WARNING: Don’t Try This At Home
“I am lousing myself up as much as I can these days. Why? I want to be a poet, and I am working to make myself a seer: you won’t understand this at all, and I hardly know how to explain it to you. The point is, to arrive at a disordering of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one has to be strong, to be born a poet, and I have discovered I am a poet. It is not my fault at all. It is mistaken to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought . . . I is someone else.”
Written in a letter by the teenage Arthur Rimbaud* to his teacher Georgez Izambard
Young Rimbaud wanted to be a poet. In order to accomplish that, he knew what he need to do. “Louse himself up.” He was confident he was on the right track although he knew his teacher wouldn’t see it that way. Arthur did not know how to explain himself to Izambard. But he tried. It begins ‘with a disordering of the senses,” that is, refusing to perceive the world in the formulized standardized way. Like looking at a picture of a cat and seeing only a cat. If a poet is not at odds with the world, he/she will not be much of a poet. Rather, he/she will be a spokesperson, a propagandist, a publicist for the status quo. This poet will tell the official version of how it is.
A poet in the wake of Arthur Rimbaud will see the world through his or her disordered and anarchic eyes.
The role of poet was not chosen by Arthur Rimbaud. It was thrust upon him by fate. As he tells his teacher, “It is not my fault at all.” He is not the production of his own will and personal power. No, he is too ancient minded and sophisticated for that. He does not think. Rather, he is ‘thought’ by some agency outside himself, a muse, a god, an archetype emerging from Dr. Jung’s collective unconsciousness, a call to which Rimbaud responded. A call which disturbed and disordered his life.
A poet, by nature, stands oddly in the world, at a contrary angle to other eyes, seeing the strange in the familiar and offering words to make the familiar strange again. For the greatest disaster to fall upon human imagination is the tyranny of familiarity – getting used to life, living in a state of stale amazement.
A poet is a connoisseur of astonishment. Having paid exquisite attention to the blade of grass or the broken glass, he or she wants to create, then share the vital shock of astonishment at common things.
*Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a French poet, precursor to much modern poetry, especially symbolism and surrealism. He uses odd images, jarring syntax, and psychological insight to create a new kind of poem. Following his own youthful advice, he lived a decadent life, purposely standing at odds with convention to achieve non-standard but astute vision. He wrote no poetry after the age of twenty and became a gun trader in Africa for the remainder of his brief life.