The Birth of Poetry

By Christopher J Swenson

FOREWORD

 

        Having been advised throughout time to not "wear my disease on my sleeve", I have taken into account of the possible stigma surrounding mental illness. It is true. Typically, upon introduction, people do not mention their ailments. Schizophrenia,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher John Swenson
• Release date: Sep 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088071526

Book preview

The

Birth of Poetry

[A Dithyrambic Inquiry]

C. J. Swenson

Copyright © 2020 by Christopher John Swenson

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

TO

JULIA JACKSON

FOREWORD

Having been advised throughout time to not wear my disease on my sleeve, I have taken into account of the possible stigma surrounding mental illness. It is true. Typically, upon introduction, people do not mention their ailments. Schizophrenia, however, affects/effects thought, language, and behavior so pervasively that an explanation is order in the context of sociability.

The writing style of this novella is highly idiosyncratic and utterly of different character than the traditional work of fiction. Having earned a writing degree from the university, it almost became a matter of urgency to put my talent to use. There, I primarily researched and wrote in the manner of abstract academia. Here, I write the piece in an intensely intuitive and vastly visionary narrative with continual notes of free verse.

Upon my psychotic break/spiritual vision amidst my studies, the abstruse nature of the concepts radically began to shift towards artistic and literary qualities of absolute relativism. I think the first instance of the possibility of such creative vistas was first introduced, when I had given a very brief visit to a philosophy professor, where with an air of mystery, the doctor had ‘prescribed’ to me James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—the title of which I would find myself thematically playing on, while theatrically bearing the delivery of exploring the travail of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, a man who eventually ended his life on the note of the mental asylum, verily himself.

With these things in mind, as the almost self-contained chapters of independent contemplations proceed throughout this novella, there is certainly a semblance of much interior brainwork taking place, while the reader has only a glimpse into this from the actual texts, somehow loosely tying the story together.

C. J. Swenson, February 9, 2020 (Supermoon)

BOOK ONE:

THE INITIAL INSTANCE

ON THE FLEETING LIFE

Phenomena collide on the antinomy of realism and anti-realism. Poetry is born from travesty in a land with nothing on its side. Yet scenic routes prevail. The stage for that which is conceived in its mind is presented as an appearance and possessed by qualities in a great diversity. The hinderance to these things is a system of belief with a singular digression—the collusion of prose and poetry. The foundation of description is analysis, and from there, synthesis. Makeshifts proceed with subtlety and intelligence, where beauty is all that which is seen. Creation requires a lack of denial, yet the end is near to the beginning.  Hence, the mind is compromised in and of itself. So, only the accidental poem explains, since a continuous effort embarks from that which is functional. Coordination between quiet, uncomplaining endurance and willful determination resides in the opposite. The manner in which delicacies are thought resembles and is suggestive of reviling behind one’s own back. To tug on the strings of the heart is likened to vainglory, yet a singular sentence can be presented as a challenge into the possibility of the unknown.

AN ENFANT INHALED IN THE BLAZING HEAT

ONE: THE INTUITIVE CUE

[To sleep in a desert cave is better than life in the grave. To paint pictures of life on the outside is better than playing with shadows in the dewy crags and fissures. To form a mental image of the four corners of a paradisiacal landscape is better than staring at the plastered walls of peeling paint. To chip away and chew on the same lead-based paint is better than them all. Stomachs that stomach not enough chip away all of life and leave the remnants to babes. All that is left is to put that picture in a frame.]

A man sat in a house that sat on the hillside as dull tom-toms sounded in a weary brain that stayed awake for a fortnight-and-a-half. A lonely chair outside a basement bedroom, broken window was buried in leaves next to a porch swept clean. A black cat scaled the whitewashed fence of a house amid a mass of glowing city blocks, where cold blues and purples filled the voids in a hue that never approached grey. Streets paved the way to more streets, cats, and seats. Yet nowhere else could there be found a man dazed in the same way as Blaise Pate.

All the while, pages in a book turned like a stomach in an upset man, standing before the somber light from outside as night approached the sun on the twenty-second day. One floor above, a room full of delighted people tried to create neologisms in phrases that had no meaning to the rest, such as Blaise Pate as he slowly came to. He turned his attention to listen through the ceiling as strings of sayings unraveled in those happy souls floating on cloud nine.

As Blaise was there, he sighed where silence sufficed. Yet his feet were asleep with a slight pain about the knees. Rain droplets were sliding down the cracked panel of a window as the day’s shower briefly subsided. A mist withstood the change in weather, when cool skies gave way to a ray of sunshine lasting for the time that it took to clip a horse of its wings. The drops continued as if being watched.

Hours passed as they did. Minutes lurked. Seconds ticked at work, dividing the time devoted to pay the little provided to survive that modern scene. Blaise had the wish to be in nature as a plein air painter before the sky and trees.

As of yet his memory forbade him from visiting those vistas, since the image of Adam Nother (poet laureate) lodged itself. As Adam grew from his younger days into the man that he was, his tie went to explain his stilted demeanor. The crest of his brow, the bridge of his nose, edge of the lips, and the jowls, all created the impression of a half-smile in response to the question among questions, asked by Blaise, Should one take a girl by both hands or simply recline at her side?

So a difficulty was set before the men, since Blaise spoke of a general rather than a specific case, which is why they became troubled by speculation, when verse could just have as well worked to express the inexpressible.

Bring to the brink

A captain’s fink

Carry on travesty

From a ship of majesty

Those men were blinded by the chance encounter, since all they could think of was pictures of girls in scant attire, published on dotty calendars—ones that could be bought at any shady bookstore, save maybe one.

They gained ground, however, since Blaise acquired a description of the situation in context, which is why he could do nothing except utter a platitude by saying that a ship consisted of wooden planks and metal nails and that a said lady’s name was etched on the side, yet afterwards not disclosing that name of the said lady.

Having realized that something was amiss with his words, Blaise felt compelled to scratch his ear to his perplexity. In this way he dished himself a spoonful of his exact medicine and another to Adam. Body language carried the day.

Adam narrowed his eyes in response and checked his watch as he tried to discern the significance of Blaise’s section of the dialogue, which is how a set of conversationalists received a clever contemplation without understanding it, at first, like the way a decorator might have placed brass trinkets on a door without looking passed the diamond-shaped glass, in the manner that a passer-by would have tended to do on the contrary.

One instance of an uncommon observer, passing just the wrong window, was Blaise Pate as he stared, where he saw a room full of things being muttered.

"A box of