Essays
Original Essays by Warren GastonTelling My Friend Why I Like Poetry [PART I]
This post was inspired by an email I received from a very good friend asking me if I would be willing to explain to him why I like poetry. Posted below is my response. ________________________________________________________________________________________ First,...
The Lecture: An Explication
[poem: The Lecture was posted 6/30/16] This poem is about change. Not just change noticed in daily life but change as a fundamental construct of reality. Change is not an accident. Change is the condition of all existence. This idea was arrived at by two ancient...
Poetry – A Way of Thinking
“Poetry for Adonis is not merely a genre or an art form but a way of thinking, something almost like mystical revelation.” Charles McGrath New York Times October 18, 2010 McGrath is...
Extending Human Consciousness
“It (making a poem) is about the extending of human consciousness, making conscious the unconscious, creating a symbolic consciousness that in its finest moments overcomes the dualities in which the human world is cruelly and eternally, it seems, enmeshed.” Clayton...
Negative Capabilities
“The concept of Negative Capability is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems.” John Keats: in a letter to his brothers,...
The Two Halves of NOW – Experience/Poetry
We know not through our intellect but through our experience. Maurice Merleau-Ponty 20th Century French Philosopher* Writing a poem is living the second half of NOW. The first half of NOW is the actual experience. NOW I receive these sensations through my eyes, ears,...
Haiku & Tanka: Capturing Right Now
The Western mind is distracted by eternity, which we mistakenly define as endless time. Literally, eternity (L. aeternus) means no time, timelessness, time as an irrelevant dimension. Even those who do not believe in eternity as a heavenly or hellish afterlife, are...
Japanese Haiku and Tanka
Tanka and haiku are forms of Japanese of poetic art that have spread far and wide and found a home in many distant places. Although haiku is better known, Westerners are now discovering tanka. Like the island nation itself, and its other native arts, calligraphy,...
The Cat Who Wasn’t There
I have a friend who has a cat named Mouse. I have been with Mouse many times, tweaked his whiskers, stroked his luxurious mouse gray coat, tugged his tail. Sometimes when the cat named Mouse appears he isn’t there. Not actually. Not as a flesh and blood tangible cat....