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Friday Notebook 08.12.2011
A number of quotes from David Abram‘s extraordinary The Spell of the Sensuous flowed into my notebook this past week. Here are a few of them: We see the sorcerer being called upon to cure an ailing tribesman of his sleeplessness, or perhaps simply to locate some missing goods; we witness him entering into trance and sending his awareness into other dimensions in search of insight and aid. yet we should not be so ready to interpret these dimensions as “supernatural,” nor to view them as realms entirely “internal” to the personal psyche of the practitioner.Read More
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Perception and Imagination
Sometimes one makes a brilliant response to a blog post somewhere in the ether—a comment that deserves a life outside that comment stream. This is not one of those. Nevertheless, because the issue is so interesting (at least to me), I’m reposting my comment here. This is in response to a thought-provoking post by Chris Ransick, which you’ll need to read for this to make sense. This is a fascinating post, Chris. I would just throw into the mix the idea that perception isn’t everything.Read More
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Incredible Machines
This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Ninety-seven percent of the machine’s components are farm equipment parts provided by John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa. It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video. The machine is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.Read More
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Deep Water
If you haven’t been following Hannah Stephenson’s extraordinary project at her blog The Storialist, this post is a great place to start. She’s one of those poets—like two of my favorite Toms, Clark and Montag—who has chosen to drop her bucket into the imaginal well every day and share the taste of that water with the rest of us.Read More
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Beyond Looking and Seeing
John Latta has a characteristically intelligent post today about William Carlos Williams’s love of “looking and seeing,” which Latta calls “the painterly chore.” There is no doubt that Williams loved looking at the world, especially into overlooked corners of it, but there is more to it for him. Latta notes this but presents it as support for his “looking and seeing” thesis when it’s actually something more.Read More
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On Imaginal Space
[This expands on my previous post, which it may help to read first.] I use the word “imaginal” to mean something far beyond the Webster’s definition, “of or relating to imagination, images, or imagery.” I mean it in the sense defined by the great scholar of Islamic mysticism Henry Corbin: …alam al-mithal, the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a noetic value, as fully real…Read More
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Stein and the Objectification of Language
On his excellent blog, Fluid/Exchange, Steve Halle has put up an intriguing post on Gertrude Stein‘s lecture “Poetry and Grammar.” I won’t rehash it here. But I will draw attention to one passage that is fraught. Halle is too good a writer to make it seem fraught, but it is, and its fraughtness says a lot, I think, about the influences (good and bad) that Stein has had on poetry various avant-garde movements. Here’s Halle’s statement: Stein begins the essay by exploring the writer’s relationship to words, and this is important because writing is made out of words.Read More
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Thingyness
Here’s an imaginal excerpt from a wonderful, long profile by Robert McCrum of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It’s Heaney’s response to McCrum’s question (the most common question asked of every poet, I think): “Where does poetry come from?” “I think it comes from all the other poetry that’s there,” [Heaney] replies.Read More
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Imaginal Paintings
I think you may all enjoy these images by Israeli artist Orna Ben-Shoshan. Her Web site says: “Orna’s artwork involves opening her consciousness and channeling images that come to her from a different realm of existence.” In them you may recognize aspects of Henry Corbin‘s Mundus Imaginalis. I was led to Ben-Shoshan via the new issue of Ekleksographia (see my just-previous post), “curated” by Amy King. Thanks, Ms.Read More
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The Visible and the Invisible
Over at Issa’s Untidy Hut this quote appeared this morning, from the introduction to a new translation of poems by the great imaginal poet René Char. The introduction and translations were done by Gustaf Sobin, who essentially apprenticed with Char while living in France in the 1960s. Sobin remarks: René Char taught me, first, to read particulars: that the meticulously observed detail, drawn from nature, could provide the key to the deepest reaches of the imaginary.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
