Blind Guide

Signs

Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Threading the palm, a web of little lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tounges, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out, like imprints on a bed,


In signs that can't be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely open mouth,
Like telegrams, the gathering of crowds - 


The plane's X in the sky, spelling disaster;
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly's panicked scribbling on the air.




Another one that I don't know what it means. But after yammering on about it for ever and a day on this blog, I realized that John Keats invented a term for it hundreds of years before I got pooped out onto the planet.


The term is "negative capability." It means being comfortable with ambiguity and the unresolved. Wikipedia calls it "intentional open-mindedness" but that smacks a little too much of New Thought jargon to me. 


I see it as an ability to accept that not everything has an answer you will be able to grasp or accept. The Grand Unified Theory, the Theory of Everything, can never explain everything. Don't try to formulate a hypothesis that will cover every contingency: it can't happen. Even the immutable law that not everything can be explained should be relied upon too heavily. 


Some might call that typical postmodernist thinking, a non-threatening relativism that allows Rick Sanchez to be both racist and non-racist at the same time and in the same manner. This will supposedly undo the Principle of Contradiction, destroy the laws of logic and reverse the polarity of the universe to send us spinning into a black hole of irrelevance and fuzzy reasoning. 


Personally, I just call it "humility." I tend to tune out anybody who claims to have the final ultimate answer that will solve everything. If you're so smart, why aren't you God? Or Justin Timberlake? (Because the smartest person in the world would DEFINITELY know the best thing to be is Justin Timberlake.)


Keats didn't elaborate much: like most poets worth their salt, he didn't go into much detail on the ins and outs of his poetical theory and critical literary opinions. Personally, I think if you get your jollies with that kind of thing beyond stating opinions or practical considerations, you've abdicated the role of an artist. You're supposed to be making art, not talking about making art.


But I feel like for poetry to have anything real, anything that lasts, it's got to have more than one way of existing, more than one way to be seen. Otherwise it's all morals in verse. The unknown and unknowable is what I'm looking for, which is very different from the nonsensical and unintelligible. I want a blind guide who can take me by the hand through new dark mazes. Let's get lost.