Looking for Dragon Smoke - Essay Example

Essay, English Poetry Introduction Robert Bly has argued, in his essay “Looking for Dragon Smoke,”that a great work of art often harbors a long floating leap at its core, a leap where the writer moves into unknown or unconscious territory. In his collection All-American Poem, the poet Matthew Dickman follows this tradition in his poems and makes liberal use of such concepts. What you articulate is important; but how you do that is more important. He touches some essential aspects of humanity and his poems propound that happiness and sorrow are alternative bests of the same heart. He cautions that the world is wavering by accepting the pleasures of the technological advancement and the impact of the materialistic civilization on the society. He observes the small experiences of life as the unique gift of Nature and wonders about the play of the pair of opposites. He treats grief as an essential ingredient of human life and he is not overwhelmed by those feelings as such and his poems do not take extreme positions. Thus an ordinary trip to farmer’s market or an incident of suicide does not evoke extreme thought-currents in him. His poems are ever calm and the worst situations do not create any harmful waves in his heart and also in the hearts of the readers. The readers experience the pleasure to follow him, not the compulsion. His voice is friendly with an ingredient of humor and at the same time funny, warm and not disrespectful and he has the strong inclination to connect with others through grim and violent situations or incomprehensible circumstances. The poet’s drive for empathy is pleasingly positive, as he searches, sometimes frenziedly, for any appearance of hope. Having said this, one important aspect relating to the poetry is, a poet does not have control over his emotions in those inspirational moments, as poetry is hailed as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Nature “scraps joy” for the poet and that bounty flows through his pen for the benefit of those who have the capacity to accept such simple but profound bounties. Dickman makes his hearty intentions quite clear in “Slow Dance.” “There is no one to save us because there is no need to be saved. I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed the front yard.”(38-41) Dickman is the master of the inner world of an individual as such he can correctly express and interpret the different types of emotions generating therein. When one begins reading a poem and reaches up to the end, one feels amply rewarded as they ooze a sense of fulfillment. Tony Hoagland, in his introduction to All-American Poem, says, “We turn loose such poets into our culture so that they can provoke the rest of us into saying everything on our minds. They use the bribery of imagination to convince us of the benefits of liberty.” Materialistic civilization and internet revolution have ushered an era of push buttons and a life of hurry. In “Slow Dance” the author advises the reader to check the momentum, think positively, shun the distractions and enjoy each and every incident of life, as if they are the nature-ordained blessings. Each action, each result, each experience has an element of joy and one has to scrap through it. There are two types of slowing down in life—one you slow down unable to bear the burden of life; second, you willfully and consciously slow down, take time to appreciate life, contemplate on events or developments and try to discover their meanings. In that situation you are neither the winner nor the defeatist. What matters is your inquisitiveness to know the reality of that experience. Every moment of life is meaningful, contains new experiences, and you will not be able to experience them for the second occasion in your lifetime, as such they are special. The sights, sounds and events ingrained in that moment are all special. An eternal music is being played and one needs to take note of the notes of music being played at a particular time. Poetry flows not through the pen of the Dickman, but also through the heart and such his pen becomes the medium, not the mode of his poems. Conscious efforts and passion are not seen in his poetry and the flow of ideas is even. No poet can avoid including one’s life experiences in the poems and Dickman is no exception to this rule. But he does not identify himself with one community. “Scraping for Joy” means trying to get joy in life whenever and wherever possible. The natural companions of joy are understanding and compassion. Empathy is the most important thing a human being should attempt to do. But the poet does not make conscious efforts to be empathetic. He visualizes a grim picture about the goings on in the secular world, everyday it presents violent and unpleasant scenes, and some tangible efforts need to be made to bring joy in those areas. An element of empathy is needed there. Thus by “scraping for joy” the poet means to look out for joy at every available opportunity for individual happiness and for societal peace. “Scraping for joy” also means willingness to find joy in acts seemingly capable of generating opposite types of reactions. A poet with equanimity of mind can only own such a balanced state of mind. While writing the poem Dickson only thinks about himself and he is in the mode of an introvert. He is not thinking about a particular audience for his poems. He just writes on the strength of the experiences gained in the past and his vision of the future, but the undercurrent of all those poems is feelings of empathy. He just wants that his poems must be read, and he is not worried about the reviews whether they are good or bad. This shows his true love for literature and his capacity to understand the feelings of the audience, whom he genuinely loves as such he enthusiastically waits for their reactions with loving hope and curious to know how they are affected by the contents in the poem. The process of reading the poem by the people is more important to the poet than the product, meaning their favorable or unfavorable reactions are of no consequence to him. An anonymous poet writes, “They may cross the moon, beat the stars, but probe they must the mystery of my eve’s wink.” Technological innovations may reach stupendous heights, but what is the end-product of those innovations, and whether they can bring joy to humankind in the real sense is the most important question. If, they don’t the whole effort is colossal waste. But who is to decide happiness or joy ingrained in a particular innovation or product is a matter of conjecture. The poet articulates the same issue and writes in “Slow Dance”, “More than putting another man on the moon, more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga, we need the opportunity to dance with really exquisite strangers.”(1-4) We need the opportunity to dance with really exquisite strangers means we must have/avail opportunities to enjoy the new experiences, good or bad, and try to know their essence, as to why they have arrived in our lives and study their effects on our mental poise. Do they such experiences cause dent in out personality? Do they contribute to our joy? Love is compared to a bird with colorful wings that ever remains caged in the heart and at the same time it moves there with tantalizing speed to make one a bard. Just as one should not be careless in love, Dickman’s poems, particularly “Slow Dance” should not be read in a hurry. One needs to immerse in the poem to get at its import, and think again and again, about the profound possibilities. This poem has the spiritual moorings. It is like the ocean, though wavy and turbulent on the surface, its deep waters are calm. In this poem, he talks to the reader like a friend, In one’s effort to “scraping for joy” one should read his poem “Love.” In this poem he creates a conglomeration of love scenes with telling effect and deals with manifold ideas. “A love that can be translated into any language: I hope you do not suffer.” He articulates the traditional love scenes like weddings and restaurants, moves to love nature mentioning about corn fields in love with the scarecrows, and jumps to sex issues describing a penis taking off like a spaceship. He succeeds in creating powerful images on the subject of love. The strength of the poem “Slow Dance” is the capacity of Dickman is to see the positivity amidst the host of negativities. He is right on that count. Had there been no desert, there would not have been oases either! Love baffles definition and each one sees the new horizon. Dickman writes, “I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you” (40) and through this observation he articulates that the life of lovers has to go on like a train that speeds on two parallel tracks. The scientists can measure the distance to the sun and the moon, but one can never quantify the intensity of the feeling of love in the heart of a human being and the most astonishing effect is it varies from individual to individual. Dickman articulates, “There are no accountants/ balancing the books of love, measuring/ the heart’s distance and speed.” Heart is the storehouse where millions of hopes of the lovers which are kept alive! Love creates such a powerful impact on the heart, that after the love’s first tremor, the heart is never the same forever! The poem “Slow Dance” is the personification of the pleasure principle, but it is the controlled pleasure. They are simple, yet profound intellectual conclusions can be drawn by the discriminating reader. Tony Hoagland, APR/Honickman First Book Prize Judge opines, “Matthew Dickman"s all-American poems are the epitome of the pleasure principle; as clever as they are, they refuse to have ulterior intellectual pretensions; really, I think, they are spiritual in character-free and easy and unself-conscious, lusty, full of sensuous aspiration.... We turn loose such poets into our culture so that they can provoke the rest of us into saying everything on our minds." His poems fathom the blissful nature of the lives of the average citizen. The subject of the poem treats the sacred and secular on an even keel. The slang used is both sacred and not- so-sacred. But Dickman knows how to convert simple incidents of life into profoundly emotional moments, and for doing so, one needs to have spiritual insight. Dickman articulates that there are wonders happening in the world at all times, and one needs wait for them and grasp their beauty and importance as they happen. There is nothing vague in nature; everything is creative and carries a silent message of love for the humankind and we should develop the capacity to accept and share it. He gives the message positive energy pervading in the world around us. To him love (the other name for scraping for joy) is positive energy and as such he makes use of it quite often in his poems. The importance that he gives to small incidents of life and tries to discover the latent beauty in it, reminds me of the book “Small is Beautiful” by British Economist E. F. Schumacher wherein he emphasizes the role of small things in the life of a human being, and how mindless adoption of machines for mass production in factories has ruined the beauty and happiness of the human soul. The synopsis of the poem “Slow Dance” is: This is the mini-portrait of America. The themes of love and small incidents of relating to the personal aspects of life and love, the broken psyche of the county, and the trials and tribulations one has to face in life, and issues related to self-discovery and transcendence are intelligently introduced in the poem. The ideas touch the grassroots level of the life of an individual and the totality related to the art of living. Spirituality is not something that relates to what is high on the sky. It relates to humankind residing on Planet Earth. That which is not practical cannot be spiritual either. Spirituality is not something that is grim. The content of this poem is serious at the same time it is unpretentious and unassuming explanations relating to the realities of life. In every situation one must perfect the art of scrapping joy. Some of them were unable to scrap joy, where it was available, and when it was available in different stations and situations of life and such they indulged in act of self-injury like committing suicide or self-shooting. People need to know how to enjoy life in the real sense of the term. One example of the family aspect was in his poem, “Trouble,” where he unremittingly talks about a lot of different luminaries who had committed suicide and how they did it. For example, “Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills to bed when she was thirty-six…. (1-2) and “My brother opened / thirteen Fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body / until it wasn’t his body anymore” (21-22).They all did what they did because they were not perfect in the art of “scraping for joy” when the various situations in life provided them with those opportunities. He almost goes hysterical about love when in the beginning of the book in “Slow Dance” he describes dancing with his brother. “Like being held in the arms / of my brother. The slow dance of siblings. / Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him, / one of my great loves, he is absolutely human, / and when he turns to dip me / or I step on his foot because we are both leading, / I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.” (6-7.17-20). He creates a situation that is at once beautiful and then immediately it plunges the reader in sorrow. But personally the writer seems to possess a great sense of equanimity, he is resilient and he discusses the serious issue of the death of his brother as if it is a routine matter of life. But there is an undercurrent of anguish in his unexpressed emotion. Conclusion Matthew Dickman works well on the emotional world of the reader and it is possible to relate to his articulations about human love. He kindles the process of awakening sometimes unhurriedly and often abruptly and takes the reader to the wonderland of true emotions that make and break the life. His poems are a mixture of hardcore and easy to understand genre of poetry. He has the perfect estimate of the human experiences in the modern world impacted by the materialistic civilization. People, in their made race for accomplishments, are indeed “scrapping for joy” with no time, patience and understanding to go in search for the permanent joy and how a human being wears the mask to suppress the true feelings of love and lust. The sojourn through Dickman’s poems is an unforgettable journey through the wonderland of emotions whose beginning and ending are impossible to fathom. To Dickman each little feeling of love is an education and liberator and “scrapping for joy” needs to be the exercise of human life that must go on relentlessly, as each opportunity missed is the loss in the process of upward spiral in life and it retards the inner growth of an individual. Works Cited Matthew Dickman - ForPoetry.com Accessed on December 9, 2013? Read More