“Art is the informed translation of soul.” -Brian Michael Tracy
April is National Poetry month in the United States. I’m joined by fellow myth-lover and poet, Brian Michael Tracy, for an exploration of the connections between poetry and soul.
Psyche is the mysterious wellspring of myth, dream, and poetry, and our source of creative vitality.
As Brian writes, “Art is the informed translation of soul.”
Brian’s poetry weaves through our conversation. I hope you find inspiration and a reflective respite here, and perhaps hear a whisper of soul.
Transcript of Poetry and Soul, a conversation with Brian Michael Tracy
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.
“This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
I hear the echoes of another meeting with a tempting fruit in that poem, maybe an apple in a garden long ago? Perhaps you hear it too. The shared roots of myth and poetry are very deep. They reach down into the oldest layers of psyche. And since April is National Poetry month here in the United States, today, we’re going to explore the relationship between soul, poetry, and what C.G. Jung called the “symbolic life.”
I say “we” because we have a special guest today. I’ve invited my colleague and friend, Brian Michael Tracy, to join me and add his insights into this multi-dimensional theme. Brian and I originally met some years ago through a shared appreciation for Joseph Campbell, and for poetry. He is a fellow myth lover and soul seeker, a courterof the muse, and a poet and songwriter. Thank you so much, Brian, for taking the time out to do this podcast.
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, thank you, Catherine, I look forward to conversation and to the topic, as you say, being in poetry mode here in the United States, I think it’s apropos. And I look forward to reading some poems discussing mythology and the art of the symbolic life.
Catherine
There are so many different ways to approach our topic. I thought we’d begin with the tag line on your website: “art is the informed translation of soul.” So much is contained in those few words. What does that mean, in your mind? Art is the informed translation of soul.
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, that’s a really good question. I would say that, it has to do with presence, it has to do with with, with being in touch, with listening. I think the word informed is important there also, I think that’s part of it, you know, it’s that that’s part of what the unpacking the word informed is, is having a presence, taking the time to listen to the whispers of the soul.
If we do that, whether on our own or with a prompt, or by reading someone else’s poem, or reading a myth, then we’re starting to approach that.
Catherine
I sense that the art or creative process is a conversation between the consciousness of the creator, the poet, the songwriter, the artist, the dreamer, and what’s coming from a different place in psyche.
Brian Michael Tracy
I mean, I can speak from the point of view of the artist, it’s a mining of it, and a mindfulness to the, the part of us that I think we all share that Jung called the collective unconscious, and to start to make that conscious to try and make a conscious effort to, you know, turn that into an art object or symbol.
Catherine
You used the phrase “whispers of the soul” a moment ago. Is there anything specific that you find yourself responding to most of the time?
Brian Michael Tracy
It varies, of course. I would say at the beginning, when I really started to write seriously, quote, unquote, there was a feeling like something was emerging and I needed to pay attention to it.
Now, I feel like, if I hear a phrase or a word, lately it’s been those kind of catch phrases or words.
Catherine
I’d like for you to read some of your poetry as we talk Brian. I don’t want to explain the poems or necessarily try to connect the dots between them and the flow of our conversation but we’re talking about kind of abstract stuff. And in a lot of ways, it’s better to get across in the actual poems themselves. I heard a whisper of soul when I read your poem titled “The Story of Light.” Would you mind reading that one first?
Brian Michael Tracy
I’d be happy to thank you. Interesting introduction to this one, speaking of how these things happen. There’s a Sting song, and I forget the name of it right here off the top of my head, but it has a phrase in it called “sad, shy horses walking home in the sodium light” and I always mistook “sodium” for “story of light.” And I love that phrase, but I can never find a poem to go with it. And I carried it for years. And then finally, I was putting a collection together, and I came up with this called “The Story of Light.”
“The Story of Light”
You are disappointed I know,
the way the leaves fail the trees
and the snow covers your heart and winter.
But tonight, as you stare into yet another storm
imagine the eye, and remember how morning
like innocence, returns each day to you
and how, soon, the fields will shimmer
once again, your horses dancing before they run
overcome by the emotion of sunlight.
True, the fences you have built no longer hold
but you take pleasure in knowing
there is nothing more to do.
The sun goes down. The horses return.
Tonight though, the only sound is the sound
of an open gate, groaning against the wind
and the only light is the light
from the snow falling immortal
dissolving as it reaches your heart
and you, standing at your gate
are nothing more or less than its story.
Catherine
I love the way that ends. And you know, we’re talking about responding to things and that happens in those of us who find a poem as well. I could try to offer an elegant, well thought reason for my attraction to that poem and yet, it’s the image of the horses plain and simple. Certain images of horses take me to a particular state of mind.
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, you know what the horse symbolizes, right?
Catherine
I can think of a number of ways to answer that question What is your intention, including the horses in this poem?
Brain Michael Tracy
It’s my understanding that the horse represents the unconscious.
Catherine
Beautiful. I also think of animal vitality, of our life, our drive below the surface of what we think we’re doing.
Brian Michael Tracy
What we think we’re doing.
Catherine
Do we know, do we really know. Brian, do you feel like you’re in conversation then, with a poem? That you’re being led in some way?
Brian Michael Tracy
Very much so. You know, we talked a minute ago about what you know, like a catchphrase or something that might trigger, you know, a thought or metaphor, or an idea for an expression of a poem. Once the poem starts, or the song lyrics start then it’s a conversation, then the poem or the or the song starts to take on its own life, you know, like a, like a, like a child, you know, where you just, you know, you can nudge it, you can cajole it, you can, you know, suggest things, but it’s, it’s kind of becomes its own, you know, living and breathing thing. And so, that’s also part of the idea of paying attention to, you know, what is it that I’m trying to express? But also, what is it that, that I’ve started to create? And, and how is that speaking to me in some way to, to pay attention to that it’s very much a dialectic.
Catherine
Yes, a dialectic. Listening to you, I’m reminded of something that Jung said about the symbolic life, which was his phrase for this dialectic. It’s a conversation between psyche and the daily ego consciousness, and one benefit is that it gives the ego perspective. Because you realize, it realizes, that conscious orientation, that it’s not the only component in a person or in a situation.
Brian Michael Tracy
Yes, I’ve read that and I’ve heard that. I think that the best way I can express it is to say not to overthink it. I’ve spent a fair amount of my adult life trying to capture a certain level of, of Zen, if you will, in a general sense of that word, whether it’s hiking or losing yourself in sports. For many years, I played tennis with all you can only think about really is that ball, just focusing on the ball. I’ve enjoyed those, the space that can be found when the when the monkey brain is quiet, right. And so, for me, that’s kind of a harmony, to be achieved. And it’s really in those spaces that, that I find that I do the best creating. So I don’t, I don’t worry about that, the idea of an ego or not an ego at that time. It’s just, if I feel if I’m in that space, and then I can start reading a poem, and I can look up and three hours have gone by, and it feels like 15 minutes.
Catherine
Time stops. You touch the eternal in the time bound realm as Campbell might say, losing the conscious sense of self in the act.
Brian Michael Tracy
Yeah, I mean, it’s almost like sleeping too, right? I mean, you fall asleep, and you wake up, and it’s, you know, however many hours later, it doesn’t feel like it was, you know, it doesn’t feel like the same eight hours that you were awake, it feels like it goes by much faster. And so I think that dream state is, is very interesting. And of course, dreams. Freud wrote the, his interpretation of dreams and he talked about the compression that takes place with imagery, and a lot of a lot of that’s in poetry and in symbols.
Catherine
This sounds like a good place to stop and read another poem. Brian, you have one that’s dedicated to Jerry Garcia, a kind of conversation with him. Will you please read it?
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, I’ve been a big fan of Mr. Garcia, big fan of a lot of different kinds of music. And so I was very happy in my first collection of poems to be able to write this one and dedicate this to him and to, I guess, the Muse in general. I will just add one thing. “Chautauqua” is a, it’s an mentioned in the poem is kind of this roving band of music gypsies that would go all over the countryside and performed for people kind of like this roving circus of musicians used to call it “chautauqua.”
“Jerome”
dedicated to the life and music of Jerome, Jerry Garcia.
What say you we sneak in our socks
Through the empty cathedral,
Lit as it is by the late afternoon
Seeping through stained glass?
And place a candle at its altar.
Find our shoes and sleep
Until the summer stars come out.
Climb the bell tower, play our guitars and watch
As the music moves down the street,
Through the trees into our yards;
Swirling like the skirts of gypsies when they dance
And snap their fingers in the air.
What say you we take the horses
Let out the leads, and race to the Chataqua?
Pitch our tents against the trees
And sing songs under an open sky
With words that seem to spill from fire,
Scorching the landscape like lava on its way to the sea.
There they meet the tide and claim the shoreline.
What say you we ride to the cliffs of the harbor
To the unmarked trail between days?
There the muse has poured the blue liquid of eternal tones
Into a guitar.
Pick it up.
Bring it to your ear.
Strum it, it is light.
Strum it again, it is night.
Strum it again, the unmarked trail is gone;
So to the horses.
Catherine
There are the horses again… Brian, what do you derive from the process of writing a poem about and to a person whom you’ve never met?
Brian Michael Tracy
Right, well, having listened to just about everything that that Jerry put on, you know, vinyl and going to a lot of concerts. I think one feels, when one is drawn into another person’s art, or another person’s personality, even it’s from a distance, that somehow, obviously, there’s been a meeting right? There’s certainly been a connection. And, to me, I will tell you, what I was trying to do was, I think two things, maybe semi consciously. One, if you notice, the poem is an invitation. “What say you?” And so, I always felt that way about the music, I always felt like it was an invitation. Jerry called it a signpost to new space, which is what I think art does for us, gives us a signpost to new space. And I think the other thing was just trying to capture somehow the emotional enrichment that I felt through the music.
Catherine
I found out about the Dead fairly late and didn’t make it to a show until very near the end. I think it was the last show they played in Las Vegas. I remember part of me thinking, thank God, I didn’t find out about them earlier. Because I was ready to just get in my car and say “where are we going next?”
Brian Michael Tracy
That’s it. That’s it. And by contrast, I was 15 years old. When I went to my first show. I had no friends that told me about it. I was simply drawn to the cover of their album, speaking of symbols– Anthem of the Sun, and I was drawn into it, like I was sucked into a vortex. And I was in the middle of a department store. And I lost for a moment. All sorts of time, and space. And so I took that album, and I said, I asked my mother if she would buy it for me. And she did. And that was it. I was 15 years old and six months later, they were playing to the Boston Music Hall. And as I had an opportunity to tell Phil Lesh one time when I met him, the bassist for the Grateful Dead, I said life was never the same after that.
Catherine
I’m glad you told that story. It’s so important that we allow experiences like that to be significant. That we let ourselves be grabbed. I talk to quite a few people who want to be more connected to their self, to their soul life, and to a deeper sense of purpose, maybe what Campbell called their bliss. But there’s so much preoccupation with what you think it should look like, or what you think is important or will be important to you. We often miss the signs and the signals that we give ourselves that come from these deeper levels of being. Deeper levels of psyche.
Brian Michael Tracy
Yes, I wrote a poem about that.
Catherine
Wonderful. Is that one you can read for us?
Brian Michael Tracy
Yes. It’s called “The Wings of Black Birds” and it’s from my second collection. “The Distance Between Shores” is the name of the book.
“The Wings of Blackbirds”
Come, let us measure the distance
between shores.
For if we measure the distance
between shores
we may become
the wings of black birds.
Feel the acrid wind
release us
from the salty mist
the empty rooms
of our lighthouse
where we pace the floors
warming our hands
with rosaries and rhinestones.
Fly to the cliffs
where the tides keep our graves
and flowers fade
in death’s impatient vase.
Come, let us find new wind
new colors of the wind,
green —
wind full of tears
from the eyes of children
mourning the landscape
gold —
wind turning tears to snow
above our wings
white —
wind that whispers
to the child
hush, do not cry
your soul is a lullaby
singing to me.
White, let us fly into white.
White hills, white rivers,
white water in the sea
white ash when we return
white ash when we leave.
White flowers in the snow
snow that mourns the child
birds that mourn the flowers
ash that fills the vase.
Come, let us sail
with the sound of wind
and listen
to the tenor of the tides
the songs of children
inside our sails.
Take the ocean to our lips
and play as if it were a saxophone
as if we were drowning
as if the moon
was all they could float
without wind, without wings.
Catherine
You offered this in response to our conversation about listening to our own messages and the signals we give ourselves. Can you tell us a little bit about how this shows up in this poem without doing violence to the mystery of the poem?
Brian Michael Tracy
Sure. I’m happy to do that. So again, of course, it’s a kind of an invitation right? Come to let us measure the distance between sure so what is the distance between shores? we could we could view that as distance between our conscious life and our unconscious life. How do we bridge that? And, but the acrid wind is blowing the salty mist, and we’re warming our hands with rosaries and rhinestones. You know maybe that’s not the answer. Maybe the rosaries in the rhinestones aren’t the answer. So, let us find new wind, let us let us endeavor to find new wind, new colors of the wind, and so forth. So it’s that invitation to explore. That’s what made me think of this poem when you’re talking about, you know, how do we find something a little deeper maybe.
Catherine
An invitation to explore. That’s really elegant, your conscious intention with these images in the poem. How much of this are you aware of when you write the poem? And then follow up question for people who might be feeling like they can’t write a poem, how necessary do you think it is to really understand what you’re handling when you begin writing?
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, I read one time that the best results are for an artistic endeavor when one has about a 40% idea 44 0% of what one is up to a little less, might be a little too fuzzy, a little more o conscious. So, I was trying to find a metaphor for this idea of bridging the conscious and the unconscious. And a lot of myth talks about the shore, the ferryman. Again, you can go back to the Grateful Dead, whether that’s true depth, I mean, it to me, that was always definitely birth, right.
So, the ferryman is that kind of bringing you across to the other shore for that shedding of skin and there, and then that rebirth. So that idea that we should measure that distance, you know, how far do we have to go, you know, what is that distance between shores? What does it really mean? It could be a one second travel distance, it could be an eternity, travel distance could be a lifetime. So, that was my start. The idea of measuring distance between shores, and that started the whole poem, and then it was just, it just went from there.
But in terms of what one has to be that conscious of, I think one just has to have a strong feeling that they want to write something down, that’s all.
Catherine
I don’t write much poetry. I make visual art. Returning to something that you said earlier, most of the time that I do something that I like, it moves me in a particular way. At some point in my process, I might try to understand that or to develop it in a way that I think will make the experience a bit more universal. But it starts off as very personal. Does it zing me in some way?
Brian Michael Tracy
I mean, I think it almost has to. There are stories of people that stories of people that start to do things when they become successful for audiences that they think they have, or in order to maintain their success and, of course, you know, that, that loses its truth. You know, it’s
manufactured, you know, you’re producing something that is somewhat artificial at that point in time. And I think people can sense that, you know, I think part of what people are looking for is some level of genuineness, and then of course some idea of identity, you know, is what we what, what do I identify with, you know, when reads a novel or, or a poem, what, you know, was it? What parts of it do I identify with? And, and I think that’s what Jung was getting at, with the symbolic life as well, which is kind of a fulfillment of identity.
Catherine
I would use the word “soul” to describe the thing that’s missing from what’s not satisfying, what feels too superficial, or canned, or plotted, or bloodless, or whatever. There are lots of ways to describe it but I think that when we experience some creative process, or some creative product, and it is just blank, that that is the way a good way to describe what is missing. No soul.
I find all of this interesting, what person follows and how much you have to know, from another angle, which is the deep connection I have with poems that I didn’t write myself. I can have a version of this soul conversation, this “art as the informed translation of soul” experience, when I’m in conversation with something that didn’t originate out of my personal consciousness. Brian, do you read other people’s poetry much?
Brian Michael Tracy
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Again, early on, in my teens, I somehow stumbled upon Wallace Stevens, who I consider to be one of the premier 20th century American poets. And I read his poem “Sunday Morning.” And the hair on my arms and back of my neck just stood up. I mean, it was so powerful to me. And that is, you know, in a nutshell, the power of art, in that case, was a poem. And of course, I went on from there to read almost everything he ever wrote.
Catherine
I’d like to read a poem that I read pretty much every day for a lot of last year 2020, the year of COVID. I think you have a poem that’s in conversation with this one Brian, so maybe you can read that when I get done. This poem is called the “Mystery of Meteors” by Eleanor Lerman.
“The Mystery of Meteors” by Eleanor Lerman
I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a meager park
Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind white birds
Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors
though the radio news says they are overhead
Leonid’s brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read
the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire
And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me
You would not think I still knew these things:
I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,
consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,
open windows, find beads to string with pearls
You would not think that I had survived
anything but the life you see me living now
In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air
She has been alone, she has known danger,
and so now she watches for it always
and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.
But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,
I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,
I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning
toward the crackling shower of their sparks
These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:
the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky
Walking down the paths of the cold park
I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything
So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me
the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads
For this is our reward: Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,
come love, not love, millennia of portents–
there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing
Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved
Catherine
Now when I first started reading this poem, there were a couple of obvious attractors, like the use of the word Armageddon, given what was going on in the time that I found this poem. And, this note of mystery, you know, my tagline is, “keep the mystery in your life alive.” Over time and multiple readings, I’ve realized that the theme I hear, of an unseen order in things, is deeply comforting to me. You know, the constellations are up there. I can’t see them. It’s cloudy. But, they are there. The boulevards are angling. I’m walking on one street and the trash is blowing around but if I was able to view them from a different perspective, I would be able to see the pattern.
When I got that insight, I really fell into a place of comfort with this poem. I used it to remind myself that I believe in this order. Which led me to think about a comment that Ginette Paris made when I was at Pacifica. She said that sometimes we need to borrow the words of others to express our own experience. We do something very personal that is also communal and has value to the community and this is a core function of culture.
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, yes, communicating on a deeper level, right. So yeah, you’re using her words. She’s using your words. We’re using a common language to communicate on a deeper level, and one of the things that I love about that poem, there are many things I love about that poem, but one of the things I really enjoy is the everyday tasks that she talks about, that she’s doing with her dog or by herself, it’s so tangible on a very daily thing, you know, a string of beads and so forth. And, and yet this all this is moving around me, and you would think that I would not be in touch with it, you would think because the cloud is there, whatever the cloud might be, right?
The veil of ignorance that that might be another phrase for it, if one is a Buddhist, or not, or just understands that phrase. There was this veil of ignorance, but, but maybe there’s not, you know, in seeing it or not understanding, as you put the unseen order of things, because maybe you’ve experienced it once before. I think it was Hillman’s quote something to the effect that in order to see the angel, you must first have a glimpse of it or an idea of it, in order to see the angel. And so once you’ve had a glimpse of that, then you have a sense of this unseen order. And you can come back to it. And how have you find that? Maybe it’s through art, maybe it’s through your dream? Maybe it’s through a conversation with a friend.
Catherine
I like the connections between the glimpse, the idea or image, and the trust that whatever was glimpsed continues to exist. thank you for that. How about another poem? You have one titled “Astrology,” right? Does that feel like the one to read now?
Brian Michael Tracy
I think so. I think so. Thank you. So yes, the title of this poem is astrology, and has a quote by Tycho Brahe, I think I’m pronouncing that correctly, one of the very first astronomers. You know, as we matured, in our intellectual development, in our brain development, one likes to one reads history, we move from mere ,mere astrology into astronomy.
“By looking up, I see downward ” Tycho Brahe
“Astrology”
If I could pour myself like rain
into a cradle, waiting
or squeeze like cheese
through the eye of a needle
I would lie down, fall upward
in half integers of time
rest of my head on a cloud
and watch the stars live their lives.
Watch them appear and disappear
arrange and rearrange
asymmetrical, misaligned
and connect them as dots…
searching always for the face of God.
I would close my eyes and listen
to soft cries cascade over me
as they turn themselves
into white dwarfs
the size of sugar cubes.
Put them in my tea
and watch them dissolve
spilling over the edge of my cup
past the ends of my table
spreading like wind
like the sound of wind
over yards and fields
forest and ocean
never falling
simply bending, as like does
like prayer
when it reaches the horizon
seeking the shortest path home.
Catherine
seeking the shortest path home.
Brian Michael Tracy
I loved your phrase about the unseen order things. And so this is kind of that. It’s almost like this, the flip side of that coin, you know, the other side of that coin of the unseen order of things is man’s desire to look up there and say, watch them arrange and rearrange the stars, right? Asymmetrical, misaligned, right, but, as a human I’m going to connect them as dots. Yeah. And I’m going to turn them into constellations, and I’m going to give them meaning. Right, that’s what we did. And, but really, underneath it all, we’re searching for what I the phrase that I used was the face of God. Uh huh. Yeah. So you can look at the sky, and you can see color, you can say it’s random, but that human impulse to connect them and say, Oh, that’s Orion’s belt, or that’s the Big Dipper or, you know, etc. And so that was that interplay for me, in that poem, of man’s desire for order, and understanding, but really, ultimately meaning.
Catherine
Seeing connections and patterns, finding messages, making meaning– that is what we do. It’s that narrative consciousness, and actually, it’s that imaginative aspect of consciousness which is the core of James Hillman’s definition of soul. And it’s really fluid isn’t it? Continuously creating and elaborating.
Brian Michel Tracy
The meaning doesn’t have to be the permanent meaning, right? That’s the other part of it. Right? So. So you know, your meaning can evolve.
Catherine
I think recognizing and allowing for this evolution of meaning is an important part of understanding the creative process as “an informed translation of soul,” listening to those whispers and letting yourself be led. Have you experienced this evolution of meaning in any of your poems Brian, in a way that you could share with us?
Brian Michael Tracy
Yes, and it’s a poem that I probably could best leave everybody with. Because it does speak to that point of, I guess, not being able to step in this water, the same water twice that kind of thing. When I come back to this poem, but it means something a little different to me each time. It’s interesting, because I haven’t, this is an unpublished poem and maybe there’s a reason for that. I don’t know. But it’s called “Coastal Plush.” Would you like me to read it?
Catherine
Yes please.
Brian Michael Tracy
“Coastal Plush”
From this white stone veranda
you can sit and watch the waves roll for hours
in mesmerizing shades of blue and green
until the late afternoon when the fog
begins its climb along the hills in the Pacific.
Inside Vivaldi plays, and a man sits alone
writing at his desk, filling his days with language.
Dropping his pen, removing his glasses
he walks out to the veranda and surrenders
to the cool coastal plush as it settles on his skin.
Out here, there’s no imagination
that is not touched by the mist, no music
that cannot be found in the movement of the tides–
no word that cannot be set adrift like some dream
to another shore.
So come, now is the time, the waves are calling.
Let us walk together down to the water’s edge
and speak of the poems inside our days
and the moon that never seems to set inside our nights
using as its light our memories and our dead.
Let us linger in the shallow pools of the tides
shoes and socks and hand, jeans rolled to our knees
and watch the mist rise to feed the hills;
then, at dusk, build a fire bold enough
to challenge the night. And in the morning
when we wake up to the solemn cries the beach gulls
we will search among the seaweed and the driftwood
for our words, that we might set sail upon them
behind the winds from this seductive shoreline
and find, for ourselves, once again, a new horizon.
Catherine
A new horizon… elegant metaphor right there for the continuous opening of new possibilities. So Brian, what’s the backstory of evolving meaning for you with this poem?
Brian Michael Tracy
Well, at first it was written for a friend, a friend, Professor that I met at Pacifica who was retiring. And we would spend time out in his backyard, looking out at the ocean and talking and talking. And so, I wrote it for him when he retired from Pacific I went up to his retirement party. And I, I read it there. And it’s still has that underlying meaning for me. I mean, that was the intention. But the idea that out here there’s no imagination that is not touched by the mist, no music that cannot be found in the movement of the tides. And then let us walk together, which is what I feel like you and I are doing here today, this afternoon, we’re walking together, we’re speaking of the poems inside our days.
And the moon that never seems to sit inside our nights. The moon doesn’t have its own light, it uses the light from the sun. And so here are the phrases the moon using as its flight, our memories, and our dead. And so how all of that runs through us all the time. You know, we are the million year old people, men and women, as Jung would say. So that is that kind of that constant shift for me of what is the poem inside your day? You know what? What lights? What lights your unconscious, I guess. And so each time I come back to this poem, I find something a little different in it.
Catherine
There’s such a lovely sense of invitation in your poetry. And you’ve noted that a number of the poems that you’ve read are actually invitations. I want to say thank you again Brian, for accepting my invitation to join me here. It’s been really wonderful to hear some of your poems and explore through them, the relationship between art, poetry, mythology, soul, the symbolic life. To take a few minutes to consider your phrase, “art is the informed translation of soul.” I’m going to be meditating on that for awhile.
Brian Michael Tracy
That’s part of the beauty of it, you know the, the depth of, of the topics that we’re covering, and I want to thank you for the invitation, Catherine to participate, it’s been been a real pleasure. It’s been wonderful to revisit some of these poems that haven’t read in quite a while and to have a chance to talk about them talk about process with you. So thank you very much.
Catherine
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Poetry and the soul life, my friends. I hope that you’ve found some inspiration and aid for your own reflection and creative process today. To learn more about Brian and his work, please visit brianmichaeltracy.com or check out his poetry and music page on Facebook. I’ll post links on my website at mythicmojo.com.
Welcome to the new subscribers and a huge thank you to the Myth Matters supporters and patrons open Patreon. Wonderful people like Fred Burke and Julia Ehret make this podcast possible through their monthly contributions. If you’re finding value in Myth Matters, I hope that you’ll join them. A few dollars goes a long way my friend.
Thank you so much for listening. Happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life alive.
Links
Learn more about Brian Michael Tracy at. www.brianmichaeltracy.com or check out his Music & Poetry page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BMTMUSICPOETRY
