I am once again thinking about bewilderment. A few months ago, I wrote about bewilderment and focused on the confusion it supposedly implies, essentially arguing that poems seem esoteric and nonsensical to untrained readers because they have not yet cultivated a mind that seeks to be bewildered.
This talk of bewilderment caused a few other concepts to pop up: enchantment, negative capability, deception, joy. Still, though, the equation remained simple. Bewilderment equals wonder, and it is what should be pursued while reading poems.
Enter Ilya Kaminsky, and his thought-provoking question on wonder and astonishment:
In the responses to this tweet, I could not find any unanimous conclusion. Some people found astonishment to have a negative connotation, whereas myself and others found it solidly positive. Some argued that wonder follows realization and understanding, while others expressed that astonishment fills that role.
Perhaps poets so often confuse wonder and astonishment because their near-synonymy makes overlap inherently likely, or because words having to do with feelings can be the most subjective words of all.
To me, astonishment is momentary and shocking, like a glimpse at God. It is inexplicable, prompting the feeling of being impressed or awestruck. A state of being, in other words, that does not ask to be responded to with action, apart from that of sitting back, mouth agape.
Wonder, on the other hand, is active. Lights flick on in the mind, tables are cleared to make space for inspired creation. It is trance-like, a sparkling hangover. The feeling of walking out of a movie theater and wanting to change your whole life based on what you saw. Wonder, for me, is influential, and very internal.
All of this brings me back to the idea of bewilderment. Upon thinking further about different styles of poetry and expanding my mind to consider poetry-like works that belong to different artistic genres, my perception of bewilderment has become both obscured by new questions and enlightened by new understandings.
In the short essay “The Poetics of Bewilderment,” Emilia Phillips poses the (admittedly oversimplified) question of whether readers preferred to be bewildered or grounded by a poem. Although this dichotomy leaves much to be desired as far as possible reactions to a poem, it intrigues me.
The concept of bewilderment seems to be geared toward poetry that aligns with fairly traditional content and form. As in, the confusion should spring from an unusual image that can be readily understood, even if not properly interpreted.
Consider an excerpt of “Apple in Water” by Mary Ruefle:
It doesn’t get any better than this
said the water
These are troubled times
said the shred
and the apple, the apple
wasn’t really there,
only a lingering taste of it,
as if it were the last apple,
or an earlier one that had lasted
“Apple in Water” is constructed of plain language, no esoteric words or difficult concepts. The players in the narrative are also recognizable: a body of water in which the speaker is swimming, a bite of an apple in her mouth. It is the configuration of these particular images that bewilders.
In giving voice to the water and the shred of appleskin, then saying that “the apple / wasn’t really there,” Ruefle toys with the reader’s perception of the poem’s reality. Are we in a world where apples speak, or are there no apples at all, only a speaker using the apple which she did or did not eat as a sort of symbol through which to ponder the state of her life?
Now, consider the opening stanza of “Nectaries” by Cody-Rose Clevidence:
nectaries :: has tempest :: o yellow—
o ovum & capsule :: u spaceship
2 the future :: Adonis I, mythic mightily,
ring species a crown my hell-bent absence & litany
These four lines alone convey the relentless oddness of the poem; its obsession with history and future, botany and anatomy, brazen sexuality and chaos. The word “nectaries” appears as both the title and the first word in the poem. It is a rather esoteric word, referring to the nectar-producing structures of a flower.
The usage of lowercase letters for all but proper nouns as well as unusual punctuation (the double colons seen in this stanza, which are joined later in the poem by double slashes “//” double pipes “||” and brackets “[]”) immediately differentiate this piece from traditional work.
roam, lucent cyborg :
hungry eyed quartzite O
lonely in hologram emblazoned mirror
of form dense w weight & urge; my animal sleeps
in the spinning eye of the universe; the milky gibberish
flung thru the sky : seek
“Nectaries” is provocative in both form and content. By telling an unabashedly queer, speculative story through a collapsed sort of language closely resembling textspeak, this poem marks itself as being truly, entirely distinct.
In me, it evokes a curious sense of wonder. I want to walk knee-deep through the poem, making what sense can be made of the unusual language and appreciating the reeling interstellar whimsy of the sex-filled cosmic utopia it creates.
Although it fits Fanny Howe’s criteria of bewilderment by following “a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability,” this poem seems to stretch beyond the sort of work that Howe had in mind when articulating her theory. It even goes beyond wonder to the point where I want to dedicate time to unraveling the references and meaning of the poem, uncovering its layers of elusive beauty.
Recently, I came across “I Can’t Swim” by Heather Christle, a genuinely fun and whimsical poem that almost reads like a children’s book.
This poem expands possibility in a comedic yet heartfelt way. It’s beautifully imaginative, and yet, for me, not bewildering.
Which leads me back to Emilia Phillips’ question: do you prefer to be grounded or bewildered by a poem? As I said before, I appreciate the shortsightedness of this question, because what it excludes is impossible for me to ignore.
Beyond bewilderment lies a stark and rare form of wonder, like that which is cultivated by Clevidence’s “Nectaries.” And imagination, exemplified by Christle’s “I Can’t Swim,” strikes me as sensible and grounded even though it challenges the boundaries of reality.
Naturally, all of these categories are subjective, and you may perceive these works and concepts differently than I do. At the center of bewilderment is the delicious acceptance that a poem need not make sense to anyone, not even the poet. And yet, a bewildering poem can feel deliberately crafted and meaningful.
The writing of poems is such an inexplicable and magical practice. In saying that bewilderment is not only a technique for the composition of poems but a broad lens through which to approach one’s whole life, Howe reveals a portion of her own process. Once you are steeped in the ethics of your poetry, it becomes more than work, more than play, more than creation for creation’s sake.
Allen Ginsberg likens it to a sexual impulse which “rises within,” definite and unable to be ignored. Joanne Kyger expressed that her main writing concerns were “the shape of the day, the words of the moment, what’s happening around me in the world of interior and exterior space.”
A skilled poet not only learns the language of poetry, but creates and builds upon their own personal vernacular. It is in no way isolated. As T. S. Eliot puts it: "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone."
That’s why I return over and over to what I’ve read or learned or pondered. The purpose of my writing this newsletter is ultimately to offer myself a place to think and carry on larger conversations.
I’ve been reading more interviews and essays recently, really thinking about poetry from a compositional standpoint. I’m as interested as ever in process, renewing my dedication to my own guiding phrase: “the process is the purpose.”
My work finally feels true to me again, but I’m holding off on submitting to journals for a while, instead putting my time towards a chapbook that may or may not ever see the light of day. I feel like a real artist, challenging my own habits to make my process even stronger, surrounding myself with inspiring work so that my mind remains ripe and able to create.
In other words, I’m back on my bullshit. Thank you for coming along for the ride.