Literature as Play

As far as I can make out there is only one rule to the game of literature that we can say with any degree of certainty. That rule is play.

Play consists of saying much without really saying anything. It is not the job of poetry to clarify. Poetry should suggest and ambiguate. To play with words, to juggle with concepts and ideas is the business of the poet. And freedom is the condition necessary for this kind of activity to flourish.

This is not to say that literature can’t have a message. Only that the message be conveyed in a way that isn’t direct or obvious. And that that message not be the only message.

All good literature is an interplay of light and dark.

Play is omnipresent in our language, in the way we communicate on a daily basis. We don’t always talk in a clear, transparent way. We suggest, allude and insinuate. They say this notion of play is at the heart of our Post-Modern society and culture, but the truth is it has been with us since the beginning of language and certainly since the beginning of literature.

Probably the best examples of literary play are in dramatic works, hence the name ‘play’. The best plays are those that don’t have a direct message. This is the difference between literature and propaganda. It is fascinating to witness how the drama works itself out. The dramatic work of Samuel Beckett is probably the best example of pure play there is. Waiting for Godot is an astonishing achievement of pure dramatic play: a play without any message at all.

Why is drama the best literary form for playing in? It is because drama mimics our own everyday speech. Our monologues and dialogues. And, as we have already pointed out, play is inherent in our language and the way we communicate. It is part of the human condition and the human condition is every poet’s concern.

There are rules to every game. These rules change over time. All except that one essential governing principle: to play. Once you start playing, you are on the road to making good poetry.

On Steve Harris

By David Jordan

Like Hendrix, you pushed your instrument

To the fore

And created a unique sound,

All your own.

 

Nobody plays like you.

 

Fast and melodious,

Full of sweet fills,

Your fingers tapping madly

Like a moth’s wings.

 

Slow and dulcet,

The calm exquisite hand

Only a real bass player

Can bring.

 

Fast or slow,

A true metal hero.

Proud:

You cut through like a sword.

Dubliners

By David Jordan

Close to perfection,

This word magic, alchemy of the word.

This complete word world spinning,

Wrapped in its grey, urban ambience,

Softly singing,

So fresh. So clear and fresh

Like a soft spring.

And characters that come to life.

These characters are the undead:

They will never die!

And always they will bring the ecstasy

Of instant recognition.

 

Yes, when every story hits the spot;

When every line glows and sings

You know you’re in Dear Dirty Dublin.

A Serious Business: Advice for Budding Poets

Every now and then I write poems.

I used to write a lot of them when I was a younger man. Many young people do. I was lucky enough to find a friend who read them and encouraged me. Someone whose opinion, as a writer, I respected. I renewed my efforts a few years ago, when I joined a writer’s group and found, again, a friend who reads the work and encourages and supports me. This is a piece of advice I would like to give to budding poets: if you are serious about it, don’t be shy. Find readers and ask for feedback. Especially people who love poetry and maybe write it themselves. As a writer, you must expose yourself. Get used to it!

It also helps if you are a music lover. Poetry has rhythms and sounds that make it musical. These rhythms and sounds are almost completely instinctual and intuitive. Or at least they are for me. Pater said, ‘all art aspires to the condition of music’ and I believe that poetry is the art that is closest to it. When I was first writing poems I would listen to music or just have it on in the background. Somehow, it got me into the right place. Try it! It worked for me and it might work for you.

Another piece of advice I would offer is don’t be afraid to go to the edge. By this, I mean you must obsess over every line, every word until you get it right. It is a form of madness. It’s like having your mind in a washing machine: your thoughts are spinning round and round and round until you are close to getting it right. Of course, you will never be 100% happy with it, so know when to stop too.

Another piece of advice that most poets would give you is to read as much poetry as you can. It’s the only way to learn. If you don’t like to read serious poetry, if you don’t enjoy the works of great poets then don’t even try. Maybe you are only writing for yourself – nothing wrong with that. But if you have literary aspirations you must immerse yourself in poetry. It is a serious business. As Seamus Heaney said, poetry can’t change the world but it can change how people understand the world.

My final piece of advice would be to work hard at getting your poetry out there. Don’t just sit there waiting for something to happen. Enter competitions, submit to journals and magazines, go to workshops and events, make friends and contacts and, of course, submit to publishers. No excuses. There is always something you can be doing to get your poems read and heard.

I wouldn’t call myself a poet but enough people have liked my poems on this blog to prompt me to write something about it. I hope this post will help anyone thinking of taking up the pen. If you have the talent, the luck and you work hard enough it will happen. It requires some patience but it will happen.

On Joyce

By David Jordan

A genius in the wood,

The wood of the postmodern,

A genius at play, dancing,

Lighting the way

With good laughter and song.

 

Scealai!

File!

The grey wood’s guiding light.

Star of Ireland:

Its angel and its eye.

Son of light,

O flower of the fair city

Won’t you show me again?

Getting to the ‘Good Stuff’: the Art of Creative Writing.

They say there is prose and verse and you can have poetry in either. This strikes me as true.

Literature is an art, not a science. Living is an art, not a science. This is why the term ‘Arts’ is often associated with, and even interchangeable with, the term ‘Humanities’.

The American poet, Jim Morrison, was once asked about the cross he wore around his neck at the Doors’ famous gig at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. He said, ‘it’s just a symbol. It doesn’t mean anything.’ At first this might seem a contradiction: you might argue that a symbol is all about meaning. You might say that a cross is a symbol of suffering. That is its meaning. I think what Morrison was trying to indicate was the difference between a fact and a symbol. Facts have an exact meaning. They are scientific. Symbols don’t have an exact meaning. In fact, they don’t say anything at all. They suggest. They have multiple aspects. Symbolism is at home in verse but it should be present in prose also, or any prose that sees itself as literary.

Yes, there is logic and science in literature, only it should serve the symbolic, the imaginative and the poetic. I believe a writer achieves maturity when he comes into awareness of the symbolic. When he begins to manipulate symbols in order to suggest and play with possible meanings. The mature writer knows how to strike a balance between symbolism and logic. The concrete nature of symbols allows him to play with them in his art. You can’t play around with abstracts because they can’t be visualized or imagined. That is why too much abstraction is a flaw in literature – it goes against the imagination and the imagination is paramount in literature in all its forms.

Consider Homer, the first poet of Western Civilisation and then consider Seamus Heaney, one of the greatest poets of the last fifty years or so. They both worked with concrete. With that which can be visualized and imagined. They worked with symbols.

Life is mysterious and writers can only capture a portion of that mystery through symbols. Life is messy and mixed up and confusing an only the mirror of art can reflect this. A good story, just like a good poem, shouldn’t have a precise meaning. It should only give you something to think about. It should suggest, allude and indicate. It should never impose itself. It should never enforce. It should never moralize except in the most general of senses e.g. it’s wrong to take another life. Good literature is an invitation to play – play with the intellect, the feelings and the emotions. Only when you master this will you become a good writer. Some of us master it at a young age. Some of us have to wait a few years and some never master it at all. It is a mixture of imagination and intuition, two terms that are alien to science and even craftsmanship. No matter how much you read and discover, there is no formula for it. You must simply write to get to it, to get to the ‘good stuff’, and, if you are lucky, you will.

On Yeats

By David Jordan

Thoughts born out of nowhere

Like the goddess Athena.

Your mind flashing with intuition.

 

Or, under the sun, a sword

At play, flashing

On a perfect day.

 

With a blade that kept its edge

And its passion over time,

As the darkness came.

On death cast a cold eye

He dared to write.

 

The sweet sounds, rhythms

And repetitions:

Instinctual, musical, masterful.

And the imagination

Like a Titan, towering,

Watching the ever changing, soaring

Pleasure dome.

 

And the discipline of the

Craftsman, the technician,

Shaping the iron, ever cooling,

Working it into perfection:

The master at play.

 

A wordsmith:

This man was born to do it.

The Unreflected Life

By David Jordan

I awoke to muddy boots,

My clothes soaked and stinking of urine.

Reject of Dionysus I am.

 

I remembered everything:

Stumbling in the dark, on the grass,

On the riverbank, like a rat.

Reject of Dionysus I am.

 

I can hear his laughter.

Old habits and behaviours reappear,

Madness, danger and fear.

Wasted days, wasted years.

Reject of Dionysus I am.

 

Damn you Dionysus!

With your leopards

And your laughter

And your car!

 

I follow Apollo.

Gladly, I toss away my thyrsus

On the riverbank.

 

I awake from stupor

To reason and intellect and imagination.

To the spring of the muses,

So cool and clear and clean.

Yes, there is nothing better on this earth,

I tell you, than to kiss that limpid water.

One Day

By David Jordan

One day

When I’m out of bed, bad blood and

Curses, maybe I’ll smile under the

Cool moon.

 

See her wrapped in a

Cloud mantle,

Reveal herself,

Then cover up again.

 

See her hang there, full,

Like a silver pendant.

 

A calm unwinking eye.

 

See her radiate and glow

The way women glow

Sometimes.

 

See her move slowly and

Silently across the sky

Like a huntress.

 

What else can I do but try

To please her with my pen,

Solitary, romantic old fool

That I am?

 

The Citizen

 

By David Jordan

I swear these long nights

Stir my blood

And steer my spirit northward

Like a long boat headed home.

 

For the imagination feeds

On the darkness like a flame

And tonight I imagine myself as

A man of the North:

Cross countenance, long bones.

Leaping on to the sandy shore.

 

Bringing alien gods to the natives:

The loquacious Gael.

The nature loving, melancholy,

Aristocratic Gael.

 

After a thousand years

Surely the stranger is gone from the house?

 

Tonight, I swear I am a citizen

Of the imagination:

Emancipated.

In flight.