Plotinus among the Critics 2

This is a way of saying that the culture, including Williams,
emphasizes the material world. Now there are a number of ways to
understand the emphasis. One way is to understand that there are no
ideas but in things, which suggests that some strange thing (an
"idea") is inherent in physical reality, although the strange thing
may not have the capacity to exist without physical reality (God
remains safely entombed). Another way is to understand that the
only thing that exists is physical reality, and some results of this
understanding are cars, swimming pools, electric things, a general
cultural propensity to acquire as much money as possible, and the
decimation of forests for profit. "Mammon" briefly sums up the
sensibility.
In the past the latter understanding was generally held to be suspect
or evil, even if you were caught up in it yourself. In the present the
idea that a way of life can be suspect is, in many circles, itself
suspect because in a world where there is only physical reality,
morality is perceived to be quite arbitrary, and the spirit, since it
does not exist, is of no significance whatsoever. People are
encouraged to do as they see fit and, in America, if I may add a
tangential editorial comment, everyone is encouraged to see fit to
earn and spend as much money as possible. The only morality is
that of free enterprise.
Similarly for poetry and our readings of it. In a culture which
emphasizes material reality, a poem will inevitably be read in its
most material terms. The free play in one or two words can become
the subjects of great critical enterprise, much to the dismemberment
of the poem, which is merely a material arrangement of words;
make your critical capital there, if possible. And further, although I
think Williams is widely misread (there is, after all, that insistent
phrase - "no ideas but in things" - which strongly implies that much
more happens than simply dead reality), his sense that a poem is an
agent of its own force and elements devolves in the critical world to
the notion that traditional ideas about metaphor are mistaken;
poetry does not figure spiritual concerns because there are no
spiritual concerns. There are only things. There are only words
arranged by some unknown human voice. The morality of free
enterprise becomes a method of reading poetry. He who gathers
does so because he needs the money; he who scatters does so because
he has more money than he needs. It trickles down. Noblesse oblige.
"A thousand points of light."
Now what was my original reading of the Chinese poem?
Something about there being inner qualities to human beings.
Something about generosity and greed. Something about poetry's
function being inherent in its capacity to drive the human spirit
toward things more permanent and beautiful, perhaps, or at least
more real, than even the physical world. Metaphor, I am thinking, is
still the essence of poetry: he who scatters has much because he has
generosity, and he who gathers has little because he has greed.
I am with William Faulkner on this point of literature: "[Man] is
immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an
inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of
compassion and endurance and sacrifice. The poet's, the writer's
duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man
endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and
honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice
which have been the glory of his past."2 Concrete reality, in other
words, whether it is the concrete reality of the world or the concrete
reality of poetry, has meaning for the inner human being. To
paraphrase Plotinus: the world is filled with meaning. There is
metaphorical value to all existence.

But the idea of the metaphorical value of concrete reality, and
therefore of poetry, becomes, like my interpretation of the Chinese
poem, buried eventually under the culture's insistence on the final
reality of matter. It is much simpler, much easier and more logical
to take words at face value, and we do, insistently. In this way, we
can deny that anything underlies a text at all. We can deny any
words in a poem that do not suit our preferred reading. We can
deny any words in a politician's speech that do not suit our hopes.
We can deny the existence of meaningful moral structures. We can
deny metaphor. With these denials life becomes much simpler. The
problem with this simplicity, however, is twofold: a poem becomes
a swamp of details signifying nothing, and we come to actually
believe that wealth is routinely scattered.
_______________________________________________________________

Notes
William Carlos Williams, "Introduction to The Wedge," in The Poetics of the New
American Poetry, Donald Allen and Warren Tallman, eds., (New York: Grove
Press, 1973), p. 139.
William Faulkner, "Nobel Prize Address," in The Faulkner Reader, (New York:
Random House, 1954), p. 4.

© Dana Wilde 2008; The Antigonish Review 1992

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