Organic Manifesto                                        (Hear it)

The Organic poem is not the record of an event, it is an event, an occasion of experience, a map of the mind at work in the moment, ear measuring and mind mediating the crowd of outside voices/impulses and resonances erring on the side of entelechy for the individual and polis and culture, in deep connection with dimensions larger than the pen-holder, enacting – not describing – the instant rather than the act of thought about the instant.

The Organic poem is allied with velocity and the duende beyond mere discourse and the function of symbology, imbued with a luminousity that exists just beyond comprehension of the pen-holder, and ripples with the silver of a wave in the midnight of Harvest Moonlight, or the white of alder-filtered September sunlight just beyond the foot of the morning altar.

It is the living apprehension of the underlying form as it spills out its testimony as only the moment can reveal, never completely contained in one poem except that poem which is the final result of a lifetime of an individual poet’s never fully articulate striving, a chaotic murmur of soul re-directing self to Self in an alchemical conjunctio only antepasados fully comprehend.

It is the practice divine of ear training, star to mind to hand to pen to blossoming, a harvesting of forces learned over years, decades, lifetimes of homage and refined, knows process as its own inherent reward in a systemless system which chooses recklessly those who would use speech (at once) at its least careless and least logical, poet as time mechanic, not embalmer.

The Organic poem is the mercy, mercy, mercy of the intersection of the vastness of outer space with the vastness of the space inside skull in complete candor, the ordinary mind in discovery of perceptions eternal in celebration of person (Universe is Person), not a stream of consciousness, more a coherent splendor, more a field of first permission to which one is allowed access more often than one thinks.

peN – 11:13PM – 9.10.07