On reading Kenneth White's poetry Open
World The Collected Poems 1960 – 2000 Polygon Books, Edinburgh, 2003: the
words seem ordinary, banal, as though telling a story, reporting on
everyday experience. One ponders: why is this man and his poetry so
eulogised? It seems that the language is merely structured to look
like a poem. There is disappointment. One expected more than simple
descriptions, retelling, expounding; but one reads on. Slowly with
time one realises that something has happened. The words loiter as do
the emotions, the sounds, the feelings of place and nature. There is
power here, a very special sensing. One knows the rain in all its
subtlety just in a few words. How does language do this? How can it?
The rich simplicity beguiles. The masterful use of language is
astonishing; intelligent; remembering Basho; knowing feeling. Words
linger longer and longing, divers diverse phrases, senses,
reverences: there is something strange here, wondrous.
Ordinary statements reverberate,
resonate, pause, surprise. They hold much more than their quantity
suggests: they echo with substance.
p373
Myth can still hit you
momentarily in a Boeing
The words won't leave me: no, not words,
the feelings; no, the ideas; no, the being, the being there, the
experience in all its rich, resonant wholeness and depth. This is
powerful poetry. This is life in all of its togetherness, amazement;
tiny things touched, recognised, loved, revealed. Ordinary things
made extraordinary in a simple, almost nondescript manner, specially,
especially. Pure poetry in every way; cliches too, but not, never:
lived feeling recorded; beauty brushed in the now.
These poems are meditations on being
exposing the raw beauty of the ordinary mystery of reality - those
instantaneous fragments of feeling, of perception are referenced,
framed and clarified: touched; touching.
I read his words and shiver:
p. 224
Between a question and a question
between a silence and a silence
the river's murmuring
The more one reads the more one is
astonished by the guile, that basic, simplistic use of words that
astonishes so completely.
p.237
all truth ultimately
within the body
the body-mind
word flesh image bone
the inarticulate heart's tree tone.
p.53
To the Bone
Hearing the bird cry
back up there
in the fields behind Fair lie
an autumn afternoon
the chill air
the gold suturning red
reality right to the bone.
But what has this to do with
architecture - just that the poetic is never forced, that ordinary
simplicity can hold a depth of meaning. One does not have to perform,
to out-perform just too much in order to achieve – quality;
significance.
It is White who describes the creative
process most clearly:
for
the question is always
how
out of all the chances and
changes
to select
the features of real significance
so
as to make
of the welter
a world that will last
and
how to order
the signs and symbols
so they will continue
to
form new patterns
developing into
new harmonic wholes
so
to keep life alive
in complexity
and complicity
with
all of being-
there is only poetry.
Wave
I - from ‘Walking The Coast’
It is the coast
that attracts the poet:
All
those kyles, lochs and sounds…
*
* *
And
the gulls at Largs pier:
sitting in that cafe
at the big
window full of wind and light
reading and watching
*
* *
Walking
the coast
all those kyles, loch and sounds
sensing
the openness
feeling out the lines
order
and anarchy
chaos and cosmology
a
mental geography
*
* *
Let
the images
go bright and fast
and
the concepts be extravagant
(wild host to erratic guest)
that’s
the only way
to say the coast
all
the irregular reality
of the rocky sea-washed West
Extracts
from ‘Scotia
Deserta’
But
there is more in ordinary, simple, everyday things, like his coat:
Old
shamanskin, listen
while
we’re moving farther on
this
poem is for you
I’ll
pin it on your lining
may
we remain long together
through
all kinds of weather
and
enjoy the travelling.
from
Poem To My Coat
Think of architecture as a coat - shelter: a poem.
