NYQ 60 Editorial

Axioms are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.
            —John Keats

Poetry proved upon the pulses, the pulse of life, the pulse of the life of the poet. How can one experience a poem if the poet has not experienced life? One of the greatest achievements of the last thirty some years of The New York Quarterly is the close association of its poets and poetry to the real world. The vast majority of the poems published in The New York Quarterly over those years were born in the dirt, grime or rainbow of reality. The poets have come from diverse backgrounds and experiences: from postal workers, like Bukowski, to lawyers, to cops, to factory workers, to strippers, to housewives; real people leading real lives.

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke admonishes: “Write about what your everyday life offers you,” but then he goes on to interject, “if your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself.” We have as much responsibility to live a life to “the ripest, fullest experience that one is capable,” as John Keats said, as we do to writing the best poetry. In fact, the two are inseparable.

To be a poet like Archilochos who, as a mercenary, led troops into battle only to leave his shield behind and then write a poem about it:

Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down by a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round.

To know that life is precious, poetry is precious, and when to fight and when to run! To be the Renaissance of Renaissance. Not just to write a poem to be writing a poem, but to write the poetry of poetry, to be a man or woman among mankind. As William Packard always reminded us, Aeschylus’s epitaph only mentioned his bravery at the Battle of Marathon—not that he was a great playwright.

Keeping our poetry and ourselves real, having lives, living them, remembering that the sunset, sunrise, midday on a Manhattan sidewalk, the human touch of the one true lover, a major league baseball game, children, dogs barking in the alleyway, a dying father, scuba diving, working overtime, seafoam, moonbeams, dirty jobs, filthier sex, duty – are all poetry in and of themselves. It is up to us, the poets, to glean the beauty.

And then write.

Living, taking it all in, and then writing.

Existing within that negative capability of Keats: “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…”. This is the flux of life where poetry exists, when we just are. We just have to allow it, be it and then write it.

Reporting back that which you have seen in the unity with the self, the ascension of the mountain, God, whatever you want to call it. The difference, it has been said, between a poet and a mystic is that the poet must return from the mountain and tell others what has been seen from the top, the mystic must leap off into oblivion.

“You can’t lead bunny lives and write tiger poetry,” we were constantly chided by William Packard, who lived up to his own teaching in every way. Live life to its fullest, scream that barbaric yawp across every rooftop, savor the sucking of every ounce of that marrow. Contribute that verse to the play of Whitman.

Uncle Walt goes on in his prose piece, A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach, to correlate poetry and life:

"The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore! How one dwells on their simplicity, even vacuity! What is it in us, arous’d by those indirections and directions? That spread of waves and gray-white beach, salt, monotonous, senseless—such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance—so indescribably comforting, even this winter day—grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual— striking emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music I have ever read, seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is because I have read those poems and heard that music.)"

Real life, real poetry infinitely intertwined.

And this real life extends from the poems found between the covers of The New York Quarterly to behind the scenes of running a poetry magazine. It is real life to face each issue of this magazine, to face the constant financial crises, to face the lack of help and sacrificing more time than you have to sacrifice to keep it all going. From screening poems in diners or someone’s apartment to paying for the storage of the back issues out of your own pocket for the last year and a half. Right now, all the money raised for the magazine has gone into its production (with a special thank you to the New York State Council for the Arts for providing us with some partial funding for this issue). We have also been blessed with many friends and supporters who have helped out where they could—but we need more.

The New York Quarterly has always been a nationwide community of poets – we need to keep that community strong and intact as well as enlarge it. We need your support, both financially and emotionally, we need office and storage space, we need people to help-out where they can with the operation, readings and, most importantly, spreading the word.

I encourage everyone to join in the community that is The New York Quarterly, for while it takes a poet to write a poem, it takes a community to produce a magazine and maintain that venue for the poet’s voice.

And whether you are reading, writing, or living, remember to keep it all real, be true to yourself.