Poetry and the Metaphysical "I": A Lecture by Dorothea Lasky | Woodberry Poetry Room

[Applause] thank you so much Christina and it's really a pleasure um to be here and to be part of this lecture series um I just recently like by recently 15 minutes ago found out that this was the place where Emerson gave a lecture so that it's probably not the best thing to say to somebody right before set the standard slightly slightly high but anyway no but it's great to be here um in a place imbued by his spirit and thank you so much for um the Emerson blessings thank uh so I'm going to be reading for about an hour um so that gives you time you know in the middle to maybe go get a Slurpee or some Dunkin Donuts and uh you know just maybe take a little nap or something but I just wanted to let you know that that was happening and I also wanted to thank um Harvard advocate for having me over to their h house before it was really fun and I'm so glad that you guys are doing all the events and things that you're doing um so this lecture is called poetry in the metaphysical eye and there's sections and I um instead of just saying one two three I'm just going to hold my finger up and I stole that from Matthew roor so I can't take credit for that but so I'm just going to do this but it starts with the quotation from n every name in history is ey the metaphysical eye I am here to speak to you today about the metaphysical eye in poetry I Define this eye as a wild lyric eye one that has no Center and has no way to predict where it will go an eye in a poem that is a shape shifter a Persona that uses unexpected language and imagery that is inconsistent frightening funny and Beyond the idea of a singular self I started thinking about this kind of eye because I think that often times a contemporary reader of a poem will conflate the eye of a poem with the eye of a poet despite that we have been taught in school not to do so this always frustrates me because when we reason out genre distinctions clearly the eye of a poem is always a kind of performer as readers we know that the greatest distance possible is between the eye and its author in a work of fiction and that the closest relationship between the ey and its author is in a work of non-fiction there is often moral obligation that the eye of a non-fiction piece be 100% truthful this can have even legal ramifications take for instance the famous story of James fry is it James Frey or James fry I guess is he here to correct us we don't know um and that's a little bit of my point he first tried to to publish his 2009 book a million little pieces as a work of fiction but when it didn't sell he tried his hand at publishing it as a memoir this worked and he instantly became a national favorite with an Oprah backing and enormous sales but with this Spotlight of fame thrust upon his book people started researching the stories within it and found out that some of it was not entirely the truth when he finally had to admit that the eye of his piece had some distance from the eye of himself as a person he was banished and shunned everyone thought he had done something morally wrong Oprah took away her crown from his book and his Publishers dropped him he was done for the lesson of this of course that a non-fiction ey better be exactly the same person as the author or else the distance between the Persona of a poem and the eye of a poet is a tricky relationship and not as simple is a non-fiction eye should the eye be the poet should it not be the poet poets always have had to make this hard call knowing that even when we make an eye so clearly not ourselves someone will assume this eye is us anyway or if they know us as live persons will put their idea of us on our poor little eye an eye in a poem with no bodily form to buffer it just trying to make its own way the best gift that a poet can give his or her eye is to bestow that it be its own cool animal an eye that is a wild thing a Mercurial trickster that resists all definition that is so close to a self a a self or the self and so far away from it at the same time that the reader can't help but see a real self in it but that is a self who makes so many contradictions who manipulates the reader and his or her expectations to such a degree that the reader is left both full and empty after having encountered it Lura in his essay on the aesthetic of dende discussed how when a piece of written art is good or real it has soul and that a soul is a kind of demon that a piece of art is authentic when the Demonic is at play in it when it has gone to the other world and brought a spirit back to inhabit it and so that when you are experiencing a piece of art with dende in it you will have delight and discuss when you encounter the Demonic and that without a little demon a poem is not a poem it makes sense after all without a demon how else to make the top of your head blow right off there is a sense in lca's idea of the dende that a poem's Persona is infinitely strong to handle this demon that the demon becomes a live alphabet an actual freakish Live Wire that the eye of a poem must encounter control manipulate beautify handle you know just deal with this I not the demon but what has to control the demon of the dende is what I'm concerned with I am concerned with in considering the metaphysical eye the part of the demon that has to know itself and control itself that is so much the puffed up essence of personal it can harness all fragmented senses of self and use them whenever it needs to to to go beyond it in Alice notley's essay the Poetics of Disobedience she writes of an eye that has been stripped down to its Essence full of strength that is bare and fearful but that has a supernatural power and this was written in 1998 so she writes in a book that will soon be published mysteries of small houses I was firstly trying to realize the first person singular as fully and nakedly as possible saying I and such a way as to make myself really nervous really blowing away the gauze and making myself too scared of life and death to care what anyone thought of me or what I was going to say I guess I and she later says I guess I partly wrote mysteries in order to stand this eye better I came to the conclusion in the final poem of the book that self means eye and also means poverty it's what one strips down to who you are when you've stripped down like not Le's idea of the eye a metaphysical eye is who you are when you've stripped down it is an essence of self that cannot only conquer its own demon it can overwhelm the Devil Himself really I mean to distinguish today that the metaphysical eye is like what we think of as dende and it also isn't and what differentiates the metaphysical eye from dende is very important is the Crux of everything important about a poem the eye full of Mojo the eye full of swagger I know from a rather superficial study of hudo mysticism about something called John the Conqueror rot it is said that when one adorns himself or herself with this root an insurmountable Mojo is bestowed upon him or her that when you wear it no one can truly overcome the nasty musk of your ineffable power the power of the root is steeped in the story of a folk hero an African prince John the Conqueror after being sold at America into slavery he had such clever wit and strength of spirit that he evaded not only his Earthly Masters on several occasions but the Devil Himself The Story Goes that John the Conqueror fell in love with the devil's youngest daughter when visiting West hell the hottest most terrible region of Hell the devil's daughter fell quickly in love with him and she gave him a magical axe to get them both out of hell they also stole her father's horses mad and lust drunk and ready to alope nothing could have angered the devil more than having both his baby girl and his hores stolen so the devil chased John the Conqueror all over West hell hoping to kill him John in order to elude his demonic pursuer shape shifted many times into demons and animals and object and weather and in a bout of incomparable Swagger passed out ice water to all of the poor souls Trapped In the Heat of hell it is also said that to this day hell is slightly cooler than it used to be because of this ice water I wouldn't know that in an epic battle John the Conqueror won over his pursuer by tearing off the devil's own arm and beating him with it stealing his daughter away as the Ultimate Prize when a poem contains a metaphysical eye it not only contains the Demonic but a shape shifter that can handle this demon it subverts the reader expectations of it every step of the way and can never be conquered because at each grasp the eye turns into a different thing and a new sort of handle upon it must be made the reader must make a set of mental shifts to master this eye but when an eye of a poem is metaphysical the reader can't ever truly Master it it has been said that if one encounters a bear in the forest all he or she has to do is say the words John the Conqueror and the bear will run away in sheer Terror a metaphysical eye in a poem cannot be conquered but like all incredibly strong things is gorgeous to watch change and flit in the light of our reading it is most gorgeous because of its strength to not just be an overwhelmingly strong self it is most gorgeous to have have the courage to not even pretend to be a self at all some poems that contain the metaphysical eye as a way to define it now I will share with you some poems that I think exemplify key components of the metaphysical eye as a way to better explain what I mean although I will not mention work by all these poets I think that poets who writes poems with the metaphysical eye include Avic Cullis Horus Marshall Walt Whitman Franco her Sylvia pla Eileen miles bernardet mayor Notorious BIG James Tate Nicki Minaj Kanye West and an seon most of these poets I mentioned come from ancient Rome and from America starting around the middle of the last century until the present some of my Fusion of these two places and time periods to define the metaphysical eye has to do with my own Aesthetics and background in poetry my earliest relationships to actual poems with a Shape Shifter I were the ancient Roman poets because these are the first poets I read or most so or more so had read to me when I was in fifth grade my teacher Mrs Jane hanin read us avid's Metamorphoses a book from 8 ad every day over lunch these weird and wonderful stories cut into my soul and made me be a poet I had been writing poems for a few years before fifth grade but these lunchtime readings as they say seal the deal a key component of the Persona of the Metamorphoses is that it is a complete Shape Shifter it is part of a tradition of helenistic metamorphosis poetry but Avid reinvented the form by organizing mys around themes and clumping stories together to tell one cohesive Story the book itself is a series poem with each myth culminating in the start of a new one for example as the story of IO ends with her turn into a cow by the jealousy of Juno the next myth starts with her as a way to introduce a friend of her son the son of the sun she is the central figure in her own myth but acts as an ancillary figure in the next in order to move the entire book forward another myth tells the story of two winged boys who join the Argonauts only for the next myth to begin with just the entire group of the Argonauts enveloping these two boy boys into a whole set set of people again moving the book forward as a NeverEnding narrative Hydra in this way the Persona of the Metamorphoses book poem is never one being but a constantly shifting perspective morphing and metamorphosizing into the next Monster a thing a constant eye with which Avid can overlay the feelings dreams and fear of each new being an eye that has to control the demon the entire story itself a story of what it means to be human in their shape shifter poems with a metaphysical eye play with their relationship to their reader in a way that is manipulative they do so in a way that we often times refer to as postmodern although this voling relationship has happened long before the postmodern age which is an age I don't believe in in case you were wondering I believe that all works created since modernism began are just modernists and will continue to be so for a long time nevertheless poems with the metaphysical eye are postmodern is that they take away a fourth wall a veil of safe performative distance between the Persona and the reader they make evident that the Persona of the poem sees you they may act at times as if they seemingly don't realize you are peering over their shoulder but at some point they let you know that they know all of this they do through an NE through an everchanging display of human emotions through an eye that takes on a NeverEnding stream of costumes to make beautiful the many moods and their hot and awful Divinity to conflate both hate and love catalus a Roman poet is another poet who uses the metaphysical eye he fills his poems with both hate and love take for example this poem hi there girl with a nose by no means tiny non dark eyes and two most UND dainty ankles not long fingers and undry lips besides a tongue that's far from overly refined you bankrupt from for my's mistress does the province spread the word that you're attractive do men pick on you to compare my lesbia with now oh this tasteless age ill bred and witless here Calis dresses down a poor big noosed girl telling her she has a bad case of the cankles seemingly just for the sake of it it is unclear if this is a Revenge poem to this girl for a possible rejection or if his purpose all along was to write a love poem for his beloved lesbia who I will discuss in a moment as we see with the above poem If Calis doesn't like someone it is with a lethal and I stringed method with which he lets them know as he writes to another person if public judgment cominius should ensue that your Hy old age soiled by impure habits was cut short I personally don't doubt but that some greedy vulture would first be fed your severed tongue and then your eyes would be pecked out and eaten by a blackthroat crow your guts scoffed by dogs the Rest by Wolves catalus has so much Mojo So Much Swagger that he can destroy a person with his words he has insurmountable power to feel as he wants and as strongly as he wants C Tellus as lesbia or clodia as she was known as a Woman in real life is the focal point of many of his poems particularly his love poetry although in his 116 surviving songs he goes from telling her there are not enough kisses he can give to her to the fact that she's an awful still the kisses win out as he writes let's live my lesbian let's love and let us esteem the gossip of old men is equal to one penny Suns can set and Rise but after that brief light goes out there is the one unending night to get through give me a thousand kisses then a 100 then a thousand more a second hundred then another thousand then a 100 then when we've had our thousands the numbers will be confused and we will surely lose count so that no evil eye can look upon us to know the final sum of all our kisses cis's Swagger comes from the golden quality of his blackened tongue no boundary can stop his passion when he loves someone like lesbian no amount of kisses can ever be enough he has an almost Supernatural passion where the people looking on the potential evil eyes can ever even begin to count the love he has for lesbia and as we see when he hates someone his words can hurt the person he is able to use his poetry to hate and love and to make this hate and love happen simultaneously calus's metaphysical eye is able to hate and love simultaneously with immense mojo as he writes I hate and love you wonder perhaps why I do that I have no idea I just feel it I am tortured it is the openness and Bluster with which his Persona exalts the beauty of human feeling both good and bad that creates the metaphysical I inist poems after all to hate and love is to be alive and showing alive Persona is what a metaphysical eye can and will do and will do well my favorite part of the Bible is from The Book of Revelations in which Christ advises a passionate relationship to God that is both full of hate and love and as he says because you are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm I shall vomit you out of my mouth God doesn't want you if all you feel is lukewarm for him a metaphysical eye is both hot and cold most of the time hot and cold at the same time but is never lukewarm what is the point in being lukewarm neither God nor your reader will have you following along my own aesthetic sensibilities and blinders I have always thought that American Poets of the mid to the end of the 21st century contain the metaphysical eye a classic poem that contains the metaphysical eye is Eileen miles an American poem which I'll share parts of you Parts with you right now so the first part I'm going to share is she writes I was born in Boston in 1949 I never wanted this fact to be known in fact I've spent the better half of my adult life trying to sweep my early years under the carpet and have a life that was clearly just mine and independent of the historic fate of my family can you imagine what it was like to be one of them to be built like them to talk like them to have the benefits of being born into such a wealthy and Powerful American family I went to the best schools had all kinds of tutors and trainers traveled wildly met the famous the controversial and the Not So admirable and I knew from a very early age that if there were ever any possibility of escaping the collective fate of this famous Boston family I would take that rot and I have and later she writes I am beginning to think there is no escaping history a woman I am currently having an affair with said you know you look like a Kennedy I felt the blood rising in my cheeks people have always laughed at my Boston accent confusing large for Lodge party for potty but when this unsuspecting woman invoked for the first first time my family name I knew the gig was up yes I am I am a Kennedy my attempts to remain obscure have not served me well starting as a humble poet I quickly climbed to the top of my profession assuming a position of leadership and honor and then later she writes I am a Kennedy shouldn't we all be kennedies this nation's greatest city is home of the businessman and home of the rich artist people with Beau teeth who are not on the streets what shall we do about this dilemma listen I have been educated I have learned about Western Civilization do you know what the message of Western Civilization is I am alone am I alone tonight I don't think so so I might ask you now how many people know Eileen miles's work I guess we all know and of these people who do not know it who believed that e mes was a Kennedy always when I'm teaching this poem there'll be a few students that will say Oh I thought she was when they hear that poem so some of you may have raised your hands Not In This Crowd I mean we are at Harvard after all so I think we knew but some of you may have raised your hands um if you don't know anything about or her work it's a fair assessment after all she states in her poem that she is one or more so her Persona does still her shape shift her eyes at work here we believe her eye is a Kennedy because of the feeling and Fanfare she brings to this identity the self of the poem however false becomes Universal as it feels and expresses these human feelings both a hatred and a love simultaneously those of us who know who miles actually is a female gay poet from a lower middle class suburb of Boston can start to see her posture of a Kennedy in the poem tinged with complexity why would a poet like her State through her metaphysical eye that she is one if not to speak from this socioeconomic male-gendered place of authority after all we listen to her poem closely as we thought she might actually be a Kennedy we listen from this flash of ostentation this overwhelming power position there was magic in her Mojo So she put the Magic in her eye once we realized her ey wasn't simply a powerful Kennedy but a powerful trickster we began to ask ourselves who is this metaphysical eye that she speaks both with and from how can it take on the costume of a Kennedy so effortlessly effortlessly I have problems with less words but that's another story so Bernadet May is another poet who employs a metaphysical eye in her poems her eye is always shapeshifting and we are never clear who or what it is in her poem Sonet she writes you jerk you didn't call me up I haven't seen you in so long you probably have a tan and besides that instead of making love tonight you're drinking your parents to the airport I'm through with you bouis boys all you ever do is go back to ancestral Comforts only money can get even calus was rich but nowadays you guys settle for a couch by a soporific color cable TV set instead of any Arc of love no wonder the GI Joe team blows it every other time wake up it's the middle of the night you can either make love or die at the hands of the Cobra Commander and then she has in the poem If you've um read her reader she has to make love turn to page 121 to die turn to page 172 so in the poem she turns the rejection over the guy not calling her up his unfortunate fate to be immortalized in a great palem for being a dud which should teach all of you Duds into an attack on his gendered and socioeconomic privilege until she becomes a Mystic eye bestowing sex or death or both upon her readers depending on what page of her book they choose to read and this Mystic eye does this in a magical book she makes the book magical with this eye for what may be lost when a reader reads this poem other than in her revered the bernardet May reader is that page 121 reveals a poem about sex but there is no page 172 so that the reader who chooses death must imagine a page that does not exist in a supernatural imaginative space that only mayor's eye has the power to create another classic metaphysical eye poem is Ted bergan's red shift and as it goes here I am 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame the air is biting February Fierce arabas on the way to tree and winter streetcape I drink some American poison liquid air which bubbles and smoke to have character and to lean in the streets look for Allan Frank or me Allan is a movie Frank disappearing in the air it's heavy with that lightness heavy on me I heave through it them as the Calvados is being sipped on Long Island now 20 years almost ago and the man smoking is looking at the smilingly attentive woman and telling who would have thought that I'd be here nothing wrapped up nothing buried everything love children hundreds of them money marriage ethics a politics of Grace up in the air swirling burning even are still now more than ever before not that practically a boy serious in corduroy carcoat eyes penetrating the winter Twilight at Sixth and bow in 1961 not that pretty girl 19 who was going to have to go kening into middleaged so to burn and to burn more fiercely than even she could imagine so to go not that painter who from very first meeting I would never and never will leave alone until we both vanish into the thin air we signed up for and so demanded to breathe and who will never leave me not for sex nor politics nor even for stupid permanent estrangement which is only our human lot and means nothing know not him there's a song California Dreaming but no I won't do that I am 43 when will I die I will never die I will live to be 110 and I will never go away and you will never escape from me who am always and only a ghost despite this Frame Spirit who lives only to nag I I am only pronouns and I am all of them and I didn't ask for this you did I came into your life to change it and it did so and now nothing will ever change that and that's that alone and crowded unhappy fate nevertheless I slip softly into the air the world's furious song flows through my costume the poem starts Placid enough we are placed in a New York scene with the Persona of the poem looking at it and placing himself within it but by by the end of the poem The Persona has come back from another dimension on the ready after being called back by the reader after all I didn't ask for this you did into being not just pronouns but all of them by the end of the poem The Body itself is just a costume the metaphysical eye must wear as the world's furious song flows through it so violently I have always found American hip hop from the late 20th century into the present to contain the Met physical eye and surplus the eye in a hipop song shifts subverts and manipulates listeners expectations and has a great bravado it is an eye that must cont control the demon of the dende Kanye Weston power exemplifies this as he writes I'm living in that 21st century doing something mean to it doing it better than anybody you ever seen do it screams from the haters gotten nice ring to it I guess every superhero need his theme music no one man should have all that power the clocks ticking I just count the hours Wes ey tells everyone confidently that he is the best poet of alive that he a superhero can make beautiful music his theme music from even the screams from the haters that his eye is so strong it can take what might break another Persona and make it a strength his metaphysical eye conquers all who oppose it through poetry and wins The Ultimate Prize of Power by having a person's power one of my favorite hip hop poets Notorious BIG or biggie as we lovingly know him embodies the metaphysical eye a listener can never pin down his eye with its overwhelming arrogance and simultaneous vulnerability and the sheer power of His hate and love of his reader listener one of his best songs is the song juicy from his 1994 album ready to die which he begins with the classic metaphysical eyeline all you hoes get a grip in this song he goes on to tell a rags to Rich's story to bestow hope upon the listener in the power of poetry of changing one's life circumstance and in particular his own unparalleled skills as a poet that it's all about believing in one's own power and as he sings it was all a dream I used to read Word Up Magazine salt and pepper and Heavy D up in the limousine hanging pictures on my wall Ever every Saturday rrap attack Mr Magic Marley Maul I let my tape Rock till my tape pop smoking weed and bamboo sipping on Private Stock way back when I had the red and black lumberjack with the hat to match remember rapping duke you never thought that hip hop would take it this far now I'm in the Limelight cuz I rhyme tight time to get paid blow up like the World Trade Born Sinner the opposite of a winner remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner peace to Ron G Brucey B Kid Capri Funk Master Flex Love Bug Star Ski I'm blowing up like you thought I would call The Crib same number same Hood it's all good and and if you don't know now you know he Biggie's eyes what we are talking about it's in the Limelight because it Rhymes tight poetry not only has the power to change his real circumstance from poverty to riches but Biggie's genius as a poet makes him both the best poet and Rich and much like miles or mayor biggie infuses Mojo into his eye not only to empower it but to empower his readers to change their own circumstance ances even the coral refrain of the song seems to bestow Mojo upon its listener you know very well who you are don't let them hold you down Reach for the Stars you had a goal but not that many cuz you're the only one I'll give you Good and Plenty Biggie's metaphysical eye eludes its listener through its bravado and an ultimate act of kindness a kind of positive charge for eyes like it who might otherwise be silenced to confuse these eyes with their own power a kind of selfless elusive quality that so many poems with the metaphysical eye employ the bees in my process of uncovering the metaphysical ion poetry I have found a weird thread in the form of bees in many poems that have a metaphysical eye there is the prevalence of bee imagery and the symbol of a poet and the process of writing poetry twin together the Roman poet hor from uh 65 to 8 BC in his poem to Ulus Antonius family refers to his work as a poet to that of a bee and as he writes I create my verses in the manner of a humble Matan bee that goes Gathering pollen from all the pleasant time and labors among the many Groves on the banks of flowing Tyber telling the poet he addresses in this particular poem that this poet's plight is to celebrate Caesar whereas horus's work as a poet is to exalt oh lovely son oh worthy to be praised a seemingly more inconsequential type of work the poet's work to worship the lovely son but one that actually is the work of a sear and otherworldly Master a metaphysical eye that steadily worships the Divine and the natural world that conquers the universe in Finnish folklore there is a story of lemon Ken I'm sorry that I've butchered that I'll just call him lemon who went and he goes to the North Country to try and get the hand of the fairest maiden in the land an old cow herd who he offended with his plight kills him by the river and cuts his body into eight pieces and throws this in the river and his mother you know goes and finds the body pieces and Fishes them out with a magic rake and puts the pieces back together again only to make a speechless doll of a man knowing that she needed to give her son voice again she called on the bees to help him and bring him honey but all that we know of how hard bees work her bees really have to work very hard in this story for his sad mother these bees travel to metola Fair Meadows to get a special honey but then this honey does not help him speak so these bees have to travel again this time across nine Lakes to an island to bring bring back an even more special and Powerful honey but still this second kind of Honey does not help her son so on a third Journey these bees go past the Stars into the Creator's realm and bring back a honey that ends up curing her son who speaks and becomes alive again the bee holds the magic honey that makes the voice of a poet that can make an I speak and for this reason the metaphysical ion poem not only becomes the powerful bee they it respects the work ethic of the bee and in many cases tries to emulate it the metaphysical eye becomes humble at the magic of the bee and then takes the magic into its poems Timothy donelly in a new poem called traveler which I believe was in this issue of the Harvard Review so particularly local writes of the process of bees honey making and the humility and possible futility of being a worker bee and also a poet and as he writes in this long poem you sat beside me on the green chair birdlike fidgeting in your girlhood as we read together from a magazine facts about the lives of honeybees nothing to be afraid of to generate on average a single pound of honey a colony has to draw nectar from 2 million flowers or enough red roses to send a dozen red roses to every resident of Columbia Missouri and to visit all those flowers The Colony has to fly collectively 50,000 miles over 1 the distance from the Earth to the Moon which holds our thoughts in place if we have nowhere else to place them as when we read the average worker bee in all its lifetime will only produce one 12th a teaspoon of honey meaning that I have stirred the life work of a dozen bees into my teacup thoughtlessly a devour of Life works this present only one example I turn my head away he here in donal's poem The ey sympathizes with the bee who like the poet must fly as a colony over 50,000 mil to make one 12th a teaspoon of honey the bee who liked the poet works for a very long time to make something powerful magical and comparatively tiny to all its effort there are so many bees and poems with the metaphysical eye when you start looking for them and I have found that once you start looking you can't stop they almost start swarming at you for safo a metaphysical eye poet only a fragment remains in her work that mentions the bee but she conflates it with her Persona as she writes neither for me nor the honeybee Emily Dickinson has lots of be poems take for example her short poem Fame is a bee Fame is a bee it has a song it has a sting a to it has a wing for Dickinson Fame and Power in Mojo is something the metaphysical eye can have and it can sing and sting and fly in a collection of his Pros Whitman writes in a section called specimen days of bumblebees with with a similar sort of respect as he writes of the May month month of swarming singing mating Birds the Bumblebee month month of the flowering lilac and then my own birth month and he writes of sensual overload of Nature and living and because he is a poet he feels to record this overload with his characteristic and large undulating detail t as he writes of the bluebirds grass birds and Robins in every direction the croaking of the pwn frogs and the first White of the Dogwood blossoms now the golden dandelions in Endless profusion spotting the ground everywhere the white cherry and pear blows the wild violets but it is the bees that capture his poet heart with metaphysical kinship as he writes of the bees conveying me to a new and pronounced sense of strength Beauty vitality and movement and he writes of these wild bees whose loud and steady humming makes an undertown to the whole and to my mood and the hour for a Whitman it is the hum of the bees that make them like the poet with the gift of musical composition of song they are overwhelmingly strong beautiful and vital with immense Mojo they have magic in their song creating a symphony with their loud and steady humming with their overwhelming power which overtakes a wild Garden in Spring even in their incessant undertone they overtake everything the hipop singer Nicki Minaj uses the symbol of a bee to address her work as a poet to other poets as she writes in bees in the trap a play of on the word be and being ain't and they ain't saying nothing a hundred can't tell me nothing I bees in the trap be bees in the trap I bees in the trap be bees in the trap and then goes on to infuse her metaphysical eye with classic bravado and Mojo in the first verse of her song and as she sings man I B did that man I've been popped off and if she ain't trying to give it up she get dropped off let me bust that yui bust that open might spend a couple th just to bust that open rip it off no joking like your name Hulk Hogan comparing herself through her eye to the great wrestler Hulk Hogan infusing her eye with sheer power and strength an eye full of money who might spend a couple thou just to bust that open Mojo and muscle as she writes rip it off no jok and like your name Hulk Hogan Sylvia Plath writes poems of full of the metaphysical eye in her final book she summon many bees some of this is due to her actual biography her father was a beekeeper however like Horus and Nicki Minaj and other Poets of the metaphysical eye she uses bees as a kind of battlecry in the arrival of the bee box she describes the confinement of being a bee of being a poet a thing being been in this lifetime and a box that by the end of the poem is only temporary as she writes I ordered this clean wood box square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift I would say it was the coffin of a or a square baby were there not such a din in it the box is locked it is dangerous I have to live with it overnight and I can't keep away from it there are no windows so I can't see what is in there there is only a little grid no exit and her desire to give these little bees these poets these dangerous poets are eyes of voice much like biggie did how can I let them out it is the noise that appalls me most of all the unintelligible syllables it is like a Roman mob small taken one by one but my God together I lay my ear to Furious Latin I am not a Caesar I have simply ordered a box of Maniacs they can be sent back they can die I must feed them nothing I am the owner and in her Palm stings pla summons the queen bee and her metaphysical eye Becomes Her and as she writes barehanded I hand the Combs the man in white Smiles barehanded our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet the throats of our wrists Brave lies he and I have a thousand clean cells between us eight Combs of yellow teacups and the hive itself a teacup white with pink flowers on it with excessive love I enameled it and later she wonders in the poem is there any Queen at all in it if she is there she is old her wings torn Shaws her long buddy body rubbed of its plush poor and bare and un queenly and even shameful I stand in a column of winged UNM miraculous women honey dredgers I am no drudge though for years I have eaten dust and dried plates with my dense hair and seen my strangeness evaporate blue Dew from dangerous skin will they hate me these women who Scurry whose news is the open Cherry the open Clover it is almost over I am in control here is my honey machine it will work without thinking opening in Spring like an industrious virgin and in the Palm plast metaphysical eye has become the queen bee takes on her power and goes beyond the women who only Scurry whose news is the open Cherry the open Clover and becomes the horrific thing later in the poem The Shape Shifter bee monster who with unearthly bravado speaks for more than herself who has summoned the demon of the dende trapped it like the devil's horses and and rote into the Town Square of the poem smiling a face full of brightly colored ribbons to conclude all of these bees and Poets and eyes are important to me because as a poet I want to write poems that hate and love their reader simultaneously that are more than lca's demon but are the harness of other worldly dread human heat that Empower a reader to overcome the devil to through beautiful language this is I think one of the main answers to the common question how is poetry relevant to our society today it is relevant because it is a way to amalgamate dark and vibrant human emotion and permit its expression two and for and through everyone and maybe this lecture today is this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me i' never amount to nothing because I have been a little silent thing too I write my own poems out of necessity summoning as much bravado as I can and maybe I do this because when I started writing poetry my eye was a tiny eye that I had to blow John the Conqueror roote upon to become big because we all start small one cell one poem one word One utterance into the dark the point of it all is to go beyond that beginning to become something else whatever that poem may be and maybe the eye in my own poems is still very small but I promise you that when I'm gone my eye is going to be as big as this whole room and if you are a poet listening or reading this here's my Battle Cry for you to be big to as PL says the bees are flying they taste the spring thank you very much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Harvard University

Views: 25,279

Keywords: harvard, poetry, reading

Id: ACk6EEQUFM0

Length: 46min 51sec (2811 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2013