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Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World
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Poetics
I look for the way things will turn out spiraling from a center, the shape things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white touched black at branches will stand out wind-glittering totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility, how a thing will unfold:
not the shape on paper -- though that, too -- but the uninterfering means on paper:
not so much looking for the shape as being available to any shape that may be summoning itself through me from the self not mine but ours.
 / Photo by Randy Son Of Robert /
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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger
This poem is a delightful meditation on how form emerges "spiraling from a center" of essential nature.
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:
Form is the expression of a more subtle foundation. Ammons is using the world of color and shape as an exercise for the awareness, a way of looking at the outer to discover the inner.
Looking at the world this way, a stillness settles on us, and we begin to see the stillness of things, even in their movement. And we start to recognize how shape and color both hide and reveal the true nature of things.
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
Looking at the world this way, the perceptual wall between ourselves and what we witness fades away, and we become something new, bigger, open, a collective unity, "the self not mine but ours"...
not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.
Wonderful!
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Ivan
M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright ©
2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or
publishers.