Comments on: Poetry and Prophecy

By: Jilly

Jilly — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:16:05 +0000

Akhmatova was pretty darn prophetic sometimes.
I always interpret a fear to write or do something as a recommendation that it is, in fact, what I should do hahaha.

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:16:47 +0000

Emily, yes, I understood the context in which you mentioned plagiarism, and thanks for the link. Still, the word in any context is very alarming to me, since my poems are all by me and all I have to show for myself. That is, it’s hard enough protecting ones own body in this crazy world, but then if you have a body of work, then that needs to be protected, too. This issue is on my mind a lot lately.
I’ll concede that there may have been a time decades ago when I read about Taoism, but it was long forgotten. I prefer to think of the coincidence I’ve been describing as an example of the mysterious strength of poems and of the unconscious. So I read a couple of poems by a Taoist priestess, and the mysterious strength of those great poems (even in translation!) worked on my mind in a mysteriously strong way, and then I wrote a seemingly ordinary humdrum poem that mysteriously translated Wu Tsao’s beliefs, or something.
I’ve wondered what I might have in common with Wu Tsao, who was from another century and side of the world. It could be seclusion. Apparently she was secluded in the country when she was a Taoist priestess. Well, I’m secluded in the country, too. So then I wonder if seclusion in the country might be more conducive to being receptive to the swarm of ideas in the world. Whatever!

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:39:36 +0000

Well, I suppose actually there were signs predicting the molar for several days that I was blind and deaf to–irritability and low-grade fever. So maybe there is a molar connection with prophecy…
Antoine, I would certainly consider those lines oracular.

By: Antoine Cassar

Antoine Cassar — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:33:26 +0000

Would you consider these lines by the young Neruda to be prophetic?
“Así en horas profundas, sobre los campos, he visto
doblarse las espigas en la boca del viento.”
“Thus in profound hours, over the fields, I have seen
the ears of wheat bending into the mouth of the wind.”

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:23:17 +0000

Dear Taoist priestess,
Gosh, I didn’t in anyway mean to accuse you of plagiarism. “Accidental plagiarism” was the term Rachel Aviv used in the article to describe minds that swarm with the same material–you know, “molar material”–a much better term than “cryptomnesia.”
Emily

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:56:26 +0000

Hi Emily. Plagiarism – that’s a loaded word, accidental or not. But what’s so strange is that the poem I wrote is about the most personal mundane things – a new mattress, the post office, the supermarket, driving a car – in diary-like entries. Molar material. I’ve searched my mind, and can’t honestly remember any time when I might have read about Taoism. Therefore, I think it would be best if you all refer to me from now on as the Taoist priestess.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:04:07 +0000

p.s. sorry about umbilical typo, above (should read “Biblical”, not “Ibilical”). . .

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:03:35 +0000

Alicia,
I agree that prophecy and some poetry are primarily focused on the present.Even the Biblical prophets didn’t spend their time predicting the future so much as warning their audience about what the future would hold if no one paid attention to the here and now.
Isaiah, in particular, rails about his people’s refusal to be more fully alive to the present.
“Truly, as one who speaks to that people in a stammering jargon and an alien tongue is he who declares to them, “This is the resting place, let the weary rest, this is the place of repose. They refuse to listen. To them the word of the Lord is:
Mutter upon mutter,
Murmur upon murmur
Now here, now there.
– Isaiah 28:11-13
Interestingly, Isaiah describes this experience with God as one that occurs in language. If only the people would listen, they’d hear the “mutter upon mutter.”
As the 20th century Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote, “It is not a world devoid of meaning that evokes the prophet’s consternation, but a world deaf to meaning.” The prophets’ authority, in fact, their claim to speak for God, rests upon the divine presence their words reveal. As Heschel wrote,
“The words the prophet utters are not offered as souvenirs. His speech to the people is not a reminiscence, a report, hearsay. The prophet not only conveys he reveals. This is the marvel of a prophet’s work in his words, the invisible God becomes audible.”
The authority of many poet also rests on creating a presence every bit as real as that damn molar.
Emily

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:54:15 +0000

Mary,
Jung coined the term “cryptomnesia” for this type of unconscious plagiarism, a concept that Rachel Aviv explains in anarticle we published this week about a popular Christian poem that four people claim to have written.
Aviv writes:
“In ‘Cryptomnesia’ (1905), a paper about accidental plagiarism, Carl Jung argues that it’s impossible to know for certain which ideas are one’s own. ‘Our unconsciousness . . . swarms with strange intruders,’ he writes. He accuses Nietzsche of unwittingly copying another’s work, and urges all writers to sift through their memories and locate the origin of every idea before putting it to paper: ‘Ask each thought: Do I know you, or are you new?’”

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:50:35 +0000

Virgil is credited with the paradigmatic prophetic poem (at least in the non-Ibilical world) : the passage in his fourth Eclogue predicting the coming Child of the Golden Age (taken in the Middle Ages to be a pagan premonition of the Messiah).
There’s a compelling book about Virgil by Christine Perkell, titled “The Poet’s Truth”. She offers an hypothesis about Virgil’s own sense of the poet’s social role, which pivots on notions of “pity” and “audacity”. It’s the poet’s special “audacity” to define and defend that “pity” (kindness, gentleness, wisdom, peace), which was lost to the world when the Golden Age gave way to the Iron Age (when Jupiter overthrew Saturn, in classical myth), and which is supposed to return again.
Some such primary allegiance might lurk at the roots of both Biblical and Classical (as well as other) “oracular” poetic traditions.