Poetrymind: Meditation on New Orleans and the Aftermath of Katrina

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Meditation on New Orleans and the Aftermath of Katrina

A few years ago I visited New Orleans for the annual AWP Conference. Hosted by a young gay couple living near the canal, I saw a great deal of the city that so captivated me; I was ready to move there in a heartbeat. Since then, New Orleans has entered my poems and stimulated me to reimagine my place in that great port. Driving aimlessly through its neighborhoods back in March 2002, I keenly felt the energy of its bold citizenry and the intense drala of the elements converging at the mouth of the Mississippi with a peculiar sense of recognition. Somewhere in my mindstream, New Orleans was once home. That much I am certain of.

The aftermath of Katrina fully discloses the beauty and terror of that city. Ever a charnel ground of life and death played out in full force for centuries, New Orleans will rise again in all its vivid display. Today, its suffering marks a transition in the American psyche where the citizens have truly toppled the doublespeak of politicians, the elements reared their monstrous heads in roiling outrage over environmental destruction and the world stopped a few seconds to contemplate the reality of life and death played out moment by moment.

We will never be the same but New Orleans will remain a timeless place, a rare flower of racial and cultural mingling celebrating the best and worst of humanity as free as the wild parrots who once graced that great city. My heart goes out to you people of New Orleans, brothers and sisters forever...

Jacqueline Gens
9/3/05

WHAT IS POETRYMIND?

Officially Poetrymind’s a Decade Old

In the Spring of 2005 while co-directing the New England College MFA Program in Poetry, I considered starting my own blog. I had been introduced to blogging through an MAT program in Information Technology I was enrolled in at Marlboro College.

I still remember sitting bolt upright one night when the word poetrymind manifested as the title. I believe I first heard this word from Russell Edson--at NEC when he read. At one point he responded to a challenge from a faculty saying something like there is only one thing that matters and that is poetrymind. Edson was a magical and deeply ironic prose poet whose work I admire. His work epitomizes for me the simple notion that things are not what they seem. Thus, the phenomenal world is infused with magic and the mystery of discovery with ever fresh eyes.

For me poetrymind is synonymous with “First Thought, Best Thought,” which is to say, thought that represents a state of mind free from conceptual overlays of judgment and second guessing. Rather it is elegant thought borne from pure perception, the original thought before attaching judgement. The slogan, "First Thought, Best Thought", coined by the late Chogyam Trungpa and Allen Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is not about writing without revision, as some believe. It is about experience first hand--direct and pure without a lot of egotistic filters or projections.

I am reminded of what the great Zen master, Susuki Roshi called “Beginner’s Mind” --- every moment offers a “fresh” experience. The ground is open vast mind or as Pema Chodron aptly puts it—The sky is open mind and everything else is the weather. Words are the display of poetrymind –alive with potentiality. Words in this context can become a vehicle for discovery of who we are.

See No Blood for Hubris on Russell Edson