unconscious spheres. This synthesis also incorporates a paradoxical harmonisation of contradictory elements, a union of opposites – including, for example, the masculine and feminine principles, the animus and anima – correlating with the alchemical coniunctio as symbolised by the hermaphrodite or androgyny.
Jung felt that elucidation of the opus alchymicum would shed light on the symbolic structure of the Individuation process, because the alchemist’s hope of creating philosophical gold was only a partial illusion: ‘for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great importance in the psychology of the unconscious.’
If the alchemists projected the process of Individuation into the phenomena of chemical change, then the same is true for the poet who, likewise, by a synthesis of automatism and active imagination, projects the same process into the phenomena of poetic (artistic) creation. He or she initiates a transmutation of the ‘prime matter’ of language into the aesthetic ‘gold’ of poetry.
Part of this process is a sustained regression into the sphere of the unconscious (the ‘dizzying descent into ourselves’ mentioned in the Second Manifesto) during which imprints of the individual’s psychological and biological development are uncovered in symbolic form. Thus, the alchemical process, by engaging with the Individuation process, establishes a psychobiological frame of reference for both psychological development and imaginative, poetic creativity (‘inspiration’).
Alchemy, viewed from the Jungian perspective, can be seen as a quest for inner psychic unity and wholeness (actualisation) achieved through a non-rational mode of self-knowledge. However identification of poetry (or perhaps the poem itself) with the alchemical arcanum paradoxa and defining poetic inspiration in the context of a psychobiological, existential substrate, highlights a conflict with conventional ideas tending to categorise writing and/or poetry, as ‘literature’.
Academic and other definitions of poetry as ‘literature’ displace the poetic act of imaginative creation from the interior psychobiological universe to the external world of cultural-linguistic structures where the preferred paradigm is communicative. Furthermore, the current ‘postmodernist’ cultural-linguistic aesthetic model presupposes that everything depends upon language and linguistics to the extent that ‘being’ itself becomes literally indefinable in non-semiotic, extra-linguistic terms. This inevitably inhibits understanding of artistic creativity as in innate psychoactive phenomenon effectively blocking access to sources of inspiration in the indeterminate quantum vacuum of the unus mundus.
The raison d’etre of the ‘literary’ paradigm is communication. In contradistinction, the raison d’etre of the ‘alchemical-surreal’ paradigm is transformation: transformation energised by inspiration, where ‘inspiration’ is defined in terms of psychic energy. In this paradigm of transformation the Jungian valuation of symbols (distinguished from ‘signs’) as ambiguous emanations of non-linguistic or extra-linguistic or even pre-linguistic being is a key factor.
For Jung the psychic presence of symbols (including ‘archetypal’ symbols) is always experienced as ‘numinous’, a categorical term he borrowed from the Kantian-Friesian religious thinker Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). Otto was seeking to extend or deepen the epistemological scheme of his predecessor Jakob Friedrich Fries. This scheme included the notion of Ahndung, a German term which can be translated as ‘aesthetic sense’. Otto expanded the meaning of Ahndung ‘beyond the merely aesthetic’ by introducing the category of ‘numinosity’, the alleged quality of the sacred.
Otto argued that numinosity is the prime characteristic of the collective experience underlying all religions. This experience can involve a sense of overwhelming power, the mysterium tremendum. The mysterium stands as the first cause of all ‘religious awe’, and, in certain respects, if one follows Jung in the matter, accounts for the sense of power and autonomy apparently exhibited by unconscious contents and symbols.
The association of archetypal symbolism with cross-cultural mythic imagery on the one hand, and Otto’s numinosity concept on the other, was one way that Jung, through his writings and researches, endowed psychological processes such as Individuation with ‘spiritual’ qualities. Part of the attraction of Jungian psychology is his overt identification of self-becoming, or personality formation, with the model of the spiritual quest, articulated through an all-pervasive symbolism shared with the alchemical magnum opus, other mystical belief systems or even mainstream theological precepts. As Anthony Storr explains, Jung was able to do this because he identified the integrated Self with an archetypal symbol of totality identical with the underlying reality of Judaeo-Christian monotheism, the imago Dei.
If the raw material of poetry is language, the essence of poetic practice is active imagination or artistic creativity. It is inevitable that imaginative creativity, in pursuit of inspiration, will engage with that innate process of psychological integration Jung called Individuation. From this perspective the poem may appear as a by-product of the process. For the poet, as for the alchemist, the psycho-activity of inspiration arising from the process of self-becoming is the prime factor. It is this psycho-active effect which dissolves the barriers between the conscious and the unconscious, exposing the subject to the autonomous ‘power’ of symbolic otherness, enhancing creative capability.
For many this dissolution is most satisfactorily defined as an ‘archetypal’, visionary, even mystical, experience. Indeed, for some, even the most wilfully mundane or blatantly secular poems can still radiate, however feebly, an aura of the ‘numinous’, investing the text with all the fascination of an alien artefact.
Grounding poetic practice in a fundamental, psychobiological, ontological matrix de-emphasises, even dissociates, ‘pure poetry’ from the cultural-linguistic epiphenomenal ‘foreground’ superstructure of modern ‘literary’ discourse. It is also the case that, contrary to Jung’s position, pro-active engagement with the principium individuationis from an aesthetic perspective may not accord with traditional ‘religious’ paradigms of human perfectibility or divine purpose.
Thus, the alchemical process of inner purification may well amount to a Promethean affront to doctrines of redemption and predestination. Then, the poet, like the alchemist of old, may stand accused of Faustian occultism – or even the heresy of the Free Spirit, interestingly defined by Vaneigem as ‘an alchemy of individual fulfilment’. The declaration of intent in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism to attain the ‘total recovery of our psychic force’ through a ‘systematic illumination of hidden places’ and excursions into ‘forbidden territory’ must be understood in the context of Romantic metaphysical revolt in the tradition of Miltonic Satanism, Byron and Sade. It is not an affirmation of the ‘spiritual quest’, or the unio mystica described as the supreme desideratum by Jung and other exponents of perennial, pan-religious syncretism.
Furthermore Jung’s identification of the integrated Self with any ‘divine’ reality or purpose is open to question in the post-religious context that is the present evolutionary situation of society. Primordial being may exert or radiate a ‘numinous’ attraction of otherness, or the subject may experience such an inspirational effect. It does not follow that experience of this effect is experience of the ‘sacred’. This is true, even if the effect or experience can be shown to be the result of a quasi-objective incursion of, or from, the unus mundus. Only those predisposed, perhaps by cultural conditioning, to a totalising ‘religious’ reading of fundamental experiences can promote such an interpretation without fear of contradiction. Again, if the raw matter of the procedure comprises the least valued, most disregarded, of all the elements, such common or ‘despised’ material. Stuff ‘of no price or value’ (Dyas Chemica Tripartita) will also form the basis of the poet’s Work. Such poetic work is unlikely to meet with approval from the custodians of cultural probity, the proponents of canonical, high-minded artistic or literary greatness.
Is the true poet an exceptional individual?
If the answer is yes, then poetry will reflect the compulsion of such individuals to seek their own path and forge their own identity through an oracular, alchemical poetry, which, like the ancient works of Khemeia, may well appear enigmatical and allusive to the uninitiated.

Arcanum Paradoxa was published by Atlantean Publishing in The Monomyth Supplement 44, January 2009
Hermetic Art Gnostic Alchemy Of The Imagination (1985) on The Alchemy Website
 

Digital art: Inner Alchemy III, 2001

Poetry & Prose Publications 2000-2009

 

Poetry Publications 2000-2009

Includes Prose Poems and Short Fiction - A Fractured Muse and Vespula Vanishes

  

Unspoken Poetry, Awen Issue 6 Oct 2000, Atlantean Publishing
Angels Bring Us, Awen Issue 7 Dec 2000, Atlantean Publishing
Haunted Astral, Awen Issue 7 Dec 2000, Atlantean Publishing
Dog Star Days, Colonies May 2000
Reflections Extend Worlds, Colonies May 2000
Black Hole Binary, Colonies Scifi , zyworld, 2000
Dog Star Days, Colonies Scifi, zyworld, 2000
In Sympathy With Horror, Druscilla’s Garden 12 Oct 2000
The Shadow Of The Marvelous, Fire No 11 May 2000
Point Of Departure, Handshake No 39 Mar 2000, Dunnock Press
Reliquary, Handshake No 40 May 2000, Dunnock Press
Underworld, Handshake No 42 Sept 2000, Dunnock Press
Moment, Handshake No 43 Dec 2000, Dunnock Press,
Haze Of Pain, International Mag Jan 2000
This/Where, International Mag Jan 2000
Meridian Of The Sun, Legend Issue 2 Winter 2000, Immediate Direction,
Where Flowers, Monas Hieroglyphica Issue 10 Spring 2000, The Monas Press,
Wings Conjoined In Lure, Not Dead But Dreaming XI Apr 2000,
Empty Rooms, Not Dead But Dreaming XII Dec 2000
Unspoken Poetry, Not Dead But Dreaming XII Dec 2000
The Vision Of Morgan Le Fay, Penny Dreadful Issue XIII Midsummer 2000, Pendragonian Publications,
Snowballs In Hell (Don’t Give A…), Planet Prozak Issue 10 Spring 2000, Literally Literary,
Mondo Bizarre (Eyes Insane), Planet Prozak Issue 12 Winter 2000-2001, Literally Literary,
Poetry Reading, Planet Prozak Nov 2000, Literally Literary
Stunning Sunbirds, Planet Prozak Nov 2000, Literally Literary
In The Strange House, Pulsar Edition 1/00 21 Feb 2000, Ligden Publishers
Still Unruffled, Pulsar Edition 1/00 21 Feb 2000, Ligden Publishers
Playing Chopin Op 96 No 1 (L’Adieu), Pulsar Edition 3/00 23 Aug 2000, Ligden Publishers
By The Crimson Sea, Pulsar Edition 4/00 24 Nov 2000, Ligden Publishers
Spiral In The Dust, Silver Wheel No 56 Samhain/Yule 2000
The Black Mask, Silver Wheel No 56 Samhain/Yule 2000
The Uncanny Dance, Silver Wheel No 56 Samhain/Yule 2000
A Long Kiss On Bitch Island, Slope 3 Mar 2000
Neon Aeon I Got Moved On, Stride Magazine, 2000
Neon Aeon II Is There Anybody There? (Freundschaftkarte), Stride Magazine, 2000
Neon Aeon III Heide Woz Ere 93, Stride Magazine, 2000
Neon Aeon IV Just Like You, Stride Magazine, 2000
Neon Aeon V Bomb The Chapel, Stride Magazine, 2000
Before Art, Stride Magazine Oct 2000
Dada Radar, Stride Magazine Oct 2000
Dissolve This Explosion, Stride Magazine Oct 2000
You Are A Star Ascending, Stride Magazine Oct 2000
Some Dreams, The Brobdingnagian Times Broadsheet 17 Nov 2000,
Angel Pictures, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Beyond The Black Isles, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Cold Looks White Mask, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Daughter Of Darkness, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Flicker Of A Thousand Lights, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Haze Of Pain, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
In Sympathy With Horror, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
In The Strange House, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Let There Be Night, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Sarcastic Angel, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Skeleton Girls, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Storm Vision, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
The Black Mask, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
The Craft Of Vision, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
The Monolith, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
The Sarcastic Smile, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
The Shadow Of The Marvellous, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
This Sepulchre, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Timelight, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Tonight My Soul, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Towards Daybreak, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Towards Sunset, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Undead Elegy, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Unspeakable Elegy, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Vampire Bondage, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Where The Vanished City Stood, This Sepulchre, Springbeach Press, 2000
Deathmasques IV Dream of Stone, Unhinged 6 Sex & Death Issue Sept 2000, PJL Press
Burning Man VII Celebrity Crucifixion Photos, Backdrop 2 Apr 2001
Against The World, Cold Print Aug 2001
Convulsive Inspiration (Occult Inspiration), Cold Print Feb 2001
And Now The Rain, Druscilla’s Garden 13 Jan 2001
The Agent Of Destruction, Druscilla's Garden 13 Jan 2001
Babe Rainbow, Fire 11 May 2001
Depths, Fire No 14 May 2001
Empty Rooms, Fire No 14 May 2001
The Obscure Nature Of Turbulence, Fire No 14 May 2001
The Stone Door, Fire No 14 May 2001
Undercover Soundtrack, Fire No 14 May 2001
Meet The Folks (Who Live In Hell), Garbaj Issue 4 Feb 2001, Atlantean Publishing
Slump, Garbaj Issue 6 Aug 2001, Atlantean Publishing
This Carpet’s On Fire , Garbaj Issue 6 Aug 2001, Atlantean Publishing
Could Be Anywhere, Garbaj Issue 7 Nov 2001, Atlantean Publishing
Implosion, Handshake No 44 Mar 2001, Dunnock Press
Closed Moment, Harlequin II Oct 2001
Magnetic Poetry, Harlequin II Sept 2001
Skeleton Girls, Legend Issue 3 Summer 2001, Immediate Direction
The Uncanny Dance, Legend Issue 4 Autumn/Winter 2001, Immediate Direction
Out Of The Velvet Womb, Monomyth Yearbook 1998 [Jul 2001], Atlantean Publishing
Always, Moonstone 82 Beltane May 2001
Eidolon, Moonstone 84 Halloween Nov 2001
Snowfall At Dusk, Moonstone 84 Halloween Nov 2001,
Darkness Of Secrets, Penny Dreadful Issue XIV 2001, Pendragonian Publications
Muse In Darkness, Penny Dreadful Issue XIV 2001, Pendragonian Publications
Unholy Communion, Penny Dreadful Issue XIV 2001, Pendragonian Publications
And The Earth Dies Away, Pulsar Edition 1/02 25 Mar 2001, Ligden Publishers
The Collogruis, Pulsar Edition 2/02 26 June 2001, Ligden Publishers
Art Deco Endgame, Pulsar Edition 4/01 28 Dec 2001, Ligden Publishers
Closed Moment, Songs Of Innocence IV 2001/2002, Pendragonian Publications
Skeleton Girls, Stagger Feral Equinox Issue Mar 2001, Stagger Press
This Carpet’s On Fire , Stagger Feral Equinox Issue Mar 2001, Stagger Press
Vanishing Point, The Black Rose 8 Jun 2001,
Alien Hand Syndrome , The Void Gallery, 2001
Chorale Figurata , The Void Gallery, 2001
Darkness Or Nothing , The Void Gallery, 2001
Distraction , The Void Gallery, 2001
Dream Fractals , The Void Gallery, 2001
Footsteps In The Snow , The Void Gallery, 2001
Image To Dream , The Void Gallery, 2001
Insomnia, The Void Gallery, 2001
Invisible Glory , The Void Gallery, 2001
Kiss The Peach , The Void Gallery, 2001
Lost Words , The Void Gallery, 2001
Meridian Of The Sun , The Void Gallery, 2001
Misplaced Poem , The Void Gallery, 2001
No Muse Of My Cold Heart, The Void Gallery, 2001
Only Shadows , The Void Gallery, 2001
Open Harmony , The Void Gallery, 2001
Self Ritualisation , The Void Gallery, 2001
Sometimes Audible , The Void Gallery, 2001
Street , The Void Gallery, 2001
Swan Of Yuggoth , The Void Gallery, 2001
The Submerged Forest , The Void Gallery, 2001
Tree of Light , The Void Gallery, 2001
The Estranged Attractor, Voyage Issue 11 July 2001, Regent Publications
Storm Vision, Bard Issue 002 2002, Atlantean Publishing
Dream Fractals I, Cold Print Feb 2002
Dream Fractals II (The Wave Function Of All Dreams), Cold Print Feb 2002
Maybe This Is Why, Fire No 18 Sept 2002
No Living, Fire No 18 Sept 2002
Thunder These Trees (Externity Now), Fire No 18 Sept 2002
Unspoken Poetry, Fire No 18 Sept 2002
Edge Of Zone, Harlequin III Feb 2002
Figure, Harlequin V Oct 2002
Angels Bring Us, Inclement Vol 2 Issue 4 Winter 2002
Lost Words, Inclement Vol 2 Issue 4 Winter 2002
Only Shadows, Inclement Vol 2 Issue 4 Winter 2002
Reflections In A Mirror, Inclement Vol 2 Issue 4 Winter 2002
By The Crimson Sea, Legend Issue 5 Spring/Summer 2002 Immediate Direction
Image To Dream, Legend Issue 5 Spring/Summer 2002 Immediate Direction
No Muse Of My Cold Heart, Moonstone 85 Candlemas Jan 2002
Votive, Moonstone 88 Samhain Nov 2002
Dark Anima, Moonstone 88 Samhain Nov 2002
In Extremis, Neon Highway Issue 2 Oct 2002
Loop Decay, Neon Highway Issue 2 Oct 2002
Waiting Here, Neon Highway Issue 2 Oct 2002
A Sleeping Form, Poetry Exchange , 2002
My Thoughts My Mirror, Pulsar Edition 2/02 30 June 2002 Ligden Publishers
Anthelion, Pulsar Edition 3/02 31 Sept 2002 Ligden Publishers
The Spiral Staircase, Pulsar Edition 3/02 31 Sept 2002 Ligden Publishers
To An Aesthete Dying Young, Pulsar Edition 4/02 32 Dec 2002 Ligden Publishers
There Are Many Roads To Space, Text Book Writing Through Literature, Bradford/St Martin's, 2002
Darkness Or Nothing, The Seventh Seal 5 Apr 2002
Don’t Ask Why, The Seventh Seal 5 Apr 2002
Lost Words, The Seventh Seal 5 Apr 2002
Only Shadows, The Seventh Seal 5 Apr 2002
Borderlands Of The World , The Void Gallery, 2002
Boredom (The Cage) , The Void Gallery, 2002
Clockwork Universe , The Void Gallery, 2002
Dark Anima , The Void Gallery, 2002
Externity Now , The Void Gallery, 2002
In These Solitudes , The Void Gallery, 2002
Infinite , The Void Gallery, 2002
Interference Phenomena , The Void Gallery, 2002
More Modern Still, The Void Gallery, 2002
No Philosophy , The Void Gallery, 2002
Poetry Moon Mirror , The Void Gallery, 2002
The Night Alone, Awen Issue 20 Feb 2003, Atlantean Publishing
Dialogue, Candelabrum Vol XI No 4, Red Candle Press, 2003
Depraved, Eclipse Issue 32 Oct 2003, Everyman Press,
Poetry Reading, Eclipse Issue 33 Dec 2003, Everyman Press,
A Sleeping Form, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Angst, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Chronotope, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Depths, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Dynasty Of Venus, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Even The Fading Light, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Fractured Muse, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Implosion, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
No Philosophy, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Pictures Of Distant Objects, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Swan Of Yuggoth, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
The Ceremony, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
To An Aesthete Dying Young, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Tower Of Silence, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Twentieth Century Girl, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
We Are The Forgotten Ones, Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing, 2003
Chronotope, Fragments No 19 Other People Other Places Apr 2003
Moment, Fragments No 19 Other People Other Places Apr 2003
No Living, Fragments No 19 Other People Other Places Apr 2003
See, Fragments No 19 Other People Other Places Apr 2003
Tower Of Silence, Fragments No 20 That's Life! Jul 2003
Kiss The Peach, Fragments No 21 Improvisation Dec 2003
Only Shadows, Harlequin VI Feb 2003
Swan Of Yuggoth, Harlequin VII Jun 2003
Misplaced Poem, Inclement Vol 3 Issue 3 Autumn 2003
To The Temple, Inclement Vol 3 Issue 3 Autumn 2003
Always, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003, Atlantean Publishing,
Are You Not, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003 , Atlantean Publishing,
Darkness Of Secrets, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Insomnia, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Invisible Razors, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Kiss The Peach, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Moment, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Muse In Darkness, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Music Fades, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
No Sensation, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Still Unruffled, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Underworld, Monomyth Vol 3.4 No 25 Issue 27 2003,Atlantean Publishing,
Most Adored, Moonstone 89 Imbolc Feb 2003
(Another), Outlaw 2 Spring 2003
Angst, Outlaw 2 Spring 2003
Even The Fading Light, Outlaw 2 Spring 2003
Fractured Muse, Outlaw 2 Spring 2003
Vision Impossible, Outlaw 2 Spring 2003
More Modern Still, Outlaw 3 Summer 2003
Dynasty Of Venus, Outlaw 5 Winter 2003
Hermetic Space, Outlaw 5 Winter 2003
Infinite, Outlaw 5 Winter 2003
Invisible Razors, Outlaw 5 Winter 2003
Moonlight Heaven, Outlaw 5 Winter 2003
Something Like This, Pulsar Edition 2/03 34 June 2003 Ligden Publishers
The Monolith, Pulsar Edition 4/03 36 Dec 2003 Ligden Publishers
New Fusion, The Brobdingnagian Times Broadsheet 26 Winter 2003
Out Of The Velvet Womb, The Void Gallery, 2003
Playing Chopin , The Void Gallery, 2003
Misplaced Poem, Anthology 1, Inclement Publishing, 2003
To The Temple, Anthology 1, Inclement Publishing, 2003
Exploring The Text, Avocado Autumn 2004, The Heaventree Press,
The Lost Book, Awen Issue 27 Apr 2004, Atlantean Publishing,
Even The Fading Light, Candelabrum Vol XI No 6, Red Candle Press,
You Looked The Other Way, Eclipse Issue 34 Feb 2004, Everyman Press,
Indigo Zenobia, Eclipse Issue 35 Apr 2004, Everyman Press,
Angels In A Heavenly Landscape, Fire No 22 Jan 2004,
A Secret Language (Trip Up Again), Fire No 24 Oct 2004,
Trip Up Poem, Fire No 24 Oct 2004,
Growing Up In Tiger Bay, Fragments No 22 Pictures & Poems Mar 2004,
Music Fades, Fragments No 23 Artists & Poets Jul 2004,
This Poem, Fragments No 23 Artists & Poets Jul 2004,
Image To Dream, Fragments No 24 Amazing & Wonderful Nov 2004
Spiral In The Dust, Harlequin VIII Apr 2004
But I Can See, Headstorms Vol 1 2004, Inclement Publishing,
Deathmasques I The Poet, Headstorms Vol 1 2004, Inclement Publishing
Life Into Shape, Headstorms Vol 1 2004, Inclement Publishing,
Deathmasques VI Silence, Midnight Street 2, Immediate Direction, 2004
Deathmasques I The Poet, Monomyth Supplement Issue 12 2004, Atlantean Publishing,
Deathmasques V The Renegade, Monomyth Supplement Issue 13 2004, Atlantean Publishing,
Nothing Is, Moonstone 94 Beltane May2004
Believe This, Moonstone 95 Lammas Aug 2004
Unknown, Neon Highway Issue 8 Aug 2004
Aspherical Test Control (Omega Lightning), Outlaw 8 Autumn 2004
Maybe This Is Why, Outlaw 8 Autumn 2004
Lost Masterpiece, Pulsar Edition 1/04 37 Mar 2004, Ligden Publishers
Relatively Cool, Pulsar Edition 2/04 38 June 2004, Ligden Publishers
This Poem, Pulsar Edition 3/04 39 Sept 2004, Ligden Publishers
Even Anarchists, Pulsar Edition 4/04 40 Dec 2004, Ligden Publishers
Entranced, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Fragment, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Images Of Others, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Into Thin Air, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Lost In Mist, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
No View, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Relatively Cool, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans , Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Shattered Some Dreams, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
The Eye Caught In A Mirror, The Bard Issue 1 A C Evans, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Automatic Door , The Void Gallery, 2004
Exploring The Text , The Void Gallery, 2004
Magical Flight, The Void Gallery, 2004
Negation And Prelude , The Void Gallery, 2004
The Dark Macabre Totentanz, The Void Gallery, 2004
Third Eye Amusement Arcade Meltdown, The Void Gallery, 2004
Undercover Nightmare , The Void Gallery, 2004
Magical Flight, Awen Issue 36 Oct 2005, Atlantean Publishing,
Relatively Cool, Fragments No 25 Brief Encounter 2005
Beautiful Chaos, Fragments No 26 One More Time Sept 2005
Not The Cloudy Sky, Harlequin IX Feb 2005
Negation And Prelude, Harlequin X Oct 2005
The Necromancer's Wife, Harlequin X Oct 2005
Vespula Vanishes, Inclement Vol 5 Issue 3 Autumn 2005
Only Shadows, Moonstone 95 Lammas Aug 2005
Be Careful On The Stairs, Pulsar Edition 1/05 41 Mar 2005, Ligden Publishers
Lost In Mist, Pulsar Edition 1/05 41 Mar 2005, Ligden Publishers
Danger (Midnight Street), Pulsar Edition 4/05 44 Dec 2005, Ligden Publishers
Advice To A Young Poet, The Supplement Issue 22 2005, Atlantean Publishing,
When You See My Grave, The Supplement Issue 24 2005, Atlantean Publishing,
(Another), The Supplement Issue 25 2005, Atlantean Publishing,
The Dark Macabre Totentanz, Awen Issue 42 Oct 2006 Atlantean Publishing,
Flashback Phantoms, Bard Issue 049 2006 Atlantean Publishing,
Dada Radar, Fragments No 27 The Last One Feb 2006
Waiting Here, Fragments No 27 The Last One Feb 2006
Depths, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 1 Spring 2006
Lost In Mist, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 1 Spring 2006
The Spiral Staircase, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 1 Spring 2006
You Looked The Other Way, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 1 Spring 2006
Flashback Phantoms, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 2 Summer 2006
Ice Sun Moon, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 2 Summer 2006
Reach For The Skyline, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 2 Summer 2006
Skies In Her Eyes, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 2 Summer 2006
A New Reality, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 3 Autumn 2006
Bye Bye Kitty Hell Bunny, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 3 Autumn 2006
Lust For A Vampire (Mircalla), Inclement Vol 6 Issue 3 Autumn 2006
Memories Mid-Distance, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 3 Autumn 2006
Can You Explain, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 4 Winter 2006
Hot Is The New Cool, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 4 Winter 2006
Slave Mask, Inclement Vol 6 Issue 4 Winter 2006
Vikki Verso, Monomyth Vol 6.3 Issue 39 2006 Atlantean Publishing,
Memory In The Making, Pulsar Edition 2/06 46 Sept 2006 Ligden Publishers
Darkness Or Nothing, The Argotist, 2006
Exploring The Text, The Argotist, 2006
Flesh Creep The World The Flesh And The Devil, The Argotist, 2006
Indigo Zenobia, The Argotist, 2006
Relatively Cool, The Argotist, 2006
Third Eye Amusement Arcade Meltdown, The Argotist, 2006
Beautiful Chaos, Awen Issue 44 Feb 2007, Atlantean Publishing,
Flesh Creep The World The Flesh And The Devil, Awen Issue 45 Apr 2007, Atlantean Publishing
Automatic Door, Fire No 28 Jun 2007,
Poetry Is A Dangerous Place, Garbaj Issue 31 Nov 2007, Atlantean Publishing
Dead End I, Inclement Vol 7 Issue 2 Summer 2007
Dead End II, Inclement Vol 7 Issue 2 Summer 2007
Masquerade, Inclement Vol 7 Issue 2 Summer 2007
Slave Mask, The Dark Tower Volume 3 The Black Throne, Atlantean Publishing, 2007
A New Reality, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Angels Bring Us, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Bye Bye Kitty Hell Bunny, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Can You Explain, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Dead End I, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Dead End II, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Depths, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Flashback Phantoms, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Hot Is The New Cool, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Ice Sun Moon, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Lost In Mist, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Lost Words, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Lust For A Vampire (Mircalla), Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Masquerade, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Memories Mid-Distance, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Misplaced Poem, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Only Shadows, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Reach For The Skyline, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Reflections In A Mirror, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Skies In Her Eyes, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Slave Mask, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
The Spiral Staircase, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
To The Temple, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
Vespula Vanishes, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
You Looked The Other Way, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Inclement Publishing, 2007
The Vision Of Morgan Le Fay, Awen Issue 55 Dec 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Weird Stuff, Bard Issue 068 2008, Atlantean Publishing,
So Not Funny (Radio Edit), Garbaj Issue 32 Feb 2008, Atlantean Publishing
A Poke In The Rye, Garbaj Issue 34 Aug 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Mutt, Garbaj Issue 34 Aug 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Some News Just In (Smile Please), Garbaj Issue 34 Aug 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Stubbylee Park, Garbaj Issue 34 Aug 2008, Atlantean Publishing
A Scandal In Crewe, Garbaj Issue 35 Dec 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Daft!, Garbaj Issue 35 Dec 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Trendy!, Garbaj Issue 35 Dec 2008, Atlantean Publishing
Boo Galaxy, Handshake No 75 Oct 2008, Dunnock Press,
Dream Scanner, Handshake No 75 Oct 2008, Dunnock Press
Tonight The Clouds, Handshake No 75 Oct 2008, Dunnock Press
Dark Anima, Harlequin XIII Columbine Sept 2008
We Vampires, Haunting Tales, Atlantean Publishing, 2008
Automatic Door, Inclement Poetry Magazine, 2008
Bye Bye Kitty Hell Bunny, Inclement Poetry Magazine, 2008
Flashback Phantoms, Inclement Poetry Magazine, 2008
Hot Is The New Cool, Inclement Poetry Magazine, 2008
South Of Suburbia, Inclement Poetry Magazine, 2008
Thunder These Trees (Externity Now), Inclement Poetry Magazine, 2008
Miles Above, Inclement Vol 8 Issue 2 Summer 2008
Nothing Else, Inclement Vol 8 Issue 2 Summer 2008,
South Of Suburbia, Inclement Vol 8 Issue 2 Summer 2008,
Mute Witness, Monomyth Vol 8.2 Issue 44 2008 , Atlantean Publishing
No Hope Now, Neon Highway Issue 13 Aug 2008
Forget Latex Love (LUV 2288), Old Rossum's Book Of Practical Robots, Atlantean Publishing, 2008
Beauty Is Freedom, Stride Magazine Apr 2008
Lucky Stars, Stride Magazine Apr 2008
Sexy Solitaire (I Want To Be Alone), Stride Magazine Apr 2008
Stone Heart Sleepwalker, Stride Magazine Apr 2008
The Scavenger's Daughter, Stride Magazine Apr 2008
Thinking About Surfacing, Stride Magazine Apr 2008
Too Much Like Real Life, The Penniless Press 29, 2008
Free Speech Today (Oxford Union), The Supplement Issue 38 January 2008Atlantean Publishing
Could Be Anywhere, Awen Issue 61 Dec 2009, Atlantean Publishing,
Edge Of Zone, Awen Issue 61 Dec 2009, Atlantean Publishing,
Dream Of Aldeberan, Bard Issue 074 2009, Atlantean Publishing,
Misericordia, Bard Issue 075 2009, Atlantean Publishing,
Eclogue, Bard Issue 077 2009, Atlantean Publishing,
A Sleeping Form, Carillon Issue 24 Jun 2009
Dream Scanner, Carillon Issue 24 Jun 2009
Shattered Some Dreams, Carillon Issue 24 Jun 2009
A Poem Like This, Curlew Issue 65 Dec 2009
Couture And Anarchy, Curlew Issue 65 Dec 2009
Perfect Storm, Curlew Issue 65 Dec 2009
Remembrance, Curlew Issue 65 Dec 2009
Stone Heart Sleepwalker, Curlew Issue 65 Dec 2009
As The Footsteps Fade Away, Fire No 31 Apr 2009
Fragile, Fire No 31 Apr 2009
Listen To The Voice, Fire No 31 Apr 2009
Credibility Street, Garbaj Issue 36 Feb 2009 Atlantean Publishing,
A Friend In Southend, Garbaj Issue 37 May 2009 Atlantean Publishing,
Being Posthuman, Handshake No 77 Jun 2009 Dunnock Press

Listen To The Voice, Inclement Vol 9 Issue 1 Spring 2009
Still She Stands, Inclement Vol 9 Issue 1 Spring 2009
The Silver Ghost, Inclement Vol 9 Issue 1 Spring 2009
From Yesterday, Pulsar Edition 1/09 51 Mar 2009 Ligden Publishers

illus: Fractured Muse, Atlantean Publishing 2003

Vespula Vanishes

 

Vespula Vanishes is a new A C Evans poetry collection published Inclement Publishing (edited by Michelle Foster) in a limited edition of twenty copies. Here is a recent review notice by Steve Sneyd from Data Dump 118, Feb. 2008.

VESPULA VANISHES AND OTHER POEMS Inclement (Poetry for the Modern Soul), 2007 Limited Edition

Vespula Vanishes is dedicated to Tori Amos* and tells of a lady come ‘out of the light’, finding the elegant world she could not articulate a day place that ‘ignored her pain’, and via twilight longings this ‘ghostly shape of desire’ dissolved ‘into the night’. Is this title poem of A C Evans’ latest collection decadent psychological portrait or evocation of other (worldly) woman? Of the 25 poems here many raise similar questions as to the boundary condition/genre definition, intriguingly some are predominantly urban or other urban/social/mental decay evocations, and a few are niche-able as more clearly genre, including Lust For A Vampire (Mircalla) her ‘breasts running with gore’, the Dark Tower-set Slave Mask ‘A face I can trust because/ I cannot see your pain./Do you understand why I/ Lick your wounds tonight?’ etc being DF, while there is at least a trace of Sfnal, e.g. Lost Words with its ‘closed sphere’ holding a world last of ‘resplendent/dying/suns’, Only Shadows’ ‘failing star’ (ACE sharing Clark Ashton Smith’s love of star death imagery) and, in the enigmatic post-Surreal definitions of Reflections In A Mirror, alongside those for ‘closed syllable’ and ‘sympiesometer’ is ‘Jupiter’ as ‘an organic arabesque’ and ‘intellect’ as a ‘new type of space’, though the payoff is back to decadent psychology with ‘sacrament…morbid fear of light’.
* Whose only UK No 1 hymned the darkside figure of the ‘Professional Widow’

The poem Slave Mask from Vespula Vanishes also appeared in the collection Dark Tower 3 The Black Throne (2007) from Atlantean Publishing (edited by D J Tyrer) who published Fractured Muse, a previous collection from A C.

A review of Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems by Eve Kimber of Pulsar Poetry Webzine can be found here 

Poetry Is Radar

for A.C. Evans

 Poetry is radar and I am off the map.

History was a stretch of wall running from
source to estuary, crossing the boundaries
between public and private spheres,
the restricted vectors of media outlets.

The inhabitants of the square erupted
in applause at images of bombs dropping
into the airshaft, destroying the archaeology
of knowledge along with the newspaper stand.
Former meaning went silent and cold.

Panoptic spaces work best in panoptic time,
they affect the whole system, whether
you like it or not. The interesting questions
are these: Are there new ways of playing
the role of the engaged intellectual poet?

Is refusal a turning away from our strange
fascination with watching and listening to stories?
Contradictory answers or refusal to respond
might be classed as insolence or insubordination.
Let us linger in the cold embrace of computers

and the dazzle of freely improvised fictions,
before travelling to ambiguity and vacillation
in the application of narrative law, bursting forth
with a flood of posters, meetings and publications.
Geography is virtual, literature is dead, poetry

is radar and that does not permit a simple
juxtaposition of interests or independence
of the working class. Do poets work? I hope
not. The enchanted world of literature, text
and storytelling exists despite itself. We name,

define, index and narrate, try to interfere
with the flow of information, gaze into mirrors
at a false and dangerous image of ourselves.
A hundred flowers bloomed, a thousand lovers
sighed; we lost our identities in the process

and critical information in the mix. Confronted
by questions and small green blips on the screen
we must follow the flow of information and power.
Perhaps it is time to construct a discourse,
time to experiment and be held responsible?

Readers uninterested in abstract or speculative
modes of writing about the event may want
to skip this poem and meet me later in the pub.
The logistics of perception exist only to present
the sublime, come with a built in point-of-view

and a small instruction manual; poetry and stories
exist only to render human what has become
inhuman. Whilst we cannot grasp the unknown,
we can connect to the sudden guest appearances
of language in our world, the autodestruction

of faith as it is replaced with a positive feedback
loop that will propel us through our own limits
into life’s muddy depths. We must no longer seek
equilibrium, must improvise out of time and space,
learn to embrace the everyday logic of events.


© Rupert M Loydelll 2016

Voices In Denial

 

The map is not the territory - Korzybski

Regardless of the style or mode of a poem, regardless even of the stated intentions of the poet, who may vociferously deny his or her own voice, a ‘voiceless poem’ is an impossibility – the phrase “a voiceless poem” is simply a flat contradiction in terms. To be clear, there is no such thing as a voiceless poem.

 Notwithstanding the inherent difficulties of defining the ‘voice’, you cannot surgically remove the individual (‘voice’) from the creative process without destroying the mechanism of the creative process itself. Beyond all the textual analysis and critical theory that can be directed towards a specific poem, the ultimate defining characteristic of the work is the unique ‘signature’ (strong or weak) of the author; it is always the product of unique sensibility. The essential criterion of difference between a poem by one writer and another is ultimately a difference of personality; it is matter of psychology, irrespective of literary theory. This is self-evident. It is also true of poems written by poets who tell us they deny the voice – all you hear is their voice.

The existence of an authorial voice does not imply interpretative exclusivity. In principle, the potential for plural meanings in a text and the creative involvement of the reader remains unaffected by the presence of an authorial voice. The ideal poem will always resist, or subvert, clear-cut interpretations or didactic messages; it is unlikely to conform to expectations derived from the received wisdom of either traditional dogma, or fashionable orthodoxy. Of course any given poem may be less than ideal.

In the Sixties, British poetry was divided into two symbiotic warring camps: conservatives and radicals. The conservative anti-modernist counter-revolutionaries can be epitomised by publications such as Encounter magazine (1953-1967), and by poetic ‘schools’ such as The Movement and the Confessional Poets. The ‘radicals’ comprise what is now known as the BPR (British Poetry Revival), but was recognized in the Sixties as the Underground, or the Children of Albion. We can refer to the latter as the Albion Underground.

The abuse of the word ‘radical’ to mean ‘progressive’ is endemic when looking back at this era and its immediate aftermath. There is an assumption that experimentalism must be ‘radical’ by definition but that is not necessarily the case. Poetic movements of the Left tend to monopolise this terminology, conflating the meaning of ‘progressive’ and ‘radical’, terms sometimes used as a synonym for ‘militant’. Radicals like to think of themselves as working to a ‘progressive’ political agenda, often involving ideas such as social justice and even ‘revolution’ (not just any revolution but The Revolution), hence the somewhat spurious notion of The Underground (in The West no poetry movement was really Underground in the strict sense). Most ‘radical’ poets fall into this category along with, for example, ‘protest poets’ who often are neither innovative nor experimental in the avant-garde sense (‘avant-garde’ here being another vague synonym for ‘radical’).

Surely the term ‘progressive’ (if it means anything) must be related to freedom and – in a literary context – to freedom of expression. Freedom of expression depends upon the concept of ‘the authorial voice’; consequently, if you deny the voice, you deny the agent of expression. To deny the voice is, thus, a reactionary and not a ‘progressive’ position; essentially it as an anti-Romantic moralistic backlash, or often poses as such.

 

The cultural climate of the later half of the twentieth century was very different from that of the Second World War or the period of Late Modernism. The Beat Generation of 1945-1960, haunted by the ghost of Rimbaud was among the last of the ‘Romantic’ groupings defined by the image of the artist-poet as mystical prophet, seer, wandering visionary and popular shaman. Ann Charters has observed that the Beat Poets ‘relied on autobiography’ because their marginal identity leads them to insist ‘on the validity of their own experience instead of accepting conventional opinions and the country’s common myths’. Jack Kerouac defined himself as ‘actually not ‘beat’ but a strange, solitary, crazy Catholic mystic’.

From the 1970s onwards, in the UK, in Continental Europe and in North America, we see, with local variations in chronology, the continuing and ever-expanding influence of academia. ‘Literature’ became an almost exclusive domain of the universities, resulting in most ‘innovative’ poets becoming functionaries in the Academy while most ‘radical’ poets outside the academy still maintained an affinity with the Academic Left, regarding open-neck-shirt scholasticism as the guarantee of the credible. Consequently, the traditional metaphor of the poet as wandering troubadour, alienated ‘genius’, or tortured outsider was replaced by the ‘academic expert in loco parentis’ drawn from the post-Structuralist intelligentsia. A new fashionable orthodoxy was born – Postmodernism.

Postmodern Theory (a diffuse and ambiguous phenomenon full of internal self-contradictions) was a consequence of the French universities general strike of May 1968 (‘the May Events’) in which academics became disillusioned with the traditional Left after the Unions and the Communists sided with the Gaullist Establishment. Displeased by this turn of events they decided that all the Grand Narratives of the Modern or Proto-Modern past (the Enlightenment) were worn-out or invalid – the ‘condition’ was Post-Modern, the ‘situation’ was new. At the same time, Roland Barthes proclaimed The Death of the Author, a Marxist attack on bourgeois individualism, one of the first assaults on the idea of the integral authorial voice.

By the 1970s there were, roughly, two strands or varieties of ‘difficult’ poetry trying to maintain the status of the avant-garde in a post-avant-garde cultural landscape. There was the Euro-centric strand, inspired by Neo-Dada movements such as Fluxus, and there was the American academic (Black Mountain) variety inspired by Charles Olson’s Projective Verse and the Objectivism of Louis Zukofsky.

Fluxus was an early Sixties Action Art movement initiated in 1961 by George Maciunas. It was concerned with the integration of art with life and the negation of social hierarchies. Allen Fisher, a poet once associated with Cobbing’s Writers Forum, is the most noted exponent of Fluxus-inspired poetics in the UK, as can be seen in his publications Place (1974-1981) and Scram (1971-1982). Objectivism was an offshoot of Imagism promoted by Ezra Pound. British Objectivism imported by Basil Bunting, came to be identified with the Northumbrian School centred on Barry MacSweeney, and the Cambridge School whose most famous exponent is J. H. Prynne. Prynne is also an enthusiast for the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (as you might expect Heidegger’s philosophy is both notoriously ‘difficult’ and prone to ultra right-wing interpretations). One aspect of Black Mountain doctrine was the eradication of the ego. Ironically, and despite this, the Post-Albion Underground experimentalists were addicted to huge, grandiose, self-important projects emulating the Cantos, Patterson, Zukofsky’s A and Olson’s Maximus.

Academic poetry differs from the writing of the pre-Albion Underground era in that it substituted theory for personality in the creative process. This was, above all, a Poetics of Process. As a Poetics of Process it paved the way for the next style of American poetry to arrive: the Language Poets.

Like Olson (who, in Proprioception (1964), demanded ‘Wash the ego out.’) the Language Poets were explicit in their denial of the individual ‘voice’ and by their concern to exclude all ‘autobiography’ and ‘ego psychology’ from writing. This stance, (a continuation of the ascetic morality of renunciation, an obvious hallmark of the righteous) which coincided with contemporary debates in the academic sphere about the role of science, identity politics and knowledge epistemology, assumed the illusory nature of the ‘Lyric I’, and the non-existence of facts beyond language as unchallenged givens. These debates were in fact symptomatic of a wider crisis in higher education and the sphere of philosophy. It was Wittgenstein who said that ‘the sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language’. Cynics have argued that this state of affairs had risen out of the widespread view that ‘philosophers’ were out of their depth when it came to confronting the scientific picture of the world (or even the universe). As Stephen Hawing said, science had become too technical and mathematical, so philosophers were impelled to reduce the scope of their enquiries. Language was the last bastion of knowledge, the final frontier for the professional thinker who was not a scientist.

 In many respects these ideas have now become entrenched as key doctrines of ‘radical’ experimentalist poetry in both the US and the UK. In reality it was another generational revolt: they used the denial of the ‘voice’ and the principle of linguistic determinism as tactics to challenge the established status quo and assert their own ‘radicalism’ – just as all ‘new’ movements seek to do. In their 1988 group manifesto the Language Poets said: ‘Our work denies the centrality of the individual artist’. This statement suggests an authoritarian tendency in operation. Nothing is more authoritarian than the denial of, or marginalization of, individual ‘expression’. As an aesthetic or poetic this is entirely retrograde and reveals a mistaken view of the creative process. Furthermore the negation of the individual (Olson’s ‘Wash the ego out’) is the very reverse of ‘radical’, if by its use one means to imply a form of anti-establishment non-conformism. The principle of the ‘unegoistic’ is the basis of the worldwide, culturally dominant morality; an ascetic morality which preaches the selfless ‘unegoistic’ virtues of self-loathing, self-denial and self-sacrifice. These are virtues which, for thousands of years, have been gilded, deified and transcendentalised; glorified as articles of faith whereas, in fact they are nothing but altruistic social conventions; conventions that have evolved by chance to enhance group survival among many animal species, including Homo sapiens.

These various innovations had a major influence on non-mainstream British poetry which, prior to this, had shared, to some extent, a Beat poetry aesthetic, founded on an authorial voice. In Britain the Academic Left consolidated a position based on Post-Structuralism and similar tendencies (e.g. Social Construction Epistemology, Reader Response Theory) influenced by the later writings of Wittgenstein, flawed interpretations of Nietzsche, and an enthusiasm for Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). This latter in particular, together with a wilful misreading of Nietzschean Perspectivism, had a tremendous impact and precipitated what is known as the ‘science wars’. A key idea was the denial of objectivity and the view that the individual is a ‘cultural construction’. There can be no established facts, only incommensurable ‘paradigms’ afloat in a sea of relativistic viewpoints where no given viewpoint is any better or more useful than any other. However, significant transformative action in the real world requires the participation of an integrated unified, human individual/subject. By extension, the same is true of artistic creativity in all forms. Postmodern Theory usually denies this possibility; a convenient doctrine for those zealots of identity politics for whom all tradition and cultural baggage – however inimical – is sacrosanct.

The continuing rise of the mass media since 1945 has consolidated an already incipient post-cultural state. This is a state in which former cultural values have evaporated and ‘high culture’ has lost its historic dominance. It does not follow that the evaporation of ‘high culture’ vindicates the historical claims of Postmodernism – that would require an agreement on the nature of Modernism and a clear distinction (perhaps) between Modernism and ‘modernity’ in order to define ‘post-modernity’ as a viable chronological category. Postmodernism is a worldview or a doctrinal outlook: a limited (but diverse) quasi-philosophical tendency intrinsic to the late Cold War period. The era 1968-1989 saw the rise and fall of ‘Postmodernism’ in this narrow, doctrinal sense. The emergence of post-culture on the other hand can be dated back to the mid-to-late nineteenth century (for Barthes the historical turning point was 1848), a period that saw the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the rise of mass circulation newspapers, department stores, celebrity culture and popular mass entertainments such as Cabaret and Music Hall; the period that saw the first use of plate glass, the Singer sewing machine, the emergence of photography and the first moving pictures.

In the twenty-first century the state of post-culture continues to evolve at an ever-increasing rate of acceleration, rendering the old, nineteenth century ‘vanguard’ model of literary and artistic self-definition superfluous. A crisis of self-definition on this level has created an alienated intelligentsia still clinging to notions of high cultural value. These values have no viable place in a ‘new world order’ of globalised mass ‘infotainment’. We now inhabit a world where hitherto ‘profound’ masterpieces stand revealed as propaganda; a world where a tabloid headline or a refrain from a pop song may well possess more aesthetic value than a poem by J H Prynne or Basil Bunting.

It is ironic that the position we are describing has lead an alienated literary class to deny the value of the authorial voice, not only the voices of others – but their own as well.

 

Bibliography

Barry, Peter. Poetry Wars: British Poetry in the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court. Salt Publishing, 2007.

Barthes, Roland. Writing Degree Zero. Hill and Wang, 2012.

Charters, Ann (ed.). The Penguin Book of the Beats, Penguin Books, 1993.

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. Bantam Press, 1988

Kerouac, Jack. Lonesome Traveller. Penguin Books, 2000.

Leiter, Brian. Nietzsche on Morality. Routledge. 2002.

Silliman, Ron et al. Aesthetic Tendency and the Politics of Poetry: A Manifesto. Social Text, 1988.

Sokal, Alan/Bricmont, Jean. Intellectual Impostures Postmodern Philosopher's Abuse of Science. Profile Books, 1998

Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology. Belknap Press, 1980.

 

Illus: Fear of Mirrors, 1975

Open Moments

The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is “Open Moments”
by A C Evans
Selected Poetry 2010-2016

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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Some of these poems first appeared in

Awen

Bard

Carillon

Decanto

Fractured Moods

Garbaj

International Times

Nerve Damage

Poetry And Paint

Stride

Such As This

The Journal

X-Peri

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