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     It doesn't happen often, but once in a while the bell
rings and on opening the door, I am confronted by a pair of
missionaries.  I think it's for safety's sake, that they
travel in twos.  Some may be dressed nattily, as often
Jehovas Witnesses are, others with quaint simplicity, like
the Mormons, or, reflecting the Baptists' brash, populist
self-confidence, in conventional workingmen's clothing.

     They usually begin, true to the Protestant tradition,
wanting to introduce me to the Bible, and they are then
invariably flumoxed by my reply, that I am very fond of and
familiar with the Bible; that I often refer to it more than
once a day; that I "believe" it, albeit in my own way, and
that would be pleased to discuss with them any Biblical text
that might seem of particular interest.  That reply seems to
leave these visitors without resources.  They were prepared
for obstinacy; ready to threaten me with damnation for the
unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost.  They had counted on
resistance, and they have no strategy to deal with
compliance.  They soon take their leave, as if they could
cope only with the failure of their missionary effort, but
had no notion how to deal with its success.

     All this was brought to mind by the poetry anthology
"Staying Alive" which, after all, is also a missionary
enterprise of sorts, and which I am inclined to welcome with
the same approbation that I extend to the various Christian
evangelists. If I understand correctly, all of them, the
anthologist and the Christians alike, are concerned with the
salvation of my soul; and my answer to them has to be the
same: I value your solicitude and your offers of help: but
your concern has long been my project, just the sort of thing
I have been working on for a long time.  It was Plato who got
me started, "therapeia tes psyches", therapy of the soul, he
called it. Where in his writing, I don't remember.

     Turning now specifically to Staying Alive, what about
the subtitle "real poems for an unreal world"?  Under what
circumstances does a cluster of words become a poem?  What
makes a poem a "real" poem?  How does one recognize a "real"
poem when one encounters it?  Isn't a poem "real" to the
extent that it has meaning for me?  Isn't the reality of a
poem analogous to the reality of the (surveyor's) monument by
the side of Red Barn Road by which I orient myself and locate
the position of my house, and by which I find my way home?
But what I am at a loss as to the value of a surveyor's
monument in no man's land? - which is where most of the poems
assembled in "Staying Alive" seem to me to be located.

     Even more to the point than the reality of the poem is
the question about the reality or unreality of the world; a
question that has been in issue since the time of Plato, made
acute by Kant's intuition that das Ding an Sich (the thing in
itself) is inscrutable, and by Schopenhauer's conclusion:
"Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung." (The world is my
representation.)

     Yet I infer that Neil Astley has in mind a different
definition.  He writes (page 19) "Many people turn to poetry
only at unreal times, whether for consolation in grief or
affirmation in love." Is it invidious of me to ask, if grief
is to be unreal for me, and if love is to be unreal for me,
what is it that I am to consider real?

     It is necessary, however embarrassing it may prove, to
articulate, if times of grief and love are unreal, then to
what species of time the term reality should properly be
applied.  Perhaps for Astley "real time" is the time spent,
for example, listening to "All Things Considered", or
watching television documentaries produced by the National
Geographic, reading the news reports, the editorial page and
the columnists in the New York Times. But for me, the text of
the journalists, the words of the broadcasters, the acts of
public officials, from the President on down, the decisions
of the judges, the advice of the lawyers, the diagnoses of
the doctors, the sermons of the ministers - all, all are
unreal. I am referring to the best and the brightest that our
culture has to offer.  Arguably, the situation is even worse:
"real times" should be considered times spent in watching
"average" television "shows" or "enjoying" "average" popular
entertainment. Help!!! Help!!! I am lost. If W and Rummy,
Condi and Cheney; Bill, Monica, and Hillary are real, then I
am delusional, I am schizophrenic, and I had better keep my
mouth shut or they will have me put away.

     So, if I begin with an anthologist who stigmatizes my
grief and my love as events occurring "at unreal times", what
help may I expect from the "real" poems with which he
proposes to save my soul?  To the extent that my inferences
concerning the realities and unrealities to which Neil Astley
refers in his anthology are correct, I find myself
disqualified from commenting, inasmuch as what is unreal for
Neil, to wit, my grief and and my love, constitutes for me
the ultimate reality; and vice versa, what Neil implicitly
considers real, the newspapers, the television, the world of
academicians, journalists, politicians and businessmen, is to
my mind a nightmare, is insane.  No wonder, therefore that
even though it is written in English I can't understand
"Staying Alive" any better than it if it were written in
Chinese or in Arabic.

     I am confident that the poems would mean something to
me, - though I can't predict what, - if I read them as
carefully as I read the Cosi libretto, interpreting them as
reflections of their authors' experiences and of the literary
currents out of which they arose.  Astley's anthology does
not provide an opportunity for such detailed considerations
as are requisite for my understanding. Indeed, the book's
commercial success, it became the "top selling poetry book
within a week of publication" (p 20) suggests a primary
appeal to readers fundamentally different from myself.  What
a snob I am!

     In the context of the books avowed missionary purpose, I
am reminded of the dictum of Frederick the Great: "In meinem
Staat kann jeder nach seiner Fasson selig werden."  (In my
kingdom, every man may achieve salvation in his own fashion.)
I choose to avail myself of that privilege.

     So I will try to be very polite to Neil Astley when he
comes ringing my doorbell to ask whether I need any of his
real poems to help me with my unreal grief and my unreal
love. I won't say to him, I'll just think it, that what I
have been writing for myself for the past sixty years
subserves for me the function of poetry, in that it
establishes monuments that tell me where I have been, and
permit me to extrapolate where I might be going.  And
furthermore, I'll strike a bargain with Neil: if he won't
report my insanity to the authorities, I won't say anything
unpleasant about his "real" poems; and if I don't have to
read his, he doesn't have to read mine.


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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
