Photo taken by Doug Richardson- Mohavi Desert, USA
Risen From Rock:
Survival Through Poetry
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"One night soon the yucca plant will bloom
and a yucca moth will find it."
"The Joshua Tree grows in the High Desert of the Southwest. In an environment that many view as lifeless and barren, this tree has evolved unique adaptations that allow it to survive against the odds, yet despite its solitary and rugged stature, this desert tree is utterly dependent on the tiny white yucca moth to pollinate it..."
The quote above describe the way words are- poet to poet. It shows the way we 'pollinate' each other with our ideas. I have long held the notion that poetry can only come about while alone with one's thoughts. I still believe that, but I left out one important element: there is no poetry without other ears to hear it. It's the sound of one hand clapping, and who has ever heard that ghostly applause?
The more mature I become as a writer, the more I realize there must be a balance between hermetic domes of self regeneration and simple community, and what it comes down to is this: we all need feedback. Not critique- an entirely different thing that often does more harm than good-- but we do need whole-hearted, open-hearted response to what we've written. One can get by without it, but it's like living through a night without stars: no twinkle, nothing living.
By the same token, we need to read the poetry of others. We must see how poetry ravels the words and lives of everyone who writes it because it is a universal crying out- a responsorial psalm, a shriek of delight, a sob of pain, and it pertains to all humanity, one string plucked at a time with a melody we all can recognize.
We find ourselves and lose ourselves in poetry, that is paradoxically true, and one never knows which one comes first and which comes after. Our relationship to words and to eachother is cross-pollination always. It's like the great pyramid, everyone hoisting his own brick and what results is another wonder of the world, but collectively built.
Maybe it's all one poem, conceived in the desert of self and absorbed into the fabric that covers us all. We need distance, we need community. As the yucca plant needs the moth, we need the mouths of others forming our words; taking them to heart as they read them. In the austere climate of solitary writing, we know.....we always know, that there is a host of toiling others doing their damnedest to raise their own voices into a chorus. Each one unique, each one with filament-like arms, reaching across the void to touch the pollen of the others. We are the hermit fathers
and the Hootenanny making a joyful noise. Long may we bloom.
