David Mutschlecner

 

3 poems

Poet-Animal: An introduction to “Person”


Aristotle defines person as a “rational animal,” where animal is the genus, human-being the species, and rational the distinguishing hallmark that separates us from other animals.  Aristotle does not mean by rational syllogistic – or exclusively philosophical – thinking.  He means something more akin to what Aquinas described as the full return of consciousness to itself.  In this return, ethical responsibility is born.  Dante writes that those in hell have “lost the good of the intellect,”  and yet they are full of all manner of thought.  What do we loose when we find ourselves, at one or another time, in some kind of exclusive self-sealed hell?  Aquinas would say that we have lost the full return of consciousness to itself, and so have lost a sense of moral responsibility both for ourselves and for others.  In short, those in a self-sealed hell have lost what real communication offers us: reflective – and healing –  depth.

But let me return to Aristotle's “rational animal.”  Despite these qualifications I make on the meaning of rational, I can't help but think that we are the most irrational of creatures.  Given the intractable acrimony of any private hell, or the wider hell of history that it mirrors, Aristotle's definition seems wrong, or at least deeply incomplete.

Turning from Aristotle, I choose to go rather with Joseph Braun's concept of “the poet-animal,” where poet is our distinguishing feature.  The poet-animal is involved with what Nishida Kitaro called active-intuition: a feeling-intelligence that informs the full return of consciousness to itself.  It is important to note that my use of poet here means all of us.  Via Joseph Braun's name for us, I am trying to get at the spiritual core and depth of everyone, regardless of vocation.  Being poet-animals, we are connected, creature-to-creature.  The poet-animal creates through love's interchange.

I have published four books with Ahsahta Press, most recently ICON (2018).  My work is frequently featured in New American Writing.

 
 

Person 1

for Joseph Braun

                        When not with living

 

                        voices              speaking            through me

                       

                        I neither speak nor read.  Interiority

 

 

                                                is the eros

                                                of language – deep beneath

                                                the closed             book-fact

 

 

                                    If I see what you say is true

                                                and if you see what I say is true

                                    where, I ask, do we see it

                                               

 

                                                            To me Augustine's words

                                                            go toward the humble truth

                                                            that conversation presupposes

 

 

                                                            a living world

 

                                                            He breaks

                                                            the Cartesian seal

                                                            a thousand years before Descartes 

 

 

 

                        These little fragile linking words are

                        what we are                

                                                If you see             If I say.  If

 

                                                            is a fissure that opens where hope is

                                                            the tinder –           

 

                                                             I go off line

                                                                        into the exigent bramble –

 

                                                           

                                                                        If Jasper Johns

                                                                        laid his memory down

                                                                        – blue-gray shade

 

                                                                        canting as the landscape –

                                                                        then I transpose upon him

                                                                        his encaustic numbers

 

 

                                                            Translucent

                                                            strokes

                                                            ghost

                                                            the overlap

 

                                                                        – it is not so much the numbers

                                                                        but that they are painted

 

                                                                        The gestures of his hand are letters

                                                                        running through the one two three

 

                                                            We know the equations ...

 

                                                but it is not the calculating cogito

                                                first returns us to ourselves

 

                                    Veracity the passion burning past.  Memory:

 

                                    an arc that hardly

                                    knows itself.  Person: 

                                                the prehension and

                                                the final cause:

 

                                                            the vase that traces

                                                            the face     twice

 

                                                            Enameled purple –       the night

                                                            between profiles

 

                                                                                    My hands        reach

 

                                                                                    from beneath

                                                                                    to try and hold.   In the crux

 

                                                in the crux there is

                                                real fear I won't hold on

                                                           

                                                            What is the is of this

                                                                                                brokenness?

 

                        Crimson vines like arms stretch out along the fence

                        then drape down and taper

                        to the paired roots – crossed ankles.  A crucifixion:

 

                                                blood marked with dark

                                                October shadow

 

                                                A crucifixion of language

                                                                        where errors flare in eros

                                                                        where exile is elixir.  Christ

 

                                                in every resurrection depiction

                                                did not lose

                                                his flamey wounds

 

 

                                                                                    Personhood

                                                                                    understood

                                                                                    in what burns through

 
 

Person 10


                                                Having the tail-fin split

                                                to make legs

 

                                                was painful

                                                beyond belief.  She passed out,

 

                                                came to

                                                as human

 

                                                but her tongue had been cut out

 

                                                – intention severed from words

 

 

                                                She mutely knew three kingdoms:

 

                                                                        green bones of the kingdom below

                                                                        where the sea-willow's

                                                                        roots float up into chartreuse

                                                                        pendant tendrils

 

                                                                        The middle kingdom:

                                                                        where lightning flashes on the flanks

                                                                        of blue jagged ice –  a tensed

                                                                        Shellean question:

                                                                                                            nature cutting grace

 

                                                                        In the third kingdom

                                                                        stars

                                                                        were kin to her silence.  Absence

                                                                        of voice

                                                                                                kindling brightness

 

 

                        You no doubt know the story:

 

                                                She came up to save her beloved from drowning

                                                – the prince who could not know her

 

                                                though he knew her beautiful limbs

                                                and kissed her eyelids.  Veracity:

 

                                                shape before shape and

                                                form before form  (these words

 

 

                                                do little good)            

 

                                                                        Water-lid

                                                                        earth-lid

                                                                        sky-lid

 

                                                                                    – the within of all

                                                                                    holy sensuality

 

 

 

                                                Being mermaid she

                                                needed to earn her soul

 

                                                Of course nothing

                                                could be more foolish

 

                                                – Hans Christian must have known

                                                we know this:

 

                                                she was always and helplessly

                                                human.  Her pain not allayed

 

                                                by imposed

                                                metaphysical reward

 

                                                – her dancing feet

                                                would bleed and bleed

 

 

                                                                        Soul is negative

                                                                        capability – ache

 

                                                                        of naked

                                                                        intentionality

           

                                                                        going out and out and out

                                                                        to what love mutely

                                                                                    imagines

 

 

                        A lapse in language.  Her hand

 

                                                                                    reaching through

 

 

                                                She knows there is no other reward

                                                She knew this when her face

 

                                                first met the surface of the water

 
 

Person 16

for Raimon Panikkar

                                                 In the wet grass

                                                early this morning

                                                the dandelion head

                                               

                                                with rayed seed

                                                long blown

                                                bears instead

 

                                                one drop of water

                                                dazzles where I stand

                                                Such a thing

 

                                                transfixed

                                                sapphire

                                                transfixes me

 

                                                Given wholly

                                                to wind and light it literally

                                                pulses

 

                                    No

                                    one else

                                    to witness

 

                                    before the drop falls

 

 

                                                “Although there is no

                                                            middle term

                                                between A                        and not-A

                                                            there is

                                                between Is                        and not-Is,”

 

                                                                        grace being

                                                                        in free fall

 

                                                                        Pitch

                                                                                    and drop

                                                                                    between the heaven and the hell we inhabit

                                                                       

 

                                                Mathematics won't solve it

                                                Thought won't match it

                                                            – the neurons

                                                            tell us this much –

 

 

                                    That which dies and                       

                                    that which does not die

                                    both live in the lucent Source

 

                                                            – so Dante

                                                between Is                        and not Is

 

 

                                                                        Taken into radiance

 

David Mutschlecner has published four books with Ahsahta Press, most recently ICON (2018).  His work is frequently featured in New American Writing.