Some poems say nothing
comprehensible at all and
the poet is exactly right to
direct us to this vacancy.
Is this the vacuum nature abhors
or is it something – this emptiness,
a void not to be avoided?
Is nothing a gift,
something in and of itself,
an opening – a clearing
where presencing occurs?
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This poem is philosophical, particularly the school of existential
phenomenology, the thought originating in the work of Edmund
Husserl, his student Martin Heidegger, and others. These
thinkers are interested in the process of awareness, how we perceive
things.This question today is studied by the biological or psychological
sciences. But it can be contemplated philosophically. What are the
structures of experience that make it possible for something to come
into our presence, whether a flower, a smile, an idea, or love.
One of the structures necessary is emptiness, openness, vacancy
which allows some distinct entity to stand out. The absence of clutter
on this page allows these words to be visible. Without this openness,
everything is background and nothing is foreground. Presencing is
something appearing in the foreground of our consciousness, an entity
standing out in our awareness.
In his poem Man Carrying Things Wallace Stevens says:
“The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully.”
The poem is successful when it clears a space in our clutter of opinions
where new experience and comprehension can occur.