“Imaginal knowing is the only way that the unconscious can move into consciousness. It happens through fantasy, through dreams, through symbols, where all is “thrown together” (which is the meaning of the word sym-ballein in Greek). It happens through pictures, events, and well-told stories. It happens through poetry, where well-chosen words create an image that, in turn, creates a new awareness—that was in us already. We knew it, but we didn’t know it. We must be open to imaginal knowing because the work of transformation will not be done logically, rationally, or cerebrally. Our intellectual knowing alone is simply not adequate to the greatness and the depth of the task.”
— Richard Rohr, “Beyond Conventional Wisdom”
In celebration of National Poetry month, let’s do something a little different.
Here is a kaleidoscope of poems and voices, of topics and perspectives, a short journey beyond conventional wisdom, to deeper knowing and recognition, to appreciation of the gift of living in this time.
There is loss and pain, there is grief and helplessness mixed in. Let’s not pretend otherwise, and let it also be fuel for creative fires. May synchronicity, or a moment of grace or attention, gift you with a poem that lifts you up today and helps you see that you are not alone.
Thank you to the Myth Matters patrons and supporters who contributed their voices and poems to this episode. They give life to our virtual story circle.
Transcript of Beyond Conventional Wisdom: Poetry and the Imaginal Realm
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
Here we are, the end of April, the final days of National Poetry Month here in the United States.
Today we’re going to step out of the usual format of this podcast and do something different. We’re going to make a move beyond conventional wisdom into the imaginal realm. We’re going to go on a poetic journey.
The seed of this adventure is the opening paragraph from a daily meditation that was circulated by Richard Rohr from the Center for Action and Contemplation, earlier this year. The meditation is titled “Moving Beyond Conventional Wisdom.” A thankful shout out to Dick Sumpter, a friend and listener in Kansas City who forwarded this essay to me.
Rohr reflects on the limitations of our reasonable, rational, quotidian ways of knowing and he offers three further forms or “ways of knowing” that can allow us to access greater wisdom. The first of these is “images.” He writes:
“Imaginal knowing is the only way that the unconscious can move into consciousness. It happens through fantasy, through dreams, through symbols, where all is “thrown together” (which is the meaning of the word sym-ballein in Greek). It happens through pictures, events, and well-told stories. It happens through poetry, where well-chosen words create an image that, in turn, creates a new awareness—that was in us already. We knew it, but we didn’t know it. We must be open to imaginal knowing because the work of transformation will not be done logically, rationally, or cerebrally. Our intellectual knowing alone is simply not adequate to the greatness and the depth of the task.”
Maybe a poet would express the inadequacy of our intellectual knowing like this:
“Even Ornaments of Speech Are Forms of Deceit” by Ron Koertge read by Catherine
It’s 1667. Reason is everywhere, saving
for the future, ordering a small glass of wine.
Cause, arm in arm with Effect, strolls by
in sturdy shoes.
Of course, there are those who venture
out under cover of darkness to buy a bag
of metaphors or even some personification
from Italy, primo and uncut.
But for the most part, poets like Roderigo
stroll the boulevards in their normal hats.
When he thinks of his beloved, he opens
his notebook with a flourish.
“Your lips,” he writes, “are like
lips.”
Today’s poetic journey will take you through a landscape of seven voices in addition to my own. I invited patreon patrons and bandcamp supporters of Myth Matters to make a short recording of themselves reading poetry. This is the result. Taken together, the poems traverse a wide variety of life experience, moments, visions, memories, and epiphanies.
Most of the poems in this episode are original, and the poets generously supplied the text of their work for inclusion in the transcript of this episode, so you can read along or visit with their words in a different format. Please respect their copyrights. You will find the transcript, including these poems, along with photos and links to websites and Instagram handles on my website, mythicmojo.com. I hope these help you take a journey into poetry of your own devising.
My hope in offering this kaleidoscope of poems and voices, of topics and perspectives, is to make a move beyond conventional wisdom, as Rohr says, to deeper knowing and recognition. To find or reaffirm our appreciation of the richness of life and the gift of living in this time.
There is loss and pain, there is grief and helplessness mixed in. Let’s not pretend otherwise, and let it also be fuel for creative fires. May synchronicity, or a moment of grace or attention, gift you with a poem that lifts you up today and helps you see that you are not alone.
[typewriter]
Cynthia Anderson reads her poems: “Ode to a Pear,” “The Loner,” and “Coyote, Again.”
“Ode to a Pear”
Do you remember
the tree where you were born
at the far end of the world?
You left your orchard
in the Alto Valle
crossed continents and oceans
flew higher than swallows
to land in California
on my kitchen counter
your perfect flesh
ripening with a blush
In the time of COVID
you upturn seasons
autumn Bartlett
in Mojave spring
I can hardly grasp
you’re from Argentina,
can’t help but think
of the energy spent
to bring you here—
how humans
take and take
to satisfy a craving
Like you I exist
in this moment
then the next
as long as life
will last—and soon
dentro de poco
you’ll be part of me
(Published in Cholla Needles 45)
“The Loner”
Today I’m thinking
of my late father
and his desert home
17 miles down
the rocky dirt
of Signal Road
three wide crossings
of the Big Sandy
where in winter
rushing water
could turn you back
for months
his quarter section
$50 an acre
the nearest neighbor
a half-hour ride
in the 4×4
the only sounds
wild burros braying
and Top Gun pilots
buzzing the riverbed
he built his own house
grew his own food
stayed there
as much as possible
for three decades—
a desert rat
born and raised
on the outskirts
of El Centro
from his heaven
he laughs at the flap
over social distancing
his life began
when he left
the rest of us behind
(Published in Cholla Needles 45)
“Coyote, Again”
Dawn’s just taking hold
as I walk up the hill
towards Coyote, who
sits in the dirt road
facing me. Scrawny
and sick, he’s the one
I’ve seen for weeks,
who smiles sheepishly
then hobbles away—
a solitary figure,
all the trickster
knocked out of him.
He needs help that’s
not mine to give—
a clean end to his
suffering. No one
deserves limbo,
breath hanging on
past its time—
but can I forgive
Coyote his trespasses?
If not today, when?
(Published in Cholla Needles 52)
[typewriter]poems by elise kost read by elise
copyright 2021, not to be used without permission from the author
The Desert Winter Winds
knocked me to my knees
and emptied me.
Sometimes, we sink.
Sometimes, swim.
…sometimes so deep or far out,
we forget we can fly ~
…sometimes, so high.
Sometimes step, and the path slips away.
…it’s a fools quest seeking why.
Sometimes we gotta hustle.
Sometimes, sit still…
Sometimes, settle…
(be gentle)
Sometimes, draw the line –
Winter is also internal.
Time is a trickster, hard to find.
…sometimes so much to unwind and unlearn.
(It’s not easy to change, but sometimes we gotta rearrange the furniture),
or curl in and rest
until the Fire returns.
*
I muster, I offer, I pray :: Show me The Way.
I let go, I let in … the all surrounding and within, Vast Unified Everything.
*
As the Great Sun Rises
and budding Spring sings,
I emerge braver
and I remember the next layer ::
Slow Down.
Slow…Down…
…s…l…o…w……d…o…w…n…
to listen
to what Love
is whispering
to you
Now.
Wisdom (Water)
follows
and
receives.
What can you see,
when you are not looking?
~ elise kost
[typewriter]“The Archers” by Rags Rosenberg, read by Rags Rosenberg
“The Archers”
They are moving quietly
through the shadows,
barely below the threshold
of my discomfort. They are
whispering, calling out
my true name, the one I forgot.
They are tugging, insistent,
forceful, their firm, dark hands
on the blades of my shoulder,
turning me first this way,
then that. Like an arrow, they
aim me with tender,
merciless love, directly toward
the center of my fear,
their exquisite accuracy
measured unerringly
by the windsock of my resistance.
It is an oddly practical dynamic:
the harder I struggle,
the clearer their target.
“In a Dark Time” by Theodore Roethke, read by Rags Rosenberg
“In a Dark Time”
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
In Poetry as Survival, Gregory Orr writes:
“But in the act of making a poem at least two crucial things have taken place that are different from ordinary life. First, we have shifted the crisis to a bearable distance from us: removed it to the symbolic but vivid world of language. Secondly, we have actively made and shaped this model of our situation rather than passively endured it as lived experience.”
[typewriter]Micael Kemp reads her original poems: “The Threshold” and “Winter Solstice.”
“The Threshold of Winter” by Micael Kemp
You left at the threshold of winter.
I watched you go.
I held your hands.
With a last exhale you moved on.
I watched you go.
I entered the emptiness in your wake.
With a last exhale you moved on.
I hold that moment in my heart.
I enter the emptiness in your wake
I find small sprouting seeds.
I hold that moment in my heart.
I watch the seeds burst forth.
I find small sprouting seeds.
Like you they have cast off their shells.
I watch the seeds burst forth.
Like you they reach for the light.
NOTE: This poem is a pantoum, where the second and third lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the next.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Winter Solstice” by Micael Kemp
Now we watch the days grow shorter
Welcoming the longest night,
Honoring our inner darkness
Faith in Mystery burning bright.
Deep within the caves and caverns
Snakes entwine, their warmth to share.
Hundreds resting, sleeping, watching,
Hissing, sinuous, their prayer.
There beside them in the darkness,
Deep within the quiet earth,
Seeds and bulbs and roots are waiting
For the Spring to aid their birth.
On the surface winds are blowing,
Clouds obscure the winter sky.
In the fields that now lay fallow,
Creatures dream of days gone by.
Winter oceans pound the shoreline;
Sands are pulled back out to sea.
Rocky coasts, the bones of summer,
Now exposed for all to see.
Like the snakes we curl together.
Like the seeds we wait and sleep.
Like the creatures we are dreaming.
Like the sands our thoughts are deep.
Like the fields we now lay fallow.
Like the caves we’re dark and still.
Like the skies we’re clouded over.
Like the seas we’re grey and shill.
Honor we the dark and Mystery.
Nurture we the seeds within.
Worship we the empty spaces,
Letting go what might have been
With the dawn the solstice passes.
One more cycle now is done.
By our faith the wheel is turning,
And we welcome home the sun.
“How to Paint Pain” by Jennifer Bradpiece, read by Jennifer Bradpiece
“How to Paint Pain”
Canvas must be skin.
A hide pulled tight.
Gesso the canvas by allowing
a gossamer stream of saliva to fall
onto your palm. Rub into skin.
Like a balm softening the hide.
Now split yourself open.
Use a scalpel to find the fissure
where muscles and tendons open.
Stretch one across for texture.
Snap off the radius where it meets the ulna.
Dip the heart shaped end to
the pool inside your elbow.
Hold it over your head like a half note.
Wave long and short strokes onto the
canvas. Circle your abdomen
until the skin swirls open exposing
the coiled intestinal maze.
For a balance of earth tones:
Take what is left in the bowels
with both palms. Carve yourself
open to the clavicle. Break off
the smallest rib for finer detail.
Open your lungs to lacquer over the clotting.
Plunge a fingernail into your inner ear.
Now blow to heat what lingers there.
Use this encaustic to seal the layers.
Now you may sign your work
by pressing the veins
of your heart against its corner.
If you’ve created something you
could live with daily on your wall,
begin again.
“Self by Prescription” by Jennifer Bradpiece, read by Jennifer Bradpiece
“Self by Prescription”
O, the oblong, kidney-shaped,
apricot-serrated, pillow-round,
pale blue dream—
There is a science in balancing
the pills’ volatile contradictory calendars,
alkalizing conflicting agendas.
This one unearths
ice picks from ocular nerve,
ear drum, and dims thoughts’
evasive aura. My senses
pulsate into floor boards.
That one puppets
marionette limbs
to lift plate to sink.
Jell-O’d muscles give,
as water washes plate
straight through hands.
A porcelain symphony scrapes
across metal sink sides,and shatters my skull.
And this one controls pain’s
acute expiration date;
forecloses the hollow
bone house left
when the nuclear glow gives way;
allows me to swallow the dull throb,
the nauseous air, the heady light.
The death knell for my
natural senses sounded
over two decades ago.
Un-medicated cells,
that fluidly carried
the organs’ rhythms and
the flesh’s thesaurus,
are a lost country.
Each line on that
globe leading back
has been undone by
chalky erasers.
My skin’s ship docked
far from any known
topography or ancient
map’s lost sea.
There is an art
to pouring yourself
out of so many bottles.
I am mixing up a new galaxy.
I am naming every star
some piece of me.
The poetic can insert itself into life in some very interesting ways. On a morning walk in the desert near my home, last week, I found an elderly dog, a black female Great Dane, muzzle and paws liberally shot through with silver, lying in the spare shade of a creosote bush. I approached her cautiously, respectful of my fear of unfamiliar dogs, but her exhaustion and fear of hoping too much for kindness and help, were quickly apparent. She had been alone in the desert without enough water and food for much too long.
I’ll skip the story of how she ended up in the cool shade of my patio, thirst fully slacked, gently snoring at my feet. In that moment, I reflected on the improbable circumstances of our meeting. The desert is vast, she was so still, and I was caught up in the task of putting one foot in front of the other, something I find challenging these days. A black shape registered on the periphery of my vision. It could have been on old tire chucked out into the big empty. There are lots of those littering up the desert.
But there was something in the glimpsed form that touched the memory of a similar shape. It reminded me of my beloved dog Steinbeck, who is now gone, and the sight of his black Lab body stretched out in a shady patch of desert dirt. Thus imprinted, I couldn’t dismiss that glimpse of black and the question that rose up in my mind– could that be a dog? without further investigation.
Hours later, daily plans hijacked once again, I opened a book of poetry to a random page and well, let me read you the poem that appeared. It’s called “Buddha’s Dogs” by Susan Browne. And p.s., yes I found the dog’s owner and there was a happy reunion later that day.
“Buddha’s Dogs” by Susan Browne, read by Catherine Svehla
“Buddha’s Dogs”
I’m at a day-long meditation retreat, eight hours of watching
my mind with my mind,
and I already fell asleep twice and nearly fell out of my chair,
and it’s not even noon yet.
In the morning session, I learned to count my thoughts, ten in
one minute, and the longest
was to leave and go to San Anselmo and shop, then find an outdoor cafe and order a glass
of Sancerre, smoked trout with roasted potatoes and baby
carrots and a bowl of gazpacho.
But I stayed and learned to name my thoughts, so far they are:
wanting, wanting, wanting,
wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, judgment,
sadness. Don’t identify with your
thoughts, the teacher says, you are not your personality, not your
ego-identification,
then he bangs the gong for lunch. Whoever, whatever I am is
given instruction
in the walking meditation and the eating meditation and walks
outside with the other
meditators, and we wobble across the lake like The Night of the
Living Dead.
I meditate slowly, falling over a few times because I kept my
foot in the air too long,
towards a bench, sit slowly down, and slowly eat my sandwich,
noticing the bread,
(sourdough), noticing the taste, (tuna, sourdough), noticing
the smell, (sourdough, tuna),
thanking the sourdough, the tuna, the ocean, the boat, the
fisherman, the field, the grain,
the farmer, the Saran Wrap that kept this food fresh for this
body made of food and desire
and the hope of getting through the rest of this day without
dying of boredom.
Sun then cloud then sun. I notice a maple leaf on my sandwich.
It seems awfully large.
Slowly brushing it away, I feel so sad I can hardly stand it, so I
name my thoughts; they are:
sadness about my mother, judgment about my father, wanting
the child I never had.
I notice I’ve been chasing the same thoughts like dogs around
the same park most of my life,
notice the leaf tumbling gold to the grass. The gong sounds,
and back in the hall.
I decide to try lying down meditation, and let myself sleep. The
Buddha in my dream is me,
surrounded by dogs wagging their tails, licking my hands.
I wake up
for the forgiveness meditation, the teacher saying, never put
anyone out of your heart,
and the heart opens and knows it won’t last and will have to
open again and again,
chasing those dogs around and around in the sun then cloud
then sun.
“Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins, read by Amy Kelley Hoitsma
“Forgetfulness”
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
“On the Nature of Understanding” by Kay Ryan, read by Jeff Bernstein
“On the Nature of Understanding”
Say you hoped to
tame something
wild and stayed
calm and inched up
day by day. Or even
not tame it but
meet it halfway.
Things went along.
You made progress,
understanding
it would be a
lengthy process,
sensing changes
in your hair and
nails. So it’s
strange when it
attacks: you thought
you had a deal
In Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, poet and essayist Mary Ruefle opens with some reflections on beginnings. Paul Valery, she writes, “described his perception of first lines so vividly, and to my mind so accurately, that I have never forgotten it: the opening line of a poem, he said, is like finding a fruit on the ground, a piece of fallen fruit you have never seen before, and the poet’s task is to create the tree from which such a fruit would fall.”
“Grasshopper” by Mary Ruefle, read by Catherine
“Grasshopper”
Have you ever tried
to catch a grasshopper?
It is practically impossible
but those who make
a close study of life
believe that under the surface
is a pillar of motionless time
Now is the time
to add a grasshopperto your viatica
to abandon endless
exposure, and embrace
unnoticed life
Now pounce
Remember, he weighs
less than an ounce
and under him
is a pillar of
motionless time—
***
poems by Elise kost read by Elise
copyright 2021, not to be used without permission from the author
Live life like a poem.pause…Sing!…linger…Stop.
Weather brings buds to unfurl without effort.
Discover what you’re holding and
let
it
drop
.
Continue through completion before beginning again.
Be Lightening, when it’s time.
Precision is a gem.
Love…is…Listening…
~ elise kost
[typewriter]In the last episode of Myth Matters, I was joined by a special guest, Brian Michael Tracy. We had an interesting conversation about poetry and soul. I’d like to share a few words from the preface of Brian’s book Opaque Traveler: A Dream Sequence in Verse. Brian notes that we are all “on the same journey between blood and roses. The better we understand our own metaphors,” he writes,” the more we activate and nourish our own imaginations and poetic minds, the more enriching the experience…. the more human our being.”
I’d like to close with one more poem from Mary Ruefle. It’s titled “The Hand.”
“The Hand” by Mary Ruefle, read by Catherine
“The Hand”
The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you to the marvelous patrons and supporters of this podcast who lent their words and voices to our circle today. Feel free to contact me with questions or comments or poems in response to today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening.
Until next time, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life alive.
Links to featured poets and poems:
More about/from Ron Koertge at poetry foundation
More about/from poet Cynthia Anderson
More about/from Elise Kost and her book Temple Of Changes, Between Earth and Mystery. Also for sale at the Grateful Desert in Joshua Tree, CA. p
More about/from poet and songwriter Rags Rosenberg
URL for “The Archers” poem: ragsrosenberg.com/poetry
Follow Rags Rosenberg on Instagram: @ragsrosenberg
More about/from Theodore Roethke at poetry foundation
More about/from poet Jennifer Bradpiece ….Buy Ophelia on Acid, an exploration of loss, chronic illness, & transformation. ✨
Find the chapbook Lullabies for End Times at Moon Tide Press: www.moontidepress.com
For more art and word alchemy, follow Jennifer Bradpiece on Instagram: IG @crystallil1107
More about/from Susan Browne at poetry foundation
More about/from Billy Collins at poetry foundation
More about Kay Ryan and her book Erratic Facts
More about/from Mary Ruefle at poetry foundation
