Literary Criticism by Terry
Very few people have the concept of a concept, let alone the concept of an interpretive concept.-Ronald Dworkin (2011). Justice for Hedgehogs, 350.Is “being socialized,” no matter what the society, the same as growing up and assimilating human culture? The society to which one is socialized would have to be a remarkably finished product.-Paul Goodman (2012). Growing Up Absurd. 17.Our reconstruction of prehistory forces another explanation on us. The law [is] the will of the father and continued it after his murder. Hence…the impossibility of a rational motivation – in short, its sacredness.-Sigmund Freud (1967). Moses and Monotheism, 155.Talk to me, poet.
Are you the psychonaut who explores states of being
or are you the hermeneut who explores their meanings?
Either way, some things are so disconnected from their origins
by time, by usefulness, by repetition, or displaced by languages,
(this list is probably endless; to begin it, was a trap).
(Are you used to these traps by now, poet)?
Poets juxtapose, in order to suppose, impose, expose, but.
Parallelism as a rhetorical device must be disappointing
since parallel concepts converge eventually.
(Don’t get all orthogonal on me, metanalytical critics of cognition).
Talk to me, poet. It’s late
(at night, staged capitalism, missing period or other punctuation).
Is poetry just the verb that describes making up meanings
for the things that have no rational motivation but nonetheless are here,
juxtaposed with everything, embedded,
running relentlessly, like a courthouse dispenses medieval law daily
(is this even a question)?
Anyways, poet,
you’re not poetically responsible
for making societies where nobody reads, and even fewerbody reviews.
That culture’s where the lit reading’s Featured Poets all have the same MFA inflections
and the Open Mic poets all do vocal fry like a streptococcal choir
(but in series, one after another, not all at once).
Society doesn’t show up to those.
(I did, you did, but we don’t count).
Society is all thumbfucking their sexlessly instant smartphones.
That culture is mediated, not experienced.
Not even juxtaposed with the juxtapositions around their own positions.
Even though they are the embodied impossibility of a rational motivation –
in short, sacred, even.
Poet
what are we doing here?
“I trashed this poem because the literary conceit of talking to "Poet" about how to write, or not-write, seems overdone. I am not sure if the poem is as intertextual as it is supposed to be - even though I really was responding to the three authors I quote at the start. Three authors! Is that too many? I use words that are part of my daily vocabulary: sometimes I am a psychonaut, sometimes I am a hermeneut. But I have spent my whole life (since Grade 1 anyhow, kindergarten was way more liberated), being berated for using words like psychonaut and hermeneut (and I have never figured out why).”
Pushcart Prize nominee, researcher & farmer Terry Trowbridge’s poems are in Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Carousel, Lascaux Review, Kolkata Arts, Leere Mitte, untethered, Snakeskin Poetry, Progenitor, Miracle Monocle, Orbis, Pinhole, Big Windows, Muleskinner, Brittle Star, Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, New Note, Hearth and Coffin, Synchronized Chaos, Indian Periodical, Delta Poetry Review, Literary Veganism and ~100 more. His lit crit is in BeZine, Erato, Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, Seeds, and The /t3mz/ Review. His Erdös number is 5. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant.