Thinking, Critique, Mindfulness: Further Thoughts on What Poets Do

Abstract

What is the thinking that poetry does? In his essay, ‘The origin of the work of art’, Martin Heidegger proposes a distinction between two poetic modes – Dichtung and Poesie – in which the former is an extra-linguistic framing essence which makes Poesie, the manifestation of poetry in language, possible. In another essay, ‘What are poets for?’ the philosopher claims technology creates a fissure of forgetfulness between selves and contexts, and that ‘To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods’. This ficto-critical paper – written after the experience of a week's vipassanā meditation – reads Robert Hass' poem ‘Meditation at Lagunitas’ as a text that aims for chthonic reconnection between objects, experience, and language. In speculating that processes of active and non-linguistic practice are generative and humanising, this paper re-reads meditation as a mode of gnostic self-extinction (after Eliot) which can enable access to intuitive zones (Heidegger's Dichtung), and which situates ‘an understanding of reality that transcends ordinary comprehension’.