Breathing: Volume 26: Chaos and Poetry (Semiotext(e) / Intervention Series) (Semiotext(e) / Intervention Series, 26)

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Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man finding treasure says “Ah!”but the treasure’s the essence: I was touched by my own loneliness as I read,knowing that what I feel is often the crudeand unsuccessful form of a storythat may never be told. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1997. Gadamer on Celan: ‘Who am I and who are you?’. Trans. by Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski. New York: State University of New York Press.

POETIC TANTRIC PRACTICE:
Add visualization to your Meter Kegel exercises. It is a fine way to begin an introduction to poetry-writing practice or advance an already existing poetry-writing practice. Sit in a quiet place and begin your meter exercises. As you progress, hold a "picture" or thought in your mind that you have decided on before you began the meter exercise. It could be as simple as LOVE, or GRATITUDE, or the vision of HEALTH, or ENERGY moving up your spine or CHAKRAS, or of your LOVER or CHILD, or a beautiful FLOWER. As you pump your meter muscles, you will be pumping your energy. This will add strength to your poem. One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you their bad advice- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. I open my mouth. I lie to my body. I still fill my lungs with nothing but stubborn desire, desire to delay my breathing. I imagine what it will feel like to take that first breath—a Renaissance of living. I can feel the blood in my veins bubble in anticipation. My body wants to be alive. My heart can’t beat fast enough. Striking a furious pace it pumps my blood through my body spreading life and oxygen to every limb making me light headed and delirious with its purity.But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do- determined to save the only life you could save. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2838. The reading of ‘The Yachts’ is at 19.50–22.10. The dissertation ends on a high note, climaxing with Li-po's, “Zazen on Ching -t'ing Mountain.” “We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.Ms. Hirshfield's exposition reeks of the very spirit that she would have us “know.” How sublimely appropriate. I’ve decided. I’m going to breathe again. I’m going to live. And what’s more, I’m going to be alive. The possible choices of poems that are also prayers are familiar and abundant. (Czeslaw Milosz’s “ Veni Creator” is one in which a contemporary sensibility is notably present.) Poems holding a dialogue between the self and a personified spirituality are similarly found in almost every tradition. They are especially visible in the work of contemporary American poets. Perhaps this is because a poem of two voices offers, by its inherent structure, not only the record of a transformation, but some haven for skepticism and doubt, even as it apparently resolves them.

Self-Compassion is a practice, like Mindfulness, that helps you become self-aware of your daily attention, and guide it towards creating more empathy and compassion for yourself, your emotions and experiences so you can in turn be more compassionate for others. Just like mindfulness poetry is a brilliant tool to grow you ability for mindfulness, Self-Compassion poetry can be an equally handy way, to increase you ability fo self-compassion. By Mary Oliver The Peace of Wild Things (excerpt) by Wendell Berry The Peace of Wild Things (excerpt) Tear down this house. A hundred thousand new houses can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian. Williams, Collected Poems, ed. by A. Walton Litz and Christopher J. MacGowan, 2 vols. (Manchester: Carcanet, 2000), vol. 1, 541. For the influence of Olson in British poetry see Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970, ed. by Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1999).

Wright, George Thaddeus. 2001. Hearing the Measures: Shakespearean and Other Inflections. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.