The Discovery of Daily Experience
It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,
hall, street, some great even: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits- but
there is a whisper. You always live so,
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moment's touch.
You see the people around you- the honors
they bear- a crutch, a cane, eye patch,
or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turn
aside, or even the brave bearing: all declare
our kind, who serve on the human front and earn
whatever disguise will take them home. (I saw
Frank last week with his crutch de guerre.)
When the world is like this- and it is-
whispers, honors or penalties disguised- no wonder
art thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,
or any people, live long enough in a place to
build, and remember, and anticipate; for we are
such beings as interact elaborately with what
surrounds us. The limited actual world we
successively
overcome by fictions and by the mind's inventions
that cannot be quite arbitrary (and hence do reflect
the actual), but can escape the actual (and hence
may become art).
Commentary
I was reading ‘Writing the Australian Crawl’, a book William Stafford had written on the subject of writing poetry, when this poem (among many others) caught my eye.
As he says in the book “This attitude toward the immediate experience of the world may indicate why in planning to consider writing I reminded myself to be alert, to be aware of the nowness of things- the feel of the day, the temperature, the kind of room, the people, what they said” (47.) He is discussing the concept of art in this chapter and in this poem. Every little object or attitude that someone can become art. An artist must be keen to the details of their surroundings, and I believe that Stafford encompasses that theme well in this poem.
— Jade
Links
Here’s a biography and bibliography:
http://www.lclark.edu/~krs/archive.html