My previous post "Our Keystone" and the four Beginning Scientific Afternotes that followed it all concerned an outmoded mindset called "modernism," not the enormous intellectual efforts of those scientists who contributed to modernism when it was still an active cultural movement.
When a cultural movement stops moving, it ossifies. So do the minds of its adherents, all of whom remain "stuck" in a dead current.
Darwin, Einstein, Freud and Marx continue to influence the living thing we call "culture," but probably not in ways even they may have foreseen. Since their contributions were made, many others have continued working on issues they raised, changing the way those issues are perceived, considered and debated.
We, as poets, need to remain alive to what's happening around us, even as we contemplate those "eternal verities" we're supposed to be wrapped up in. That effort can leave us chasing one fashion statement after another, or it can put us in a place where we can fashion statements of our own.
It's my hope that we can all do this together, however often we may debate just "what's goin' on."
It's my belief that we need to do it together, as the entries in The Top Ten can attest: they were not created in a vacuum.
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I'm going to need another break in posting, but I'm hoping not for too long. I plan to continue working on The Top Ten -- reading, re-reading and commenting as I feel I can.
The next milestone (which may be that giant rock I've been mentioning in my subtitles) will be Browning's The Ring and the Book. His tower poem is longer than Paradise Lost, longer by several thousand lines, and it will take me a long time to finish at any rate, especially my notorious crawl.
I also hope to post some things on the other Top Ten members, too. But these probably won't come at the pace I've been posting recently, or anything close to it.
What I'm trying to say is, "Be seeing you!" After all, this is just a village, right?
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