Here's what I wrote in my journal around this period:
Saturn is not the image, it is the icon!
Reading through my journals and common-place books for the past thirty or so years, I have noticed how I seem to become mesmerized by certain images. In high school and early in college, there was an abundance of blood in my poetry. After my first visit to Princeton, NJ (as a sort of boho tourist), crows started flying through my poetry. And the planet Saturn makes its first appearance in December 1981.
I thought of this process as “following my muse.” One may compare this to musical composers who return to certain musical or themes through the course of their careers (Aaron Copeland comes immediately to mind). But other poets have allowed themselves to become infatuated with phrases, rhythms, and images.
So: what does it mean? Why Saturn, of all things?
Look at the picture below.
Those rings are beautiful, aren't they? Although this is a retouched
picture from NASA, this is how I have always imagined Saturn from early youth —
when I contemplated maps of outer space and my eyes were immediately drawn to the
strange planet with the rings.
A photograph very much like this one stayed with me through my early college career. The theories about those rings have matured since my childhood, but I still like to think of them as a mystery. And therein lies the power and strength of Saturn as an icon — its mystery. It seems to me that even the most concrete scientific evidence will not remove that mystery.
Saturn makes its first appearance in a poem with the opening line “I sleep under the sign.” I say I sleep under the sign of the twisted branch — as if this had an astrological significance. When I mention Saturn, I talk about its orbit, so I am apparently thinking of the planet. Yet its appearance here is somewhat mysterious. The images here don't seem to “mean” anything — until you get to the last two lines with their haunting question about a hollow heart.
In the next poem, “The Seven Days of Creation & Destruction,” Saturn is one of a number of planets referred to as I simultaneously re-invent Genesis and the Book of Revelation. Here, Saturn has a decidedly malevolent presence.
As the sequence continues, Saturn becomes less malevolent, but the theme becomes more apocalyptic. Of course, this was during the mid-1980’s, when the stresses of the Cold War were more threatening than usual. And my own life seemed to be on a self-destructive path (drugs and alcohol). Letters and journal entries of this time note that I had been reading the Gnostic writings discovered at Nag Hammaddi, along with the works of William Blake. All this gets stirred together into a sort of prophetic stew.
The passing years have given me some perspective on this series of poems. I cringe at some portions. But there are many, many lines which still have a lovely lyric quality. I hope these moments of lyricism are enough to justify your visit here.
James Collins
February 2002
Oklahoma City, OK
|
| Enter the sequence |
