I Stood Up Again Poem Derek Brown

The Ever-Evolving Strategy of Derek J. Brown

'In opposition to Aristotelean logic is what one might telephone call paradoxical logic … Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in the philosophy of Heraclitus, and and then again, nether the name of dialectics, it became the philosophy of Hegel and Marx.'
Erich Fromm ¹

Part of what motivates the poetry of Derek J. Brown is business organisation with the impotence and ingenuity of humanity faced with a universe that our minds seem sick equipped, as yet, to fully grasp and understand. There is wonder at the things human beings can achieve and disconsolation at human stupidity and the limitations of our senses. Within this paradox (or dialectic) can be found other paradoxical conundrums, we may enjoy consumption while destroying ourselves: we run into the surface of a vast assortment of phenomena yet do not fully embrace them. Where does belief begin and fact end?

This is a highly impressive commencement collection of poems. It asks many important questions and explores them relentlessly through paradoxical iterations: such paradoxes range from those within details of the minutiae of daily social life, to the wide, the visionary and the universal.

A Poetics of Place and Fourth dimension

The setting for much of the thought and action in these poems is Brown'south abode metropolis of Glasgow. Both the city'due south center and periphery are given equal attention and appreciation. Brown brings the same concentration and focus to all parts of the city that come up nether his scrutiny. There are no easy categorisations of social form or urban/urbane political certainties. People are observed in their places with the same sceptical reverence wherever they happen to exist. The Glasgow encountered past the reader is both a real and recognisable xx-start-century city and a mythical identify: an allegorical backdrop for exploring such questions as:

1. What happens to us when we dice?
2. Is it possible to love another human being existence?
3. Are we all liars?
4. What is the moral universe?
5. Where exercise our values come from?
6. Does scientific reason tell u.s. the truth?
7. Is in that location a purpose to human existence?
8. Why do nosotros exist in the first place?

Clearly these are big questions which may have no answers, or multiple answers, or, even so unlikely, one truthful respond. Nevertheless, it is by looking at Glasgow (and the world) in this way that Dark-brown constructs the poems of A Strategy of Mirrors. Information technology is commonplace in Brown'due south poetry to detect the mythical, mystical and mysterious rubbing shoulders with café interiors, bar stools and someone smoking a cigarette exterior a hospital entrance.

Underlying all of this is the feeling that Time, and its menstruation, is a affair of risk, of probability frequently and then remote as to render events miraculous to the human senses. Perhaps all is serendipitous, all is random, or by way of counterpoint, perhaps all is blighted under the master plan of an unknowable being (or God) and free will is not what it seems? Then again, possibly, there are junctures and hinges in history whereby in parallel realms all possibilities of every conscious decision are played out with dissimilar results: something along the lines of certain ideas advanced by Philip M. Dick. Whatsoever the case may exist, it tin can exist asserted with some certainty that for Brown, Fourth dimension is a slipping affair, layered similar Russian dolls.

It generates its algorithms

Despite this reader's estimation of Brown'southward methodology, or poetics, Brown'southward globe view is emphatically that of a poet. The seeping of philosophy into the poetry is past virtue of attention to those fundamental poetic tools, language and language use. Language is an active lens, reflecting and refracting the light of meaning, which is in its plow ever evolving, being and becoming, negating certainty to find new ways of looking at our lives, presenting life as fresh and vibrant: even the dull and jaded is live through deployment of notions of transience and paradox, which simply just save Brown from jaundiced pessimism. While many a man being, including myself, similar to call back of humans equally creative beings, every bit role of a circuitous and artistic ecosystem, which exists in a creative universe, Brown gives us the metaphor of "The Glass Harmonica" hiding backside a curtain and if we strain our ears hard enough, or tune in properly, we can hear its telephone call. Brown tells us:

There is no telling
what I misconceive
You call seductively

to a universe
whose ears are total of wax
Quintessential orphan
you raise your holy hands
to the follies of the world
Instruct your threadbare czars
to play their dead guitars
I will pretend to mind

How tin can we trust in our senses to tell us the truth about the universe when we are the universe and the universe is u.s.a.?

it generates its algorithm
like in that location was
no eternity

take this body
bruise it until information technology heals
Take your myths,
unite them in flesh

What soul is hidden in the music of the universe is reflected in Chocolate-brown's attention to syntax, cadence and rhythm. Brown'due south poems have subtle but pointed rhythmic patterns imbued with the resonance of song. As in the famous Gillespie algorithm, 'What happens is what is possible to happen, fatigued from a random option' of variables available to Chocolate-brown'southward observational psyche. ² This same principle probably applies to all generational linguistic communication creation though rather than get further down this road it might be beneficial to mention that Peter Clive has written an first-class short introduction to Brown's collection which gives ease of access to the verse itself.

Language as Music

As I strolled, fully possessed past twenty-first-century wonder, through Glasgow's Alexandra park I overheard several groups of young people arguing amongst themselves over the question of 'What is poetry?' One young adult female cried passionately into the Spring-like 1^st of March sky that 'Poetry is language as music'. Notwithstanding another declaimed 'poetry is metaphor'. To which a very serious seagull answered, 'All signifying-systems of representation are metaphors: mathematics, music, sculpture, painting, language written and spoken, but only language equally sound is truly beautiful. Poetry and song are the greatest achievements of leaden-footed humanity, and I tin fly, so fuck them.'

You lot know the kind of affair … happens every day. I was baffled by the fact that the Poetry Police force weren't on paw to keep order should anything go amiss. In my day it would've been a swift kick up the arse… And I thought to myself, what we call metaphor is really metaphor contained within metaphor. And home did I caput to ponder. On pondering, the question arose as to what precisely are the algorithmic qualities of music? Surely modern synthetic sound product is algorithm dependent?

The magic thing is that human beings can perform such tasks of sound generation without ever having to know the first thing about algorithms, or whether the symbolic representation of sound is metaphor within metaphor. Our senses tell united states. We know intuitively how to mimic the world – procedure our sense data. It is another of the cracking gifts nature bequeaths usa and will continue to do so for as long as there is an eco-system on this planet, or anywhere else, of which nosotros are a role. Brown'due south poetry has a wonderful sense of music, of language equally music, (and there are very few decent poems which are complimentary from 'language every bit music'). In Dark-brown'southward Strategy we find both formal and informal structures. In that location is close attention to the sound of the words, to the rhythm and cadence of the syllables, to line length, to stanza structure, though this does non come from counting the number of syllables and stresses in a line, but from the heart of Brown's consciousness, from his familiarity with and feeling for music, for linguistic communication as music, for poesy. It comes from something as vague as sensitivity or sentiment, nevertheless is accurate, true and existent. Ane such highly musical poem is,

The Twenty-four hour period Gene Vincent Came to Glasgow ³

On the verge of well-nigh reliving
the twenty-four hours Gene Vincent came to Glasgow
I linger, smoking cigarettes
in the infirmary'south dominant shadow,
following randomly time's deceits,
bait and switch of gods,
pulse of constants in my eye,
magnetic ends and odds

furnishing this vast aloneness,
the mystifying value
of a question that can't be answered.
Is this not the way it always is?
In the myth that never was
all happenings that happen
happen simultaneously,
science of music whispers,

moonlight'southward cold infractions
accumulate then cypher in
on epiphanies yet to exist had.
Sirius appears to trip the light fantastic
and with its vanities gesticulates,
every ghost is living
in this revision of revision,
this script of what passes for transience.

I fill a small however incurable infinite,
same one Cistron Vincent filled
back somewhere in the 20th Century
I picket lovers escape
into prisons of their visions
I am not immune, I escape into my own
Here in Dec'due south mortal grip
I dream sounds from lucent guitars,

howls of infants built-in in bitterness.
words of drunkards, unseen sages,
everything subject to impulse
of thermodynamic conundrums.
It will soon be Christmas Eve,
seems the lights have burned for ages
and it feels similar I was there
the day Gene Vincent came to Glasgow

There is music in its content and its cadence. The location is just outside Glasgow's somewhat gothic Royal Hospital, but this location is entangled with the thoughts occurring in the narrator's consciousness, a consciousness that while located in one place (the narrator's mind) is contemplating other times, places and ideas. There is also the location of the poem itself as ink on a folio in a concrete volume: contained inside its airtight world which is "A Strategy of Mirrors". It is winter and perchance someone close to the narrator has just died or is seriously sick. We are "in Dec's mortal grip".

Thinking of how Time behaves in this poem is instructive. Fourth dimension is not linear, Gene Vincent travels from the early 1960s into the narrator's nowadays consciousness, and the narrator simultaneously is transported to Vincent's world of the 1960s: "time'southward deceits … all happenings that happen/happen simultaneously … in this revision of revision,/this script of what passes for transience … and information technology feels like I was at that place/the day Gene Vincent came to Glasgow". Even the natural world itself is not equally it appears, information technology too contains various entanglements: "moonlight's cold infractions … zero in on epiphanies yet to be had … Sirius appears to dance … and … every ghost is living". The moon travels in Fourth dimension and is not the bodily moon observed but a future moon indicative of knowledge that can only be gained from hereafter feel. There is the possibility that dancing Sirius brings our ghosts to life and somehow wraps all of time in an eternal present, in which past, present and hereafter are united, it is all in the one-ness. A one-ness which exists to be transcended…

Needless to say, this a deeply thought-provoking collection. Information technology is an entire world, and a worldview, contained inside lxx or so poems. Each poem is executed skilfully and reads with amusement and ease. There is a lot going on here, reflection upon reflection upon reflection. Reading A Strategy of Mirrors is a fascinating journeying, by turns melodic, philosophical and abundantly rich with images.

A Strategy of Mirrors is published by Rymour Books, 2020.

End Notes

1. Erich Fromm, The Fine art of Loving, p. 57 (London: Thorsons, 1995 [1957]).
2. Stuart A. Kaufmann,Humanity in a Creative Universe, p 52 (Oxford: Oxford University Printing, 2016).
3. Brownish, A Strategy of Mirrors, p. 46 (Perth: Rymour Books, 2020). Chocolate-brown can be heard reciting this poem on YouTube.

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Source: https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2021/12/a-strategy-of-mirrors-by-derek-j-brown/

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