The (bitter)sweet science of the lyric poem
How a poem about a gecko forced me to take a good, long look at myself.
There’s a quote from an interview with the Dalai Lama, that has remained lodged in my head for many years, about how Buddhism is a subjective science. I was still going through the crusading atheist phase of my early thirties at the time that I heard it. It struck me as a bit of an oxymoron in the sense that third-person methodology is an inherent part of science and a core sticking point over whether there can be a science of consciousness.
That isn't to say that Buddhism and other forms of self enquiry aren't rigorously methodical. In the same way that technique can play a part in everything from sport to public speech, subjective enquiry can be just as precise and exacting. It's not that contemplative methods don't yield tangible results, it's more that the subject and experimenter are one and the same.
One thing that eventually sprung me from my crusading atheist niche was the conviction that there are many aspects of subjective experience that cannot be transferred to a third party via the medium of language. Or, as my old mucker Ludwig put it, “there is that which can be said and the rest we must pass over in silence".
It is easy to dismiss a lyric poem (a short poem written in the first person where the speaker is identified with the writer and focuses on their subjective experience) as navel gazing. But, as the Romantic Odes often show us, the lyric poem can be an exact and forensic act of self enquiry. While each stanza of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale might suddenly shift in mood and focus – each shift portrays a vivid and tangible view of a part of Keats's experience before it shifts again with the next stanza.
There's also something to be said for political lyric poetry in which the poet doesn't set up the lyric I as a pure moral centre point from which the corruption of the world is observed and judged. While I wouldn't consider myself to be a committed Jungian, I've often felt that many of these poetic moral paragons could practice a bit more shadow work. My many years on the live poetry scene brought me into contact with these types of poet. Each seemed completely assured of their status as a faultless moral agent, even though many of their actions suggested otherwise.
I think this is one reason why I keep returning to the poetry of Adrian C Louis. An enrolled member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe, Adrian lived and taught in Minnesota and died in 2018. He was probably my favourite living poet in the years prior.
His poetry was personal, political, spiritual and profane. A recurring and striking feature of his poetry was how he was able to investigate his own character and see how aspects of it were corrupted by the greater political milieux he took aim against.
The following poem isn’t necessarily an example of this, but it’s one that I keep returning to:
Meta-Metamorphosis Once upon a time there was a gecko. When he looked into the mirror, he saw Godzilla. Pleased with the power of his imagination, the gecko decided to become a writer. He had a profound ability to spew luxurious words. There seemed to be a direct vein from his brain to his fingertips. Great! Except it bypassed his heart. Shit transpired. Shit backfired. Long story short: that rock in yonder field? Those sweating, haunted eyes peering out? It is a toad who was once a gecko. Adrian C Louis, from Random Exorcisms (2016)
It’s a fun and spiky poem but it was also one that I took very seriously and intensely personally. I felt I was specifically called out at the time that I read it – when I was posting a prose poem every other day that took aim at the manifold ghouls of the 2016 shite-geist. Being that this was probably the peak of my Twitter addiction, my politicised superego was calling the creative shots. Then Meta-Metamorphosis appeared on Adrian's Facebook page and I immediately saw myself as the gecko.
We sometimes exchanged comments and likes on each others’ pages and I genuinely suspected that the poem was about me. That’s how loud and insufferable I was in my work and my moral certitude, in ways that made my previous crusading atheist phase look measured and accommodating.
In the years since, I've not been publishing as many poems but I've got better at looking within. While the gecko in Adrian's poem is able to string a vein between his brain and fingertips, I found that you can't really rig up the same kind of line from the heart.
Sometimes the heart has no words to offer, much how like the flames in Milton's version of hell shed no light. It’s a place where you might find a new poem, or you may find an obstinate muteness, but if you look deeply enough, you’ll always find the truth.
This is the latest in an ongoing series of weekly, shorter posts from Rusty Niall to complement my longer essays that have settled into a monthly delivery pattern. Every week I’ll aim to send something interesting, funny or poetic to your inbox. If you like it then please share it with someone you think might like it too. You can also support my work through some of the options listed below. Cheers.
Niall