The Tension of Order and Disorder Held in the Imagination--Smack Dab in the Imagination by Dia Calhoun
This grabbed my attention:
“When . . . Frost defines poetry as ‘a momentary stay against confusion,’ he is acknowledging the significance of thresholds as a place where disorder and order meet and are held in dynamic tension by the power of the poet’s imagination.”
--A Primer For Poets Gregory Orr. Page 49
Maybe this resonates with me because of all the order and disorder tumbling through the country right now. I am fascinated to consider how my own imagination might be a container for, or perhaps a resolution of, order and disorder. Orr also quotes Theodore Roethke: “The edge is what I have.” Then Orr writes:
“Each of us has his or her own personal threshold: the place where order passes over into disorder.…"
“In poetry, the threshold is that place in the poet where disorder and order meet…"
Most of the time my imagination feels chaotic or disordered. But imagination is more than the raw streams of the unconscious bursting forth. Imagination is also a shaper of that streaming over the edge, using the tools of intellect, craft technique, and experience. (Revision!) When I think of Orr’s idea that way, then I feel more persuaded that perhaps my writing--fiction, memoir, poetry--is some kind of container, some kind of momentary resolution caught in form of the tension between my own order and disorder.
Here, for your further consideration, is more of Orr’s idea.
“Poets tend to go to their thresholds to create their best poems. Why? The first reason would be that the thresholds are places where energy exchange is happening, or something real is at stake for the poet. In his essay “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Robert Frost put it this way: “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. “The poet must go to his or her threshold and authentically experience the disorder… in order to move the reader… The threshold that poets must approach is a place where the ordering powers of imagination are responsive to the stimulus of disorder. When, in the same essay, Frost defines poetry as “a momentary stay against confusion,” he is acknowledging the significance of thresholds as a place where disorder and order meet and are held in dynamic tension by the power of the poet’s imagination.”
Yes, the imagination has the power to hold great tension, to hold opposites, and resolve them into that third, new thing: a piece of art, compassion, understanding. We need that now in so many ways. So artists, writers, poets--go to the edge and bring back a container for the rest of us.
“When . . . Frost defines poetry as ‘a momentary stay against confusion,’ he is acknowledging the significance of thresholds as a place where disorder and order meet and are held in dynamic tension by the power of the poet’s imagination.”
--A Primer For Poets Gregory Orr. Page 49
Maybe this resonates with me because of all the order and disorder tumbling through the country right now. I am fascinated to consider how my own imagination might be a container for, or perhaps a resolution of, order and disorder. Orr also quotes Theodore Roethke: “The edge is what I have.” Then Orr writes:
“Each of us has his or her own personal threshold: the place where order passes over into disorder.…"
“In poetry, the threshold is that place in the poet where disorder and order meet…"
Most of the time my imagination feels chaotic or disordered. But imagination is more than the raw streams of the unconscious bursting forth. Imagination is also a shaper of that streaming over the edge, using the tools of intellect, craft technique, and experience. (Revision!) When I think of Orr’s idea that way, then I feel more persuaded that perhaps my writing--fiction, memoir, poetry--is some kind of container, some kind of momentary resolution caught in form of the tension between my own order and disorder.
Here, for your further consideration, is more of Orr’s idea.
“Poets tend to go to their thresholds to create their best poems. Why? The first reason would be that the thresholds are places where energy exchange is happening, or something real is at stake for the poet. In his essay “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Robert Frost put it this way: “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. “The poet must go to his or her threshold and authentically experience the disorder… in order to move the reader… The threshold that poets must approach is a place where the ordering powers of imagination are responsive to the stimulus of disorder. When, in the same essay, Frost defines poetry as “a momentary stay against confusion,” he is acknowledging the significance of thresholds as a place where disorder and order meet and are held in dynamic tension by the power of the poet’s imagination.”
Yes, the imagination has the power to hold great tension, to hold opposites, and resolve them into that third, new thing: a piece of art, compassion, understanding. We need that now in so many ways. So artists, writers, poets--go to the edge and bring back a container for the rest of us.
What an intriguing thought--where order and disorder meet...
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