Poems and literature were, by nature, a little strange, seemingly intentionally obscure. I could walk out of an English class with a fuzzy concept of what had been taught, and it was okay; language was, by nature, up for interpretation. In Philosophy classes, I wanted answers.
My Philosophy major culminated in a seminar on Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote his books as a series of short, axiomatic phrases. The budding realist part of me rejected the simplicity of his certainty, wanted to throw his short statements at the wall and go back to my vague but fun life as a Boston student. The larger part said, "No, this is what philosophy is, keep quiet and get your Bachelor of Arts degree in May."
I did, and am now out of college. Yet my concepts of language and thought are becoming messier.
To a poem, I am able to say with the simplicity of a seasoned film critic, "This is good," or "Reject." In my thinking life, though, I find myself wading through streams of facts spat out by the media, only to land back in a bog of humanity. I have learned to submit to complexity in newspaper articles - the realm of facts - and to simplicity in poetry.
Perhaps I was talking, reading, and writing to myself through the course of my well-defined English and Philosophy majors.
I have begun to grow into more respect for poetry than I had when I was in college. People don't put their mental hands all over poetry. It is personal. It is beyond analysis. It doesn't have to reflect the real world. It often does anyway, or at least the kind of world I would like to live in.
Journalism, a discipline that strives to forge clear connections between events - the concrete - and human understanding, does not now command so much respect. The diversity and freedom of modern media has turned truth into something more resembling play-doh than a rock of cultural foundation.
I don't think this is purely an issue about poetry and journalism, or English and Philosophy. In the age of technology, knowledge has become human. It has become disputed, hypocritical, foreign information. Facts are universally available, and have forgotten their stubborn loyalty to themselves.
In college, I saw poetry as something to fool around with, and philosophy as a giant in front of which I should kneel - or at least sit with and read fine print about epistemology for hours.
The working world has flipped me on my head. Philosophy, truth, knowledge all now rest at my feet as material with which to create frames for adulthood. Poetry is now speaking in Wittgenstein-esque axioms. Ideas from the media may flood my experience, but poetry is setting the mark for my reality.
A simple reality. In this reality, there are only brief sense-impressions taking shape and arriving on a page as words. I know what I believe and what I love. What I believe and love flows from within me, unobstructed.
Although both thought and feeling are present in my life, I am not sure how to live both in the world of poetry and in the world of facts. I now trust my senses most, and find it incongruent that I have come to work in the field of technology journalism.
This misaligned trust shows itself in the fact that poetry is always creeping into my work; I usually have a window open to poets.org as I move through technology news on the net.
At times I forget the boundaries between poems and news stories. Each is a gathering of perception, a creating of mores to help readers navigate towards their own ideal sense of truth.
When it comes to poetry, I am now more of a philosophical journalist than a poet. I simply let daily experiences slowly boil down through my awareness until a poem arrives at my hand. Sometimes I like what arrives, and sometimes it sounds very much like nonsense. But unlike in college, I have a good sense of when it's based in fact.
I want to talk back to all of those philosophers whose work I studied in school. The events of my life three days ago are speaking back to what they said. Due to the media's new power to give voice to individual truths, my life carries more of the weight of truth than it has in the past. It also has more poetry.
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