Lines of Acahti and Tomkins - Essay Example

Lines of Acahti and Tomkins Matthew Acahti and Ezra Tomkins write poetry that is most striking for its capturing of free verse structure and the “deep image”. Free verse structure in poetry is a response to and manifestation of the prosaic world in which we currently move and have our being. “We are all secretly longing for prose...Prose then is the natural speech of” our times, “which Vico calls ‘epistolatory or vulgar, which serves the common use of life.’ If one tries to live in ones own age, it doesnt mean abandoning poetry; the task is to keep the mystery, the high spirits, the subtlety, even the verbal brilliance…while letting the sentence itself — not the foot or the line — be the primary unit”, says poet and essayist Robert Bly (“Poetry Daily”, 1998). The original imagists were in resonance with our ever more globe-spanning reach and awareness as individuals as well as the rising tides of material positivism in everyday society and the beginnings of what would become Existentialism in philosophy. They “stated that poetic ideas are best expressed by the actual rendering of concrete images without superfluous commentary. They held the poet must embody his feelings in specific physical analogies that exactly convey his meaning.” (Columbia, 2005). The sparseness and utter concreteness of the original imagists in just a couple of decades evolved into what would come to be called in the second half of the 20th Century, “deep-image poetry”. The deep imagist self-conceptualization was originally inspired by the Spanish canto jondo. The deep imagists were inspired by and invoked images of cows of the ancient world, stones as foreheads where dreams go to grieve, fire being scratched with one’s fingers, and psychic seas that are illuminated by circling eagles. Deep imagery seeks to be at once utterly existential and transcendental, as if poets of our times feel the need to harrow Hell on their way to ascension. Acahti and Tomkins are both haunted by voices, or at least the quest to find them. The voices that they hear or need to hear speak of the need for deep introspection that leads to existential transformation and/or psychological liberation. However, the two writers’ perspectives on the voices that deliver or guide them as well as on their relationship to their imprinting outer events are at odds. Acahti in “Suggestions for stabilizing” requests of us that we “Sit, staring at the spaces/ Between each breath”, because he knows that we need to be cognizant of the fact that “The density/ Of each breathe/ Is difficult to perceive”. Acahti is confident that by observing the sensate world, we can come to something of gnostic insight. Contrastingly, Tomkins relates in “The Story of My Life” that he had a mind that “stood still/For a few years” after he was “coming out of a/ Swamp, heading toward Corpus Christi”, for it was then that he was set upon, almost preyed upon, by the sudden storm. Yet, the “sun storm” itself emerged from within Tomkins’ own mind, with psychic winds blowing “Up to five hundred/Miles an hour.” Blown by the winds of his emotions, he physically alters his driving course. Tomkins is more in search of direction than he is insight. But the poets show those two things to be merely the alternate sides of the same coin. The poets’ voices don’t sound nor come upon them in the same way, either. Acahti seeks knowledge of, or from, “Inaudible & exquisite/Inner sounds”, as if the muse-like or will-o’-the-wisp qualities that he requires bubble up from the depths of his own private, inner wellspring. Tomkins’ voice is virtually admonishing and brash as it tells him, in the midst of his fight with the storm, “Watch/What you’re doing”, coming not only from within but at once from far away. Tomkins seems to heed a voice that came to him, not out of him from any inner wellspring, but from some place outside of himself either known or unknown, calling him not into but out of his own mind, a voice that has now become something of an “objective correlative”. Acahti’s inaudible voices will help his own mind to “rise out/Of its wicker/Basket.” His inner voices are snake charmers, and his mind is the serpent of wisdom needing to be called forth—or perhaps sung forth—by his own inner sonic guides “out of the box” so that it can apprehend new psychic vistas. Tomkins’ voice, by contrast, seems to be more of a driving instructor or a navigator. He watches what he is doing, heeding the voice’s call, and he relates that “that’s why/I am the way/I am”. Driving—either overt or implied—is conjured as a deep image by both poets. Yet as with their haunting voices, their takes on this activity are contrasting. Tomkins calls his driving his “position” and his course his “argument”. He has definite direction as he makes his way towards Corpus Christi. As his position is shown to be in error and he comes up with a different argument, he ends up “moving/East along the Andes” as the psychic storm alters his perceptions. Yet even with this alteration, he still has direction. He still maintains his “objective correlative”, with his circumstances infecting him and forevermore changing the existential being that he is. Acahti sings of the opposite of direction—drifting. Acahti is adamant that “Concern should be more with the drift.” And, paralleling the inaudible, snake charming muses that sing his own mind out of its box, he does not drive himself; he himself is the driven one. How does he set his course? He has no city, no mountain range, no cardinal direction drawing him out. Instead, it’s just, “Driver, follow that cloud”. But, Tomkins and Acahti are in accord about the perception that in the end, they as individuals are the ones commanding their vessels. Inner voices and outer drives continue to weave their threads through Acahti’s “What Is It That Compels?” and Tomkins’ “Skaters”. The voices come in different guises for both poets in these works. The haunting voices now come from objective things said to them or around them. Acahti, at the funeral for his father, is bleakly impressed at the expression of “loving and losing” that he observes with his mother touching the corpse’s hands and saying to her dead husband, “This is our last date”. Tomkins is disturbed by the voice of a passing skater, someone whom he charges was just “Pretending/To be pleas/-ant for a/Moment”, saying to him that he seemed to be the man who “the other/Night” was “crawling/At the/Ice from/Underneath”. Both poets’ voices have become haunted by images of personalized death; and at once the poets remember the circumstantial impressions that came along with those images. Yet again, Acahti takes the more stoic, gnostic view. He watches the drive of people who “move in slow motion/over familiar and treacherous terrain”. From this he takes away impressions of watching a “private screening of an/avant-garde movie on the/life of the mind.” He is still gathering his gnostic insights. Tomkins’ take is, again, more personal, more emotionally charged. The driving he observes now is not that of a car but that of the human body on skates. And he resents these drivers who “get/You” and “Come after/You when/You least/Expect it”. Like death. Works Cited Columbia Encyclopedia (6th Edition). “Imagists”. Columbia University Press. Oct. 12, 2005. < http://www.bartleby.com/65/im/imagists.html >. Johnson, Peter. “Robert Bly” (Interview). “Poetry Daily”, 1998. < http://www.poems.com/blyinter.htm>. Read More