Integration and Explanation

The impulse to explain is strong within me. I ApoLogize, this is new, and it may feel strange. It may be strange. Categories make simple the process of ingestion. Vegetable. Animal. Herb. And this impulse applies to life just as well as to poetry, for me. I want to be understood, to be understandable, to be reasonable. For this I have been long trained.

And here I am, trying to articulate what I mean, when I am not saying anything right now, only trying to embed my little voice in between poems. There is something here about wisdom and confidence. About residing in myself and nestling into the neighborhood, the total environment, and letting my interobjective relations give up arm wrestling for the title of One True Context.

What I want is for people to try to understand, to fail, and to be happy and amused that they tried. This is how I feel when I watch Dr. Strangelove, but with not quite enough failure. It feels good to talk to AI because the goal is for the writer to feel understood. This is not my goal in writing, however. I don’t think it is. Maybe that is my goal.

Poetry likes to jump-scream at incomprehensibility. A poem does so in a way that weaves symbols into events, events into symbols, people into either, defeating incomprehensibility with tilting and lilting. “Incomprehensible” is a reprehensible place to remain for an imagination. Comprehended may not be the outcome of an imagination’s efforts and dreams, but at least effervescent bafflement can arise as a sensation, along with its gang of merry and angry and incoherent desperados.

Life must become death. It need not become ready for death, but it may become ready. A social life must overcome and also submit to the individual life. Opposites can be heated and sizzled and stirred and shaken and blended, going from raw tomato and raw onion to pure umami. The components of paradoxes and predicaments are also prepared to be prepared by the competent cook. The oversimplifier must be prepared to eat potato chips for dinner.