PART II, ARTICLE VII: THE USE OF VOICE AND COLOR IN POETRY, SECTION I

 

The involuntary association of words, objects, or persons with colors is called ‘synesthesia.’ As a boy, my synesthesia had mainly to do with girls. Each girl in my class at school had her own color. Some girls were black, others yellow, one was orange; there was even a blue girl and some silver ones. Girls did not dye their hair back then; and the girls in my school, all of them, were Caucasian. So my mental images of girls as crayon colors had nothing to do with race or dye. Natural tones and hues evoked girls’ true colors. How spectacular it was to have these crayon girls distributed randomly about the room! As a man, my synesthesia has mainly to do with words. And as a Christian, it has mainly to do with biblical words. One day awhile ago I read and liked a poem that was overtly colorful. This triggered my synesthesia so much that biblical associations were automatically suggested. That is how I came to write this unusual article. 

I faintly remember the first poem that I wrote. It was a sentimental tribute to a black farm cat that we called Bob. Typical of amateur poetry, the element of rhyme predominated. My teacher, not expecting much and pleasantly surprised by my little strength, scored me ten out of ten for that project. No poetry assignments were to follow, unfortunately. I thought infrequently of poems after that, and grew up.

It wasn’t until about the age of thirty that, as a man set apart, I thought of poems again. I had been reading the Bible in a desperate search for truth while intermittently exposing myself to literature. During the couple of months that it took me to read the Bible for the first time, I was undergoing an awakening to literature. In my daily perusal of the Scriptures, I discovered incomparable poetry. No poetry in the philosophical mold can equal Ecclesiastes; no poetry in the form of devotion is comparable to the Psalms; no poetry in dialogue can arrest us like the book of Job; no poetry is as colorful, dreadful, and multi-layered as the book of Revelation. To further slake my thirst for poetry I bought several anthologies and I read their poems from beginning to end. I read commentaries. I studied technique and structure. I learned how to identify things like unrhymed iambic pentameter, which stretched my patience and failed to stick. I tried to read Milton and even Chaucer, gave up, and then tried again. Despite the impediments of complex rules and archaic language, I relished my new exploits. I had been awakened. It may be that my awakening was part of the illumination that the Holy Ghost imparts in the born again experience; I am not sure. But I still think that the awakening preceded the regeneration. Notwithstanding my uncertainty as to the sequence of these divine acts or how or if they were mingled and mixed, I know that around that time I was unexpectedly blessed with a palate to taste the written word. Until this happened, poetry was no more attractive and comprehensible to me than calculus was. Unless the poem was straightforward and simple like the one that I wrote as a child, I did not understand it any better than a poet knows how to pound sand. I do not mean by the awakening that I became instantly or particularly able to interpret poems. I mean that I could now detect in the poem the importance of beauty and philosophy to the poet. The poet was not being purposely obscure, after all. He was trying to convey his idea as concisely, truly, and prettily as possible. He was trying to convey the ideal of his idea. I do not mean that my awakening shed light on poetry of the postmodern sort, however, for no one can be awakened to see something sensible in lines that were never meant to communicate sense. Every thinking person will see nothing but randomly written words or phrases in postmodern verse, for this kind of poetry is written to disclose whatever the reader wishes to see in it, and therefore, no certain idea. So I recognized that the poet had a distinct outlook that he wished to make known and that to some degree this outlook I could now perceive. I further noticed that even when the poet spoke through a voice that was not his own, he was revealing something about his beliefs. Each person writes, after all, what his mind dictates it is mannerly for him to compose. One cannot hide from responsibility by speaking in the voice of another. Is the ventriloquist not responsible for what his dummy says? The poet’s voice is a significant factor, if not the chief one, in determining the thrust of a poem. I am not referring to the voice that conveys the tone of a poet’s work as a whole. I refer to the specific voice that speaks out from the particular verse—the voice chosen by the poet to tell his poem. For example, in a poem the poet may speak as a soldier, a father, or the boy that he used to be; or he may speak for someone else entirely. It does not take the reading of his whole body of work to confidently insist that the voice of Leonard Cohen may be fairly coined as indecent spirituality, or devotional indecency. That is his voice generally considered, even though this or that poem of his, taken strictly in context, might not exhibit this voice.  

So to interpret a poem, the poem’s voice must be identified. Where the poet is coming from must be determined. In the poem that I wrote in grade five or so, I spoke in the voice of a boy. In the following poem by William Carlos Williams, the voice is that of a man about being a boy. Perhaps it is the voice of Williams himself:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

(Robert DiYanni, Literature, p. 491.)

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION VIII

Desire, if not under arrest, even in its earliest stage, can disfigure the complexion of a perfect moment. Some contacts are too flawless to risk their marring. While attempting to drive away from a church I had visited for the first and, I think, only time, I discovered that I had parked my front tire into a rut. Then this pretty young woman—just a few years younger than I was at the time—upon seeing that I was not able to rock my car out of it, came over and easily pushed me out. She was so happy to have done it; I was pleasantly taken aback. We both smiled; I drove away; and we never saw each other again. Nine out of ten single men, maybe, and some married ones too, would have taken advantage to ask her out for coffee ‘to repay her for her kindness.’ How convenient would that have been? But how pathetic? Any more contact than we had had, I knew, would have dashed the scene to pieces. Some things remain perfect because they are never touched. There is an element in desire that desires to dirty its hands. Desire dirties its hands when it touches the untouchable.      

Even for the Christian man, libidinous desire is not wholly subdued until death or the redemption of the body (if alive) at the second coming of Christ Jesus. But under the Lordship of Jesus today, a new power is available to control this desire: to suppress it, smother it, redirect it, or transform it. Without this grace from God, man has little with which to fight desire; and if his desire is for women, he will seek them out, or seek them out afresh, and, like a Benjamite up from the vineyards, attempt to catch what he can (Judges 21.21.) He will go back to his women, to his Woman Substitute—to the only image of God that he has an appetite for and feels comfortable with. He will turn to a frail alternative to Divine Eternality, and try to be satisfied with that.

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION VII

In spite of Solomon’s addiction to women and devotional failure, at some point in his life (it is disputed when) he did realize that pleasures ‘under the sun’ do not satisfy: not position and power, nor honor and achievements, nor even wealth and women; and he wrote a poetic disquisition on the subject. This, of course, is the book of Ecclesiastes, which is Solomon’s autobiography of an existential crisis. During this existential crisis he pondered the meaning of life, and the subject of women never entered the debate, at least not directly. Cohen, contrariwise, is tormented by his desire for women. They are at the center of his debate about life.

By the wisdom that God gave him to govern Israel, Solomon concluded that man’s all is to fear God and to obey his commandments. This conclusion, offered for acceptance to each one of us, is recorded at the close of Ecclesiastes. Though God does not give men wisdom in the same fashion as he gave it to Solomon, nor to the same extent, he does give it: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1.5.) It would be wisdom itself to accept Solomon’s conclusion on life and meaning; and then, upon acceptance of this, we would be made wiser in the performance of our trade. 

What poetry could Leonard Cohen write if he were to repent toward God and apply divine power to control desire? What if he were to ask God for wisdom to supplement his talent? He would never write a song to rival Solomon’s because God no longer inspires the writings of men like he once did for a few. But if he were to come under the authority of God, Leonard Cohen’s song, much because of his natural endowments, would be a 21st century classic. About Cohen’s poetry, one cannot conclude: “But where many beauties shine in a poem, I will not be offended with a few blemishes” (Horace.) His work is more than blemished. Its many beauties cannot make amends for profuse carnality. Of his poems, it might be said, though hyperbolically, of course, that they contain “features so beauteous that they had been worthy to shine in everlasting gold, if he had chosen rather to praise our God; to whom he preferred foul monsters, and defiled his fluent language with obscenity” (Prudentius.) 

There is no lack of love poetry in the world, even of a chaste character. Not all poets are playboys, thankfully; some of them have been able, at least in verse, to keep desire on the leash. The newly married Nathaniel Hawthorne knew something about the sweetmeats of marital bliss; he almost wrote at length about this kind of love. “Would that my wife would permit me to record the ethereal dainties,” he says, “that kind Heaven provided for us, on the first day of our arrival! Never, surely, was such food heard of on earth—at least, not by me” (Arlin Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 146.) He might have written an epic love poem; because of his florid style, the moral restraints of American Victorianism, and his respect for the bashfulness of his wife, it would have resembled Solomon’s verse more than Cohen’s. Solomon wrote about his experience of sexual love. Why didn’t Hawthorne? Why wouldn’t anyone? Maybe some things are best not written about, even emblematically, if their composition were to render, even to a degree, ecstatic encounters too earthy. It is perhaps as difficult for a writer to abstain compositionally as it is for a philanderer to be sexually disciplined.

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION VI

Now more than thirty years after the poem above was written, Cohen, in his mid-sixties, is still dominated by desire. It’s his inspiration; and women are his Muse. A protégé in a Buddhist monastery, he tries to exorcize the ‘demon’ through asceticism. But he is not religious enough; Buddhism is a poor choice. Desire draws him downward, and Cohen drowns in lust. Here are two stanzas from a song that he recently wrote: 

“The ponies run, the girls are

young,

The odds are there to beat.

You win a while, and then it’s

done—

Your little winning streak.

And summoned now to deal

With your invincible defeat,

You live your life as if it’s real,

A thousand kisses deep.

“I’m turning tricks, I’m getting

fixed,

I’m back on Boogie Street.

You lose your grip, and then you

slip

Into the masterpiece.

And maybe I had miles to drive,

And promises to keep:

You ditch it all to stay alive,

A thousand kisses deep”

(National Post, May 12th, 2000.)

Though usually it is shabby criticism to assume that the poet is the subject of the poem that he writes, this one is tailor-made to fit Cohen’s desire in the crisis of advancing age. In this poem, with some help from Robert Frost, is he not confessing his longing to repossess the girls that he once had? But when you get old, the ponies are faster, the girls are younger. You go back and forth from womanizing or flirting to reality: ‘your invincible defeat.’ You’ve lost your grip on ‘Boogie Street.’ But you want to ‘ditch it all’—all your obligations and ‘promises,’ like maybe your promise to defeat desire in a monastery.

One of the ‘four noble truths’ that Buddha is alleged to have apprehended is that desire must be annihilated. So Buddhism is made to order for Leonard Cohen—if the practice of Buddhism could annihilate desire, that is. Desire is tenacious. It defies age. The Buddhist monastery can’t eradicate it even in an old man. So Cohen continues to meditate on the seduction of women. He continues to write about it. Desire compels him. 

When a man has not been reconciled to God, he will worship a substitute. What more natural substitute than members of the opposite sex bearing the image of God? Young women remind man of life and vigor; their skin, until marked by trouble and time, is man’s alternative altar. Maybe Cohen is craving to relive what might have been his most profound religious experience: his ‘masterpiece.’ Are not women his religion, and desire the conduit?

In a sense, women are a religious experience, and men do want that experience to last forever. To a man, the imprint of God is most noticeable on the opposite sex. When man and woman unite, this is, at its marital best, a devout experience between two creatures made in the image of the One to be worshiped. Of course, men know that the women they desire are not able to impart salvation. But many men who are distanced from God act as if that were possible. Instead of choosing one woman, which limitation would leave room for God, they spend their resources and energies on many women. These are men who live ‘under the sun,’ as Solomon puts it in Ecclesiastes—men who live for base desires. They cling to their sexual objects as if for salvation. The man who is determined to live for desires ‘under the sun’ hates the thought of mortifying his desire for women because women are the best experience ‘under the sun’ that he has ever had. The poet ‘under the sun’ does not want to give up his source of inspiration, especially when that source is Woman. 

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION V

Leonard Cohen’s poetry has not been influenced by God very much. However, Cohen often uses the Bible to embellish his work and to shroud it in mystery. Often, awards are given to lesser talents. But in 1972 the literary powers were captivated by a superior talent, and honored Cohen with the Governor General’s Award for his Selected Poems. Cohen kindly rejected the award. In writing, he replied: “…Much in me strives for this honor but the poems themselves forbid it absolutely” (15 Canadian Poets, p. 274.) Because his poetry is beautifully personal, yet temptingly carnal, Cohen has drawn oxymorons for accolades. On the back cover of his Selected Poems, he is called ‘a beautiful creep’ and ‘a secret all over the block.’ He suitably wrote a book titled, Beautiful Losers. 

These accolades befit his poems. The reader of poetry may be instantly drawn to Cohen’s craft; but if he comes looking for purity, he will be soon disappointed:

“I heard of a man

who says words so beautifully

that if he only speaks their name

women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body

while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips

it is because I hear a man climb stairs

and clear his throat outside our door” 

(Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, p. 30.) 

This poem, written between 1956 and 1968, flows because of where the lines break and because of the number of syllables each line contains. By using the pronoun ‘I,’ Cohen makes the poem personal. In the first stanza, a man is spoken of who seduces women with words; this is perhaps a reference to himself. Then in stanza two, sin gives way to guilty silence, for the man is made dumb when the consequence of sin shows up. The first stanza is matter-of-fact; the second one is a shock. 

When Cohen writes about the opposite sex, you can expect him to include many or you can expect the sex to be sinful. Desire dominates him and defaces his work. When Solomon writes about the opposite sex, he zeroes in on one, and the sex is pure and undefiled. Solomon was able to overcome desire, at least in his compositions. The influence of God made the difference. The difference is a song that edifies instead of pollutes.

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION IV

Christians—called ‘saints’ in the Bible, which is what Solomon ostensibly was—are frequently called prudes who think sex is dirty. If, instead of being falsely accused, they were judged by what they profess to believe, the conclusion would be that they find sex more delightful than dirty:       

“While the king sitteth at his table,

My spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.

A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me;

He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.

My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire

In the vineyards of En Gedi” 

(Song of Songs 1.12-14.) 

If Christians believe this part of the Bible, and if they exploit it for their fulfillment, it must be that they are not prudes who have sex for no other reason than to make babies:

“I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse:

I have gathered my myrrh with my spice;

I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey;

I have drunk my wine with my milk:

Eat, O friends; drink, yea,

Drink abundantly, O beloved” 

(Song of Songs 5.1.)

The couple’s enjoyment of each other here is exhaustive, at least in the casual sense of that word; it is comprehensive, significant, and intimate. Solomon and his beloved knew what it means to become one flesh bodily, emotionally, and on the intuitive level. But like what happens to so many men when temptations tumble into life, be it from position, power, or plenty, Solomon failed to control his desire. It got away from him, and he enhanced his harem until it was preposterously huge. Nevertheless, at some point in his life he was disposed by God to write this epitome of love between man and woman. One of the trickiest things for a writer to do is to write about sexual love both poetically and purely. One of the things deemed ‘too wonderful’ for Agur the son of Jakeh to come to terms with was ‘the way of a man with a maid’ (Proverbs 30.19.) King Solomon was divinely assisted to write about this, or at least the sexual aspect of it; God inclined him to do it in good taste. The result was the composition of what is now the standard text for Christian lovers to turn to, learn from, and be animated by. 

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INSPIRATION IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION III

We usually call the Song of Solomon, Canticles; this means, ‘little song.’ But the author of it calls it ‘the Song of Songs,’ or ‘Ballad of Ballads’; this, in some sense, means that it is rather large. He defines the song in the first verse: “The song of songs, which is Solomon’s.” It is a bold move, to say the least, for a person to give his song an ambitious title like that. Unless we knew that he titled the book under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we might call it a presumptuous move. This title seems even less audacious if we consider that he called this ‘the song of songs’ among the one thousand and five that he wrote (1 Kings 4.32.) Since the Bible sometimes rounds off to the number thousand, as when it tells us that Solomon amassed, during his lifetime, one thousand women (1 Kings 11.3), it is not farfetched to guess that he might have written a song for each one of his women, up to the number one thousand and five. 

Though the song is about love between King Solomon and the Shulamite, it is a book of love for Man and Woman. It has also been treated as an allegory of love between God and Israel or between Christ and his Church. A. B. Simpson penned an excellent exposition of it with this kind of interpretation in mind. That allegory is called, The Love Life of the Lord. It is interesting that ancient Jewish authorities discouraged the reading of Solomon’s Canticles among the youth on the basis that a person could be inflamed with lust by the reading of it. This book of Scripture was not intended, then, if its subject matter is so obviously sexual, as an allegory and nothing else, as many commentators contend. Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) used it allegorically to describe the ‘joy of the Holy Ghost’ that he was the recipient of, especially when a prisoner. In his letters, he calls this joy the ‘love-kisses’ of Jesus, the ‘kisses of his mouth,’ and even his ‘soft and sweet kisses,’ obviously on the basis of Solomon’s Canticles (Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, pp. 171, 71, 132.) He was made fun of by some vulgar persons for speaking like this of his experiences with the Lord; but holy experiences can make their beneficiaries startlingly familiar in speech. By the Lord’s acceptance of this vernacular by the holy Rutherford, we know that God honors the allegorical use of this portion of Scripture. And this is what we should expect in light of the expressions used elsewhere in the Bible to depict the relationship of Jehovah with Israel and of the Lord with his Church (Hosea 2.19; Ephesians 5.22-33.) I nevertheless agree with Adam Clarke (1762-1832), in his commentary, that when it comes to exposition, the Song of Solomon is meant to be exposited literally, not allegorically. To allegorize content that so plainly and thoroughly narrates the practice of romance comes too close to perpetrating and encouraging the unsound hermeneutical method that we find in the writings of Origen. In Solomon’s Song: the woman’s breasts are like young deer, her neck is like ivory, her belly is like wheat highlighted by lilies; and the man is white and ruddy, his head has the bearing of gold, and his lips drop sweetness. What does all of this basically and literally signify but a princely man and a bonny woman?    

The Song of Songs is most basically intended as an incentive, or aphrodisiac, for Man and Wife, and for exploratory discovery. This nuptial song has been appreciated for thousands of years. It is an ancient text; but it is shockingly up to date with what we are only now discovering, or discovering anew, about physical intimacy. There are revelations in it that are best kept between married lovers. If a person were to study it closely, that person would be jolted into realizing how up to date it is. There are things in it that could have knocked even a man like Sigmund Freud over. And this has nothing to do with, for example, that term of endearment: ‘my sister, my spouse’ (Song of Songs 4.10.) The soap operas and movies get love wrong when they show a man and woman fumbling breathlessly for buttons and zippers while knocking each other against the wall as if their wills are possessed. Right after Solomon tells us what the song is in the very first verse of it, he jumps right in with words from his lover in verse 2: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” What do wine tasters do? They ‘savour’ (verse 3.) The lovers in the Song savor the wine, the smells, the kisses, and the mouth; they linger instead of lust. They aren’t possessed; they want possession. “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake love, until he please” (8.4.) “Let me have you!” they seem to say. “Let me have you for days and nights together! Don’t disturb us tonight; and don’t wake us up in the morning.” They, like our lonesome nice guys and the girls that get played by bad boys, want commitment. They don’t want to sneak out in the morning; and they don’t want the other party to do so. They are all about the bed, the sporting, the ravishing, and the honeycomb; and they want it to last. The lovers are intoxicated; but they are more aware than they’ve ever been. “It is good for us to be here” (Matthew 17.4), they say with Peter, though about something else. They want to tabernacle together. They want to get to ‘know’ each other (Genesis 4.25), not just have a passing acquaintance. This takes time, scrutiny, play, practice, experimentation. Their love is like a fantasy come into focus. Solomon’s love-song about his amorous relationship is idyllic except for occasional references to swiftly resolved love-spats. But what are love-spats but arid spaces for new sparks to form? Is it not true that ideal love includes these minor breaches that must be made up by romantic overtures?