7-3-24,  A. R. AMMONS--GRAVELLY RUN AND HYMN

A RIFF ON MYSTICISM

GRAVELLY RUN

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient

to see and hear whatever coming and going is,

losing the self to the victory

of stones and trees,

of bending sandpit lakes, crescent

round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self

as to know it as it is known

by galaxy and cedar cone,

as if birth had never found it

and death could never end it:

the swamp's slow water comes

down Gravelly Run fanning the long

stone-held algal

hair and narrowing roils between

the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,

and the cedars' gothic-clustered

spires could make

green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air's glass

jail seals each thing in its entity:

no use to make any philosophies here:

I see no

god in the holly, hear no song from

the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter

yellow of trees: surrendered self among

unwelcoming forms: stranger,

hoist your burdens, get on down the road.

HYMN

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

and go out

over the sea marshes and the brant in bays

and over the hills of tall hickory

and over the crater lakes and canyons

and on up through the spheres of diminishing air

past the blackset noctilucent clouds

where one wants to stop and look

way past all the light diffusions and bombardments

up farther than the loss of sight

into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes

trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest

coelenterates

and praying for a nerve cell

with all the soul of my chemical reactions

and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire

You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum

has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut

and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark

chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down

and if I find you I must go out deep into your

far resolutions

and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

I am never sure when I am ready to tackle a poem, as it is never clear to me when I have collected my thoughts about what the poet has presented. That is the case with both of these poems by A. R. Ammons. I get a certain feeling about the poems from the beginning but then further considerations make me want to know more about what might be said in them. I am tempted to know more about the poet and how he might have created some slice of autobiography in the poems. But there is something to be said for letting the poems engage the imagination just as they appear.

To engage my imagination is to see where the poems reflect back at me something I have experienced in my own life. I suppose this is an act of affirmation, something that seems to be very human but also something that allows even the most esoteric or opaque work of art an opportunity to breathe as we breathe. I think this is true for all works of art that attract my attention, be they poems or paintings, art installations, dance, or music.

Both of these poems are grounded. By that I mean that both contain references to nature and to a more specific biological state of living things. Ammons seems ensconced in nature and that might reflect his own background as one who majored in biology in his formal education. But it is not necessary to know that. What is important for me to notice is that he observes nature in its macro- as well as its micro- manifestations. His interactions with natural phenomena in “Gravelly Run” and “Hymn” make them the object with him as the observer. I think of this stance as having one foot in the realm of nature/worldly life and the other foot placed in whatever stands against that as a place where spiritual ideas and feelings are present and alive and may even be the destination for a journey through nature's abundance.

I think Ammons wants us to see that observations of nature's beauty and mystery are more than an escape from worldly experiences but are a source with which one in a world of calamity and noise can merge as a participant or even a receptacle of whatever might be considered divine grace. He says in “Hymn”: “You are everywhere partial and entire/ Your are on the inside of everything and on the outside.” “You” in this poem is God to my way of thinking. He reaches this point of insight having observed lakes and clouds and even single-celled organisms (coelenterates—jellyfish and corals). But this is more than just describing them. It is about finding their existence as portals to the realm in which mystery and human destiny cast shadows. The poet finds these connections, not despite the natural phenomena set apart from spiritual matters, but because of them. And it is the mystery and beauty of them that stir something in his soul. Still, he returns to his worldly state among the phenomena:

“no use to make any philosophies here:

I see no

god in the holly, hear no song from

the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter

yellow of trees: surrendered self among

unwelcoming forms: stranger,

hoist your burdens, get on down the road.” [“Gravelly Run”]

No, what he observes are only evidence of things not seen, those things being what interpenetrates the life we lead (yes, he calls himself a “stranger”, a stranger to what can be experienced only from quickenings of the heart), the burdens we bear, the emotions and feelings that emerge within us on a daily basis, based on what the world offers in distractions and desires. Time and temporal existence are part of our existence but timelessness is also an imagined state of knowing. He puts it this way in “Gravelly Run”:

“for it is not so much to know the self

as to know it as it is known

by galaxy and cedar cone,

as if birth had never found it

and death could never end it:”

This is not a solipsistic poem. It is not really about the observer but only as the observer is another of the phenomena of nature. And the reality of being human sets one apart from whatever one can imagine as the Creator, the spirit that interpenetrates all things and beings. In “Hymn,” he uses the phrase “I know if I find you I will have to ...”, using it three times as follows:

“I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

and go out

over the sea marshes and the brant in bays”

“And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes”

“and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves”

The journey the poet is describing is a progression from what might be a desire to escape the earthly beauty to a final stanza realization that he “must” remain on earth, perhaps to continue what amounts to worship of the mystery and beauty ingrained in natural phenomena (and, as in “Gravelly Run,” to “hoist your burdens, get on down the road”). It is these phenomena that are the only visible evidence of what lies behind the veil of the spiritual life. But the poet seems comfortable with this arrangement: “and praying for a nerve cell/ with all the soul of my chemical reactions/ and going right on down where the eye sees only traces” [“Hymn”].

In her own way, Mary Oliver, another poet exploring heaven and earth, once said about how to approach one's life:

“Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.”

That is the poet's charge, one poet to another and one person's formula for engagement with earthly life. I expand this admonition to include all beings and things that we might encounter in our own personal journeys through life. It is no mystery in these days that there are forms and forces in earthly life that present great challenges at a time when many of us feel unprepared to manage the waves of change and the threats we might perceive from those changes. I do not think poetry, or any art form, can offer an escape from what arrives at our doorsteps on a daily basis. But I do believe in what the Zen Buddhists propose and that is to use art forms as a way to confront and live through what seems most threatening and fearful. It is no challenge to enjoy the joys, beauty, and the moments of happiness and successes. The challenge that poetry, for instance, can answer is the encroaching unknown of a world built on consumerism, on pleasure as an end it itself, on extraction, on technology designed to blur and manipulate our personal and communal lives. Poetry as one art form can be a portal for reestablishing right balance in a world that seems out of control. It is also a portal for right action in our personal lives, reigniting personal connections and communications over time that feed kindness and compassion. I think imagining a better life for everyone is realistic if we can imagine our own inner lives as active and engaging and the source of spiritual health. “Telling about it” beckons others to share in what we have noticed and what we think about those things. Art forms can do this. Art in the form of deeper listening, considered speech, shaping a life of ethics and morals, and supporting the less fortunate are all examples of artful action. One can be an artist within the constraints of this earthly life, just as Ammons is suggesting to us in his two poems. It is what we notice (what we pay attention to) and what meaning we make of them that makes everyone a potential artist.

Several more ideas come to mind as I think more deeply about these two poems. One is to wonder about the vocabulary we use all the time with some words falling out as obsolete and others being added or even invented to get closer to something whose expression seems inadequate. Here is Ammons with his background in biology using nomenclature for describing natural phenomena, a vocabulary that makes communication universal among the interested. Because he mixes into his poems references to natural phenomena using universal nomenclature that is understandable by those interested as well as references to the more mysterious realm of spiritual life, I wonder if words we no longer use to refer to what might be heavenwardly oriented could be revived and help more of us understand what that realm and those words mean in the context of our worldly lives today. I am not sure that inventing new words for what previous generations could name in their orientation to the spiritual life would be helpful. This brings those experiences and the words used to describe them back into the light of our curiosity. Perhaps this would depend on a greater degree of reflection on what shape the spiritual realm actually takes for us. So many citizens are leaving formal church/synagogue/temple affiliations that it is no wonder that the words that sustained the faithful in the past have fallen out of daily use. I am thinking of words like: sin, forgiveness, redemption, devotion, sacrifice, penitence, atonement, heaven and hell—all solid words with meanings that might or might not challenge us in our lives today. But they might also open up more nuances of meaning that deepen our relationship with nature as well as one another.

Another idea that strikes me about these two poems is that Nature (as in Mother Nature) has no pretenses. The truth in nature, while incompletely explored and described (thus, its mysteries), is its basic formulation, open to us to observe and relate to. Nature is also neutral when it comes to knowing or acting on behalf of human beings. Our efforts to control nature have met with mixed results, not all of which are successes by any measure. But my sense is that nature will manage her own processes in spite of what humans do to them. This is humbling and valuable in that regard for us humans, as we have begun to believe we humans are the controlling agents in all things when, in fact, what we have hoped to control with our technology is beginning to control us. We could use more humility.

All of these ideas have been spurred by how Ammons has shaped these poems. He presents dichotomies with the option of interpreting them as unities. He suggests this as much in his relationship with both nature and the spiritual realm. He invites the reader to form whatever meaning those relationships generate, as all poets attempt to do, I think. It is all about thinking—and paying attention, as Mary Oliver shouts to us.