A favorite line, a favorite phrase, to start the week with.

“Often I Am Permitted To Return To A Meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought...”

- Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field, © 1960

This poem is a poem I often return to. For reasons perhaps not what the great poet intended. Or perhaps they are. It speaks to me, however, as a creed about art, creation, and creativity.

It is as if there is a place where we can go to find our voice, our meaning, our myths, and our art. It is, however, not wholly our own. We are permitted to find our voice, and we are permitted to make our meanings. But this is a sacred place, a place where we can't go whenever we want. Perhaps this is writer's block, but this meaning I attach to it is itself the mythology we can make of small things. And in this way, become connected to something greater.

It is, of course, a made place. Does that mean it is not natural? Or is nature made, too? Either way, it is part of eternity, “an eternal pasture folded in all thought”, our thought, our muses' thoughts, the thoughts of the field itself, perhaps, the ground of being.

It is ours, it is dear to us. It underlies everything. I use language to make it mine, to show it, to fold it in thought – all thought – which means it becomes part of other's thought as well. They have the final act of creation, of linking it to their own experience and interpretation. The reader, given permission by the author putting out this section of the field, now is part of the field. The field is much greater, of course. We explore it bit by bit, poem by poem, story by story. We then fold ourselves into the greater part of the world.

A great poem to come back to, when time permits, when need arises. It is eternally there for us.

  “            They were what we volunteerd,
incidents the mind barely recalls.
                                                                    Let me then
        recite the seasons as I would recite
                 the passing of anarchists and great kings.” - Robert Duncan, Ground Work

Well, it's simply a great piece of writing.   What more can be added?  Our lives are seasons, are filled with anarchists and kings, and those with memory, or bemoaning the loss of memory, recite them. 

“Most verse is something being made to communicate what is already present in the mind.” - Robert Duncan.

“The process of poetry...is to reveal the potential of what is 'present in the mind' so that writer and reader come to know what it is they know, explore it and realize, real-ize it.” - Denise Levertov

Simply put...write what you know, but more elegantly stated. The fruition of which, of followed, is that we know more, more about the world, our selves, and the relationships. The simple things that make up the real world, and the simple responses that are overlooked by others, are the things we know. Observe, participate, know, stew, write. Re-write and realize.

By doing this, the poet can become an unwitting explorer, which, if others are able to follow the journey, might also learn along with the poet.  For sometimes the things we know are deep in the mind, buried, our histories and myths forgotten, disconnected.  We can, however, find them and reconnect.