Philosophy and Poetry

General Philosophy
1

If we define Being
in the universal sense
as the principle of manifestation,
and at the same time
as comprising in itself
the totality of possibilities of all manifestation,
we must say that Being is not infinite
because it does not coincide with total Possibility;
and all the more so because Being,
as the principle of manifestation,
although it does indeed
comprise all the possibilities of manifestation,
does so only insofar
as they are actually manifested.
Outside of Being,
therefore, are all the rest,
that is
all the possibilities of non-manifestation,
as well as the possibilities of manifestation themselves
insofar as they are in the unmanifested state;
and included among these is Being itself,
which cannot belong to manifestation
since it is the principle thereof,
and in consequence is itself unmanifested.
For want of any other term,
we are obliged
to designate all that is thus outside and beyond Being
as “Non-Being”,
but for us this negative term
is in no way synonym for ‘nothingness’.

What I have done here is put line breaks into a quote from Rene Guenon. I did that because I memorized these words. I memorized these words so I could recite them at my leisure. I wanted to do that because I experienced these words as Poetry. Poetry in my experience is a mode of apprehension. This raises the question; Is Philosophy also, among other things, a mode of Apprehension?

My route to poetry was facilitated in large part by the words I found in Philosophy. Here is a piece of Poetry by Immanuel Kant that I memorized.

Philosophy may be said to contain the principles of the rational cognition that concepts afford us of things, not merely as with logic the principles of the form of thought in general, and thus interpreted the course usually adopted of dividing it into theoretical and practical is perfectly sound. But this makes imperative a specific distinction of the part of the concepts by which the principles of this rational cognition get their object assigned to them. For if the concepts are not distinct, they fail to justify a division which always presupposes that the principles belonging to the rational cognition of the several parts of the science in question are themselves mutually exclusive.

This is from the start of the Critique of Judgement. It marks Kant out as the supreme Poet of his age. This is exquisite. Words cannot describe how beautiful it is. Reciting speech like this has the effect of enabling one to inhabit the feeling of performing real speech. I think that it is the feeling that is the definitive thing. One comes to know what it feels like to say something and after that one can at times, recognize the feeling in ones own transcriptions of the unconscious life.

I think there was a time when Poetry was the standard mode of expression for all people in all domains - Art - Science - Philosophy - and daily life. This is a sense of our being that we have lost over the millenia.

Here is a brief note I made about Poetry;

Today, we have an impression that some people think that poetry is something other than ordinary speech. These persons who have impressed us thus in their utterances, seem to think that, Poetry is or has to be something more than or extraneous or superior to - ordinary speech. Some people appear to think of Poetry as sort of the opposite of what it is, which is speech in its purest and most efficient and economical form in relation to the meaning intended - hence ordinary.
Poetry is nothing special. It is not ‘Life with Brass Knobs on’ or, any special accommodation, disposition or state of being; It is not something decorative supererogatory, intentional or elaborative or revelatory that one ‘does’ on purpose, at the time, it is not something that one pretends to, on top of merely being ordinary. There is no ‘Poetic’ mode, no fanciful state of insightful apprehensions. Rather there is a removal - an exclusion of all artifice, personal interest, fantasy, self-conscious awareness and aspiration.
Vitality, Pleasure, attention, enthusiasm, communication, content (Being at the time), life; These are the muscles and the blood of memory. Poetry is merely anything that anybody says that one remembers. It is what you need to hear. All of human memory is Poetry. Poetry is a mode of apprehension. In this sense then, Poets do not exist as they are or have been commonly imagined. They never have.

But does not this sense also apply to Philosophy? What use is Philosophy if we cannot remember it? Are not the great Philosophers Poets?

Can we say that Philosophy is anything that anybody says that a body remembers?

2

A well-written and interesting original post (OP).

Are you saying anything beautifully written is poetry. Anything written that transports you? Moves you? I certainly don’t see it that way. I must admit you set me to thinking about what it actually means to call something “poetry.” Your two examples seem very much prose to me and I wouldn’t have called them beautiful, but that’s a matter of taste. I don’t find them compelling philosophy either. Again, a matter of taste or at least metaphysics.

So is poetry anything meant to be or more effective spoken out loud? Are the little tricks that usually go along with poetry–rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, metaphor, symbolism, imagery, etc.–just mnemonics? For me, poetry feels different, especially when I’m writing it. I feels like it comes from someplace different and takes you someplace different than prose does. For me, it feels more like a visual art, like painting. It’s like painting pictures with words.

As for beautiful writing, and speaking as a reader and an engineer, I’ve found it in all kinds of writing–fiction, history, philosophy, poetry, engineering reports, business letters, technical specifications, scientific articles…Maybe that’s the same thing you mean when you say:

I’ll just fall back on what I said before–for me, poetry feels different. Not better, just different.

3

Here are some further notes;

#Poetry is speech.
Speech is always meaningful. The substance of speech is meaning. Meaning (the outcome of desire) is the mystery of being. All speech is poetry. Poetry is not something that has a life outside, above or below speech and its necessary components. Poetry is always ordinary. People speak, or they do not speak, that is all that there is to it, and it is up to them what they say and what they do not say. What we do say and what we do not say, is how it is that we create the reality that we live. Our lives are made of poetry. Such is either intentional or unintentional. Somebody made a mistake. That is all that there is to it. Writing is speech that is considered deliberate - this intentionality is a state of life that is achieved in spontaneity, in being oneself. It is submitting to the unconscious life as a way to consciousness and to reality. By admitting the fact of one’s own pleasure and enjoyment, appetites and reactions, as such, one defeats lies at once and for all, and becomes free, conscious, intentional and decisive. This is unity. Freedom is a matter of speech, and the limit of that freedom in the body is the power of the description of reality which one is prepared to make when one is saying something. I tell you now and listen to me properly - freedom is speech. Reality is ordered at the mouth.

#Musicality.

We believe that Musicality is essential in Poetry. But what do we mean by Musicality? Musicality does not begin with rhyme or meter or cadence. It begins with the perception of the innate musicality of words as original forms that order time and space, and with the pleasure derived therefrom in the speaker as the sensational creator of meaningful order. The ‘Music’ is an innate property of the speaker. It is not a result of the employment of manner, mode, device or technique. It is the feeling of being. It is the love of speech and of speaking - in a certain real way, according to the inclination which gratifies the speaker in some way or in some other way at the time. Words are not like numbers. They are not final units of meaning nor are they finally measurable. They are events in the Spiritual life. They are nodes in a tangled matrix of connection that stretches from here and now and into eternity. Hence, they are subtle and not all of their properties and influences and interactions and connections and relations to each other are consciously knowable. But they can be felt innately by the adept. They can be known intuitively by the Initiated, by the proficient - by the Musician. Speaking happens after Listening. It is the manner of listening and receiving (being) which conditions the original Musicality of speech. One can only say the things which one can hear.

#And So.

Poetry recognises the formal property of words and presents verse. Verse refers to a finite set of words intended to achieve a unity which is expressed in the disposition and the arrangement of formal properties which are affecting, memorable and recognizable. This formal unity is apprehendable/experienced through the perception of sound, rhythm, rhyme and regularity. Regularity refers to the repetition in speech of recognizable formal components. But there may also be repetition, pattern and regularity of unrecognized or subliminal subtle (abject) life. Words have visible surfaces but they also have invisible bodies. Two words that ‘sound similar’ may be dissimilar in essence. Two words that ‘sound dissimilar’ may be similar privately. It is possible to create a formal unity in words, but without any semantic coherence whatsoever. However, poetry normally presumes that meaning is required in the proceeding sound. The speech says something. It has a story. A story is a destiny. A destiny is a fact that it is possible to feel in the body. Therefore it is something that is shared in principle.

#Musicality.

We believe that Musicality is essential in Poetry. But what do we mean by Musicality? Musicality does not begin with rhyme or meter or cadence. It begins with the perception of the innate musicality of words as original forms that order time and space, and with the pleasure derived therefrom in the speaker as the sensational creator of meaningful order. The ‘Music’ is an innate property of the speaker. It is not a result of the employment of manner, mode, device or technique. It is the feeling of being. It is the love of speech and of speaking - in a certain real way, according to the inclination which gratifies the speaker in some way or in some other way at the time. Words are not like numbers. They are not final units of meaning nor are they finally measurable. They are events in the Spiritual life. They are nodes in a tangled matrix of connection that stretches from here and now and into eternity. Hence, they are subtle and not all of their properties and influences and interactions and connections and relations to each other are consciously knowable. But they can be felt innately by the adept. They can be known intuitively by the Initiated, by the proficient - by the Musician. Speaking happens after Listening. It is the manner of listening and receiving (being) which conditions the original Musicality of speech. One can only say the things which one can hear.

#Poetry is speech.
Speech is always meaningful. The substance of speech is meaning. Meaning (the outcome of desire) is the mystery of being. All speech is poetry. Poetry is not something that has a life outside, above or below speech and its necessary components. Poetry is always ordinary. People speak, or they do not speak, that is all that there is to it, and it is up to them what they say and what they do not say. What we do say and what we do not say, is how it is that we create the reality that we live. Our lives are made of poetry. Such is either intentional or unintentional. Somebody made a mistake. That is all that there is to it. Writing is speech that is considered deliberate - this intentionality is a state of life that is achieved in spontaneity, in being oneself. It is submitting to the unconscious life as a way to consciousness and to reality. By admitting the fact of one’s own pleasure and enjoyment, appetites and reactions, as such, one defeats lies at once and for all, and becomes free, conscious, intentional and decisive. This is unity. Freedom is a matter of speech, and the limit of that freedom in the body is the power of the description of reality which one is prepared to make when one is saying something. I tell you now and listen to me properly - freedom is speech. Reality is ordered at the mouth.

#Preface.
Regarding reading; I think that enjoyment, consciousness, apprehension: and particularly apprehension of subtlety and potential and fact in a presented formulation of language - apprehension there; justified and being as unconscious reaction and impression as (a necessary component of enjoyment) can in that moment (of enjoyment) function there as an original energetic input, and as a catalyst to a spontaneous manifestation of some states of extraordinary or exemplary definition and finality, and also and in that, of a fulfilment of a highest absolute of abundance of meaning, efficiency and so of economy, possible in any particular body as it then speaks in returning urges. The potential that one apprehends in something said; where language and meaning seem a unity - is then nothing more than the mere equal, equivalent or identity of the potential action residing in the body of the apprehensive self. Or even in the end - there transpiring in any due natural activity arising and emergent as finally factually superior to such as (the original apprehensions) or even further and where vitally extant; as possibly or even inevitably substantially transcendent. Such are the rungs of the ladder of Mastery ascending as they do now into Mystery.

My name is Fidelity, Play, Truth (Ricky Meat).
My name is
Ricky Meat
Ricky Meat
I feel total
I feel complete
this
believe it or not
is the hymn sheet
the home street
the rhythm beat
of Ricky
gorgeous
Ricky meat
my name is
Suzy Strange
Ricky Meat
licks my flame
he wants to look away
he wants to play that game
he wants to feel the shame
exquisite
Suzy game
has entered
the fucking frame
Ricky Meat
he is compliant to me
and he is tame.

Look at this ‘Poem’. It has no meaning, thought or content or life, beyond being daft, voluptuous and libidinous. The libido is the engine that drives the play. The play is important because it is in play that we inhabit a state of spontaneity. The state of spontaneity is important, because in it we present fidelity to truth. It is a vital feeling. It is an essential mode, if we want to tell the truth. It is in play that the state of spontaneity becomes familiar and accessible. It becomes a second nature, so that when there is content, life, enthusiasm - when there is a real story to be told, familiarity with the state where spontaneity (freedom) is permitted, experienced and known, is to be regarded as essential and necessarily simultaneous to the production fidelity to the original idea.

4

Here are some further notes;

#Poetry is speech.
Speech is always meaningful. The substance of speech is meaning. Meaning (the outcome of desire) is the mystery of being. All speech is poetry. Poetry is not something that has a life outside, above or below speech and its necessary components. Poetry is always ordinary. People speak, or they do not speak, that is all that there is to it, and it is up to them what they say and what they do not say. What we do say and what we do not say, is how it is that we create the reality that we live. Our lives are made of poetry. Such is either intentional or unintentional. Somebody made a mistake. That is all that there is to it. Writing is speech that is considered deliberate - this intentionality is a state of life that is achieved in spontaneity, in being oneself. It is submitting to the unconscious life as a way to consciousness and to reality. By admitting the fact of one’s own pleasure and enjoyment, appetites and reactions, as such, one defeats lies at once and for all, and becomes free, conscious, intentional and decisive. This is unity. Freedom is a matter of speech, and the limit of that freedom in the body is the power of the description of reality which one is prepared to make when one is saying something. I tell you now and listen to me properly - freedom is speech. Reality is ordered at the mouth.

#Musicality.

We believe that Musicality is essential in Poetry. But what do we mean by Musicality? Musicality does not begin with rhyme or meter or cadence. It begins with the perception of the innate musicality of words as original forms that order time and space, and with the pleasure derived therefrom in the speaker as the sensational creator of meaningful order. The ‘Music’ is an innate property of the speaker. It is not a result of the employment of manner, mode, device or technique. It is the feeling of being. It is the love of speech and of speaking - in a certain real way, according to the inclination which gratifies the speaker in some way or in some other way at the time. Words are not like numbers. They are not final units of meaning nor are they finally measurable. They are events in the Spiritual life. They are nodes in a tangled matrix of connection that stretches from here and now and into eternity. Hence, they are subtle and not all of their properties and influences and interactions and connections and relations to each other are consciously knowable. But they can be felt innately by the adept. They can be known intuitively by the Initiated, by the proficient - by the Musician. Speaking happens after Listening. It is the manner of listening and receiving (being) which conditions the original Musicality of speech. One can only say the things which one can hear.

#And So.

Poetry recognises the formal property of words and presents verse. Verse refers to a finite set of words intended to achieve a unity which is expressed in the disposition and the arrangement of formal properties which are affecting, memorable and recognizable. This formal unity is apprehendable/experienced through the perception of sound, rhythm, rhyme and regularity. Regularity refers to the repetition in speech of recognizable formal components. But there may also be repetition, pattern and regularity of unrecognized or subliminal subtle (abject) life. Words have visible surfaces but they also have invisible bodies. Two words that ‘sound similar’ may be dissimilar in essence. Two words that ‘sound dissimilar’ may be similar privately. It is possible to create a formal unity in words, but without any semantic coherence whatsoever. However, poetry normally presumes that meaning is required in the proceeding sound. The speech says something. It has a story. A story is a destiny. A destiny is a fact that it is possible to feel in the body. Therefore it is something that is shared in principle.

#Musicality.

We believe that Musicality is essential in Poetry. But what do we mean by Musicality? Musicality does not begin with rhyme or meter or cadence. It begins with the perception of the innate musicality of words as original forms that order time and space, and with the pleasure derived therefrom in the speaker as the sensational creator of meaningful order. The ‘Music’ is an innate property of the speaker. It is not a result of the employment of manner, mode, device or technique. It is the feeling of being. It is the love of speech and of speaking - in a certain real way, according to the inclination which gratifies the speaker in some way or in some other way at the time. Words are not like numbers. They are not final units of meaning nor are they finally measurable. They are events in the Spiritual life. They are nodes in a tangled matrix of connection that stretches from here and now and into eternity. Hence, they are subtle and not all of their properties and influences and interactions and connections and relations to each other are consciously knowable. But they can be felt innately by the adept. They can be known intuitively by the Initiated, by the proficient - by the Musician. Speaking happens after Listening. It is the manner of listening and receiving (being) which conditions the original Musicality of speech. One can only say the things which one can hear.

#Poetry is speech.
Speech is always meaningful. The substance of speech is meaning. Meaning (the outcome of desire) is the mystery of being. All speech is poetry. Poetry is not something that has a life outside, above or below speech and its necessary components. Poetry is always ordinary. People speak, or they do not speak, that is all that there is to it, and it is up to them what they say and what they do not say. What we do say and what we do not say, is how it is that we create the reality that we live. Our lives are made of poetry. Such is either intentional or unintentional. Somebody made a mistake. That is all that there is to it. Writing is speech that is considered deliberate - this intentionality is a state of life that is achieved in spontaneity, in being oneself. It is submitting to the unconscious life as a way to consciousness and to reality. By admitting the fact of one’s own pleasure and enjoyment, appetites and reactions, as such, one defeats lies at once and for all, and becomes free, conscious, intentional and decisive. This is unity. Freedom is a matter of speech, and the limit of that freedom in the body is the power of the description of reality which one is prepared to make when one is saying something. I tell you now and listen to me properly - freedom is speech. Reality is ordered at the mouth.

#Preface.
Regarding reading; I think that enjoyment, consciousness, apprehension: and particularly apprehension of subtlety and potential and fact in a presented formulation of language - apprehension there; justified and being as unconscious reaction and impression as (a necessary component of enjoyment) can in that moment (of enjoyment) function there as an original energetic input, and as a catalyst to a spontaneous manifestation of some states of extraordinary or exemplary definition and finality, and also and in that, of a fulfilment of a highest absolute of abundance of meaning, efficiency and so of economy, possible in any particular body as it then speaks in returning urges. The potential that one apprehends in something said; where language and meaning seem a unity - is then nothing more than the mere equal, equivalent or identity of the potential action residing in the body of the apprehensive self. Or even in the end - there transpiring in any due natural activity arising and emergent as finally factually superior to such as (the original apprehensions) or even further and where vitally extant; as possibly or even inevitably substantially transcendent. Such are the rungs of the ladder of Mastery ascending as they do now into Mystery.

My name is Fidelity, Play, Truth (Ricky Meat).
My name is
Ricky Meat
Ricky Meat
I feel total
I feel complete
this
believe it or not
is the hymn sheet
the home street
the rhythm beat
of Ricky
gorgeous
Ricky meat
my name is
Suzy Strange
Ricky Meat
licks my flame
he wants to look away
he wants to play that game
he wants to feel the shame
exquisite
Suzy game
has entered
the fucking frame
Ricky Meat
he is compliant to me
and he is tame.

Look at this ‘Poem’. It has no meaning, thought or content or life, beyond being daft, voluptuous and libidinous. The libido is the engine that drives the play. The play is important because it is in play that we inhabit a state of spontaneity. The state of spontaneity is important, because in it we present fidelity to truth. It is a vital feeling. It is an essential mode, if we want to tell the truth. It is in play that the state of spontaneity becomes familiar and accessible. It becomes a second nature, so that when there is content, life, enthusiasm - when there is a real story to be told, familiarity with the state where spontaneity (freedom) is permitted, experienced and known, is to be regarded as essential and necessarily simultaneous to the production fidelity to the original idea.

5

your posts are too long. Think of something to say that doesn’t look like an encyclopedia entry.

6

A bit harsher than it needs to be.