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Pilgrimage to Montreal

I will be presenting a paper at 2005 NASSR. Now that I've got my t's crossed and my i's dotted – namely, the paper is all done and ready – I can sit back and read for purely recreational and self-improvement purposes :)

"modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversions of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on self-improvement" (David Lodge, Small World).

Read me !

Like the artists who wrote them, books try to turn their potential readers from indifferent observers to active participants, to reinvent themselves from silent words into lively beings.

Look At Me!

In "Person to Person" Tennessee Williams suggests that every artist is a young child shrieking "look at me!" to the deaf heavens. This constant demand of attention is a perilous play that might end in by-standers' indifferent observation, leaving the artist alone "on the shelf". Williams suggests a careful balance between the personal and the public, the observer and the potential fellow performer: "know that out of your personal lyricism something has to be created that will not only attract observers but participants in the performance".

A Poetic Flying Envelop

In a previous chapter, "The Ponds", Thoreau criticizes the name given to Flint's Pond, arguing that "if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at least as the Icarian Sea…" (197). His main argument against Flint is that he only sees the money value of the pond, oblivious of the privilege of simply beholding its beauties. Flint would "carry the landscape [and even] his God, to market, if he could get any thing for him". From Thoreau's perspective Flint worships mammon:"...whose trees [bear] no fruits, but dollars...whose fruits are not ripe for him tillthey are turned to dollars" (196).The reference to Icarus, whose "brave attempt [the shore] resounds" (197), seems to be a celebration of doing something (whether flying, fishing, farming, meditating or writing a poem) just for the sheer joy of doing, without concerning oneself with outcome or possible profit. In this context 'doing' seems to be a profit in and of itself. Daedalus built wings to escape the labyrinth, flying for him is means to an end. For Icarus flying is an end in and of itself.

Paraglider-pilots who do not concern themselves with the thrills of acro-flights or the glory of cross competitions do exactly that: fly for the sheer joy of flying,becoming one with the wind, sharing the sky with the birds. From a paraglider-pilot's perspective Icarus is a case of a pilot exceeding his flying envelop, recklessly ignoring ballast and moderation, giving in to the thrill of pushing the limit.
Margaret Fuller argues that "poetry...in its essential being [is] a recreative spirit that sings to sing". Are a poet's words his wings ? Icarus can be regarded as representing the danger embedded in complete absorption. Being so immersed in what he is doing, he is literally lost in flight.What is the ballast of a poet who "sings to sing" ? Should there be a poetic"flying envelop" ? Icarus is brought as an example of "the noblest andworthiest men", is the fisher-poet a more down to earth, ballast-conscious daedal model of the "recreative spirit" ?

A Winged-Poet, A Fisher-Poet

Henry David Thoreau's "Brute Neighbors" opens with a dialogue between a Hermit and a Poet. Sound intertwines with thought in the Hermit's observations, while the poet mingles sight with memory in his communion with the clouds and the sky. Along the conversation, the poet proclaims himself to be a fisherman: "[Fishing] is the true industry for poets...the only trade I have ever learned" (224).

Later on Thoreau asks "why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse ?" (233). I wonder whether he believed the poet himself is winged.

Notes:

1. All references to Walden are from Henry David Thoreau, Walden. Ed. by J. Lyndon Shanley. Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates (Princeton University Press, 1988).
2. Historically speaking, the Fisher-Poet is Thoreau's friend, William Ellery Channing, the younger.
3. J. Lyndon Shanley suggests in The Making of Walden (1957), that this dialogue can be regarded as a comic interlude allowing a descent from "Higher Laws" to "Brute Neighbors".

Daedal Practicality

As much as she modeled herself upon the myth of spontaneous creativity, Sexton was well aware of the unavoidable drudgery of re-writing and revising, the inescapable daedal craftsmanship that gives integrity and order to the topsy-turvy icarian enthusiasm. Icarus' flight into the sun can be seen as the uninhibited, chaotic stage of creation, a stage Sexton also referred to as "milking of the unconscious". In this primal phase, the poet turns off the inner daedal-voice that constrains creativity within known boundaries, completely immersing herself in the raw material produced by the foolhardy unconscious: "You have to turn off the little critic while you are beginning a poem so that it doesn't inhibit you. Then you have to turn it on again when you are revising and refining".
Practical Daedalus, Sexton's "little critic", can be regarded as the phase of aesthetic structuring, the reconstitution of order. Order and chaos are explored and expressed through poetry: "it's within a woman to create, to make order, [writing poetry] puts things back in place…things are more chaotic, and if I can write a poem, I come into order again…the world is again a little more sensible and real" (interview with Patricia Marx, 1965).

Works Cited:
J.D. McClatchy, Anne Sexton: The Artist and Her Critics (Indiana UP, 1978).

Icarus Catcher

Anne Sexton perceived Icarus as the crazy poet, unbound by the limitations of prudence and propriety, boldly transcending all restrictions, gloriously plummeting into the sea, consumed by his burning creativity:
"…who cares that he fell back to the sea ?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
While his sensible daddy goes straight into town"

As attractive as Icarus' rise towards the sun might seem, crashing nips his poetic career in the bud. Not willing to compromise the combustible ecstasy of unbound creation with the pragmatism of a sober innovation created within reasonable limits, Icarus remains an unfulfilled creative potential.

In her first meeting with Sexton, Anne Wilder identified the hunger and fear imbedded in Sexton's creative urge, and observed her desperate need of a safety net: "It was like Icarus plummeting not to destruction in the sea, but into a haven, my lap…[my] heart", she wrote to Sexton in August 1963. Sexton agreed heartily, "to be caught is not to fall", she responded. To be caught means to fall into safety rather than into ruin, to hold the rope at both ends: recklessly ignoring danger, transgressing limitations, while simultaneously enjoying the safeguard of a protector, an Icarus catcher.

Works Cited:
Anne Sexton, "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph".
Diane Wood Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991).