Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:
We all of us have a mind of our own, precious to us, and we want our mind to work well. What would that mean? And what does it have to do with poetry? The understanding of mind and of poetry in the current issue of TRO is thrilling, new, and definitive. That big aspect of mind, imagination, is explained in a way humanity needs very much. Yes, there are kind riches of knowledge in “Mind, Poetry, & Is the World a Friend?”—the August number of The Rightness of Aesthetic Realism: A Periodical.
The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:
Dear Unknown Friends:
As I described in our July issue, TRO has the honor of presenting this summer two portions of a great 1975 lecture by Eli Siegel. It is about what mind is, what poetry is, and their relation. The subject is tremendous, and Mr. Siegel’s seeing of it is definitive—also thrilling. Published here is the second portion of that talk.
Mr. Siegel is discussing passages of a lecture given a century and a half earlier, a lecture by William Cullen Bryant, on poetry. It is a means, Mr. Siegel explains, of looking at important aspects of mind. And so he has titled his own talk Preface to Sensation, Understanding, Imagination, Emotion: A Lecture of William Cullen Bryant, 1825.
Central to Eli Siegel’s greatness as a philosopher and critic is that he truly understood the human mind, including its deepest purpose, and what in oneself interferes with this purpose. The purpose of mind, he showed, is to like the world honestly, through knowing it. Further: the enemy, from within ourselves, of our own mind is our desire to have contempt: to look down on things and people as a means of elevating ourselves. Contempt is the stupidest and most hurtful thing in the mind of anyone. It’s the source of every injustice, from a certain coldness (which Bryant writes about) to murderous brutality.
What does poetry have to do with this fight in mind—of the desire to see meaning in things, versus contempt? Well, every instance of true poetry and art is respect for the world, with a fullness. Art arises from a person’s being his or her individual self through being passionately fair to what’s not oneself! Read more