Prompt:  p 189   “If there are ‘gorges’ (French = ‘throats’) in the mountains, isn’t it because the wind, long ago, spoke there?” In Bachelard’s understanding of poetry, a “light delirium makes the dreamer of cosmic reverie pass from a human vocabulary to a vocabulary of things.” He admires poetry in which “human and cosmic tonalities reinforce each other.”

Here is an example: “Listening to the trees of the night prepare their tempests, the poet will say: ‘The forest shivers under the caresses of the cristal-fingered delirium..’ That which is electric in the shiver—whether it runs along man’s nerves or along the fibers of the forest—has met a sensitive detector in the poet’s image.  Don’t such images bring us the revelation of a sort of intimate cosmicity?  They unite the outside cosmos with an inside cosmos.  Poetic exaltation—the crystal-handed delirium—makes an intimate forest shiver within us.”

Use this prompt to evoke through a poetic image a light delirium in which your nerves run along the “fibers” of your field study.

Whisper of the myst gives me a kiss from all around

I am standing on the grass, and I hear nothing, not a sound.

And this is what it’s like to be encased in mystery.

I’ve been looking out the window for a while,

I see what’s coming. This is me.

Echo of a voice from far away, guiding day over the land

My spirit shines at the guidance of the crystal in my hand.

When I close my eyes now, I still see

when I defocalize

I see glowing, and my nose

I see through my Spirit Eyes.

Trust me, trust me when I say

That this is nothing yet

The myst around is getting thick

But shadows loom ahead

Everyone knows that this is nowhere

This is life, and this is dead

Just because you close your eyes does not mean that you are blind

Welcome to the Forest.

Your mind has crossed the line.

Prompt:  pp 139, 141  Create your own reverie in response to Bachelard’s reverie:  “When I read this line by Edmond Vandercammen: ‘My childhood goes back to that wheaten bread,’ an odor of warm bread invaded a house of my youth.”  Create a reverie to demonstrate how in your own life “a whole vanished universe is preserved by an odor.”

The Trophy in my room. First Place. The worst player on the best team.

I speak of the smell of my mitt. It is unique; I am left-handed, proudly so. I assume the smell–nothing else like it in my world–is the result of a very complex compound of leather and oil chemicals. To me, it smells like running around. To me, it smells like the Summer in the Grass. To me, it Smells Like Kid Spirit. That was the summer I literally never swung the bat once all season, though because of some well-timed errors, I bunted a home run during a practice game. We made the playoffs–only lost one game all year, to Jay Buhner’s Mariners. At least he gave me a high-five and a couple autographs. The first playoff game, I got pegged in the ankle. it kinda fucking hurt. But then I stole second. Then third. Then went home on a groundout. I was safe, but the umpire “wanted to be fair” or something. My coach argued. it took a long time. “Can we speed this up? My ankle’s falling asleep,” just to clear the mood. the dugout exploded in laughter. We won that game. We were eliminated by (go figure) the goddamn Yankees a few weeks later. Those kids were bigger than us and threw faster. Some might say they were older than our team, I say steroids are leaking into Little League. Jay Buhner expects way too much from his kids.

Prompt:  pp 88, 93  Create your own reverie in response to Bachelard’s reverie:  “Reveries of idealization develop, not by letting oneself be taken in by memories, but by constantly dreaming the values of being whom one would love.”  Great dreamers dream their double.  Can you create a reverie to demonstrate how and why the passion of your current field study sustains you?  How is your “letter” (e.g., c is for cacao) your magnified double?  (E.g., While tasting Kallari chocolate can you re-member how C might idealize cacao?) “”Tell me whom you create and I shall tell you who you are.'” Suggestion: Use your reverie on an idealized passion to create a poem that evokes the sensation of how your passion is sustaining you.

Since I was a boy, I’ve been afraid of the Ocean, open and bare with miles of darkness and unknown beasts below my fragility. even wading in shallow was uncertainty; rip currents come from out of the blue and sweep you out into the unknown, far from home. But in the last couple of years, I’ve lost my fear, gradual though it may have been. For better or worse, I crave Mystery. I beg for understanding, I cry to know that there is something more than mechanics and protons above my head, aeons of primordial soup and pure chance behind me. I have always known, it seems more than most others, the sense of the language of the Wise Ones of old. And now I’ve found the Druids, my ancient forefathers, guardians of ancient truths, tellers of legends. I will create the Druid’s Grove, he will tell me I am strong.

 

Prompt: pp 38-39, 47  Create your own reverie on the engendering of words in response to Bachelard’s reverie:  “Look out for the flamboires, little girl! Look out for the flambettes, booby!” In your experience does a romance language such as French do a “great service” by being a “passionate language” that has not wanted to  preserve a neuter gender, but rather multiplies occasions for choosing/coupling? What words, for you, “love each other?” Can you create a reverie to demonstrate words that, for you, have sexes re: the passion of your current field study?

Words: 110

It is easy: the Goddess, who silently sings dark subtleties that somehow ring. She’s married to Magick, to Music, to Madness, to Moon and Mystery, and gives birth to the Stranger who rides on a black stallion out of the forests from a distant, Shining Realm which can only be reached by the light of the silvery moon. The Music of Goddess casts a spell from the silent melodies of her soft fingers gliding upon the Neural Lyre, as graceful as raindrops tapping and sliding upon the window of Consciousness. She is not a beast as you have been told. She is a dark lady with eyes made of gold.