.
Standing Up
The screech of an eagle
__Will marshal our senses
And, if reckoned regal,
__Refocus our lenses
__On many events
That we blithely ignored
__When we kept to our tents,
Hypothermic and bored.
As a matter of focus,
__It’s best to remain
In the proximate locus
__Of brawn versus brain.
__A moment of thought
Is a wonderful thing,
__Unless you’ve been caught
In a government sting.
We struggle and we chafe
__At invisible bonds.
May you always be safe
__And your kids in good hands.
.
.
The Futility of Reductionism
The squirrels are unlikely to refuse
To gather nuts when autumn frosts demand
They put some by. It isn’t front-page news
That scientists are last to understand
How bio-logic trumps established laws
Of chemistry and physics. Let’s be clear:
Effects occur that have no proper cause,
Profound emergent properties appear
Ex nihilo, and Science can’t foresee
The wonders yet to come. The crucible
Of Nature, mother to anomaly,
Begets conditions irreducible
To fields of study farther up the line.
Biology itself is sorely pressed
To conjure explanations where design
Seems evident; its doctrines are undressed
By clear and present instances of what
Humanity has managed to create
From scratch: religions to a fault, a glut
Of arts, and sciences galore. Just wait,
For something unexpected will arise
And turn accepted paradigms to dust,
But that will likely come as no surprise
To those who know the iron from the rust.
.
.
C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
C.B. Neat, witty, and insightful as always, The Futility of Reductionism especially so. The penultimate verse reminds of an old joke about Satan saying that he could have made Adam and Eve as easily as God. So, the two agreed to a contest. Satan went first and gathered up a pile of dirt to begin his part of the challenge, but God ended the contest by telling Satan to, “Make your own dirt.” We humans can also create many things, but only with what has already been provided for us. We can do nothing ex nihilo.
True, James. I should have written out of nothing a materialist counts as real to complete the idea, but you, as an astute reader, seem to have figured that out. The point is that biology alone cannot explain civilization itself or the works that have come out of it, much less predict what might come next. I mean, here we are, writing and reading poetry that is nowise determined by our DNA.
C. B., I agree. It seems unfair to press biology for explanations of religions, arts, and sciences. You yourself take a full stanza to explicate what you want explained, and I have to pay careful attention to get your point. But on the glut of religions, I recall that Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini was astounded at American creativity. She had wanted to go as a missionary to China, but the Pope sent her to the United States where there was greater need. Your conclusion about knowing iron from rust is apt and applicable.
In “Standing Up,” did you want that 7th syllable in “We struggle and we chafe”? It seems to introduce an anomalous third stress in the line, but maybe that was Mother Nature’s work.
To be honest, Margaret, the first poem is something of a jumble of iambs and anapests, though there are only six syllables in the line you cite — the third stress exists only if one puts a stress on “and,” which is unnatural. If by Mother Nature you mean the mystery of fermentation (and the invention of distillation), then maybe your guess is correct.
Discerning “the iron from the rust” seems to be a rare capability haunting everything from climatology to cosmology these days. That certainly is a sociopolitical obstacle, as well. “Paradigm” is the most apt and operative word for a temporary theory or model, while Mother Nature is ready to make changes and provide anomalies, as you said.
Yeah, Roy, when Government starts funding Science, guess what’s going to happen. Scientists will publish conclusions in accordance with the wishes of those who hold the purse-strings. This is happening today. A paradigm is more than a temporary model; it is a world-view that permeates the entire culture in any given era. To wit, Newtonian physics dominated the world until Einstein came along, and we are still waiting for the next great leap.
Lots of great phrases (“hypothermic and bored”; “In the proximate locus / Of brawn vs. brain”; “its doctrines are undressed…”), and unusual rhymes (crucible/irreducible; foresee/anomaly; senses/lenses.
I love rhymes, Cynthia, as if you didn’t already know that, and I’m glad that you appreciate some of my locutions. Now, if only I could get everything to make sense. I don’t do this kind of thing for the money, as you well know; I do it just for the fun of it.
Who says that poetry can no longer be a vehicle for philosophical comment? “The Futility of Reductionism” is as neat as anything in Pope’s “Essay on Man.”
K.A.N.D!
Who does say that, Joseph? Were it not for a string of lackluster philosophy professors at Wesleyan University, I might have majored in philosophy. I probably should have majored in English, and now, as it happens, I seem to have done so.
What I meant was that the tendency of modernism, as a general movement, was to push poetry into the lyric mode exclusively, and discourage lengthy and discursive verse. What has become standard today are personal exhalations and small-scale epiphanies, as I mentioned in some other thread.
I get you, Joe. Now that you point this out it seems obvious, and you have said similar things in any number of threads over the years. But you’re right: it’s much easier to write heartfelt (mawkish) verse than it is to find end rhymes that will tell the tale of, say, the Pythagorean theorem
C.B., regarding your comment about the “next great leap”, I think it’s already here, with the push for AI. Granted, there are some, like Elon Musk, who have said that we should take it slow, but you know there has to be someone out there who’s fantasizing about putting chips in their brain to become their own God. What does this bode for the human race? Are we on the verge of developing the means of our own destruction? I think about that movie, Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines, where the AI becomes self-aware that it’s superior to humans and seeks to eliminate us…
I’ve read a lot of science fiction, Cheryl, and the next paradigm shift could be anything, but especially something we have never imagined before.
As a programmer, I can tell you that a machine can never be self-aware. I wrote a program that writes ready-made reports for work based on inputs. It can’t think for itself; it can only take inputs and give a specific output. That’s true of even the most complex program imaginable.
The greater danger with computers is already here: they’ve become so addictive that for many, they’ve replaced human companionship. Take a gander at this statistic: 20% of people ages 18-34 use smartphones during sex!
https://www.medicaldaily.com/20-adults-use-smartphones-during-sex-how-can-cell-phones-hurt-our-relationships-247622
I’m old enough to remember when sex was the effective religion of the people. That phones can drive wedges that deep in relationships tells me that we’re not on the verge of developing the means of our own destruction; we’re already there.
Joshua, this stuns me. Am I hopelessly old-fashioned to think that two people have to be in close proximity to each other to have actual in-person sex? Isn’t that a given? So I can’t see what the smart phones would be used for, other than as improvised sex toys.
I have heard that some people are so pathologically attached to their FLHHDs that they use them to communicate when across the room from someone, instead of just walking over to the person to talk. And others use them at the breakfast table, to text a message (“Please pass the sugar” I guess). But during sex?
I used to think the Dutch tulip-mania of the 17th century was the height of insanity. But sending electronic text messages to somebody when you’re lying naked in bed with them? This has to be the absolute nadir of irrationality.
Thank you for stating the simple truth that a machine can never be self-aware. All it can do is mindlessly respond to programming.
I wondered what could finally shock you, given how knowledgeable you are about the state of today’s world!
I think what happens is that people get distracted from their partners by the compulsion to check their smartphones. We’ve become a population of drug addicts.
Another article, with even more shocking statistics: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/love-sex/its-now-proved-that-smartphones-in-bed-can-ruin-your-sex-life/articleshow/72748641.cms
Over the years, I’ve taken steps to reduce my dependence on these awful things (ever since the incident nearly seven years ago that inspired my poem “The Phony Mom”). If I didn’t need mine for work (and various things to help my mother), I wouldn’t even have one.
That second article also baffles me. People actually stop in the middle of sex and disengage from their partner, in order to answer a beeping i-phone? If I recall my youth, not even the Final Trump announcing the Second Coming would have induced a guy to do that.
Part of the problem, I think, is the desperate need of the millennial generation to get messages, as a way of proving to themselves that they are alive.
Yes, Joshua, as the man explained, computers can be made very quick and proficient at handling syntax, but they are horrible at semantics. It might surprise you, but I never carry a cell phone.
C.B., your poems always give me something to think about and this is especially true of ‘The Futility of Reductionism’ – I love it. In these dark and confusing times, it would seem that the ‘something spiritual’ is missing from every aspect of understanding the world we inhabit… the something that nature often informs us of, the something that modern science refuses to listen to. Perhaps the ancient farmer’s almanac (based on messages from “fields of study farther up the line”) holds the key.
There are always a lot of things to think about, Susan, but sometimes we just need a reminder. The “missing something spiritual” is especially odd because every material object in the world is imbued with spirit.
These are fascinating poems, C.B. — more intellectual than emotional yet poetically beautiful. “The Futility of Reductionism” captures a deep truth regarding our deeply limited ability to reason out everything humans encounter with a prophecy to get humble and recognize that the only thing that is predictable is the unexpected. I’ve re-read “Standing Up” multiple times and am finding it both cryptic yet strangely inspiring. I’m interpreting it as a call to wake up from complacency, look around, see what’s really happening and allow yourself to get angry. I’m not certain of my reading on this one but there’s real hope in the benediction you offer at the end.
Ambiguity, Brian, is my middle name. Your takes on my poems are as good as anyone else’s and better than most. It doesn’t take a Hercules; it takes an Odysseus.
Rich, philosophic, gnomic, and you may have to forgive me, not easy. But easy isn’t something I’m ever looking for in poetry anyway. I keep thinking of that pie in Margaret Coats’s haiku from the other page, which I would guess is a pecan pie: not easy eating but you also keep wanting a little more. (There’s unpredictability even in pie that contains things closer to their raw created state than corn syrup.)
Truly wild things happen to matter when it’s taken by the breath of life. And sometimes the breath of life resolves into intricate word-patterns: like yours here.
I wish, Monika, that we could have a long conversation about more than ships and sails and sealing wax. Your “intricate word-patterns” is worth all the tea in China.