Nothing is Outside the Framework of Poetry

Nothing is Outside the Framework of Poetry
An Interview with Mukesh Williams
By Rohit Wanchoo
Published in The Copperfield Review Volume 8, Number 3, Summer 2009
http://www.copperfieldreview.com/interviews/williams.htm

Nothing is outside the framework of poetry but it all depends what a writer wishes to include in it. Poetry is not a single message to the world but multiple messages that escape the intention and control of the poet. Each epoch, century and generation must reinterpret its own world, represent its own reality and create its own priorities. Within these reinterpretations, representations and priorities poetry must find its original telos.

—Mukesh Williams

Rohit Wanchoo: Do you think the Aristotelian idea of poetry has lost its meaning today?
Mukesh Williams: During the time of Aristotle there was no clear separation between the principles of rhetoric and poetry. This is one reason that his Rhetoric was far more popular than his Poetics. It is only later, during the Enlightenment period that his theory of poetry, especially his pronouncements on tragedy, became popular and influenced many writers and their representations of the world. For Aristotle poetry included a wide range of genres such as the lyric, epic and drama. Of these he gave greater importance to drama and especially to one aspect of drama that is tragedy. By and large Aristotle rejected the domain of comedy, which he equated to the orgiastic phallic tradition, which was quite popular in some of the Greek towns during his time. Even today this tradition survives in Japan in the kanamara matsuri enjoyed by young and old alike. Perhaps that could be one reason that serious poetry journals today caution poets not to submit scurrilous or prurient content in poetry. It is quite difficult to explain most of the things Aristotle says and its relevance today in such a short span of time, but out of his key concepts of mimesis, catharsis, peripeteia, mythos, ethos, dianoia, anagonrisis, hamartia, melos and opsis it is the first that is mimesis which has acquired great significance in modern times especially through the Auerbach’s writings and later through the historical investigations of Michael Foucault and Hayden White and Clifford Geertz. Aristotle understood mimesis as both imitation and representation but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries things were so grossly misrepresented that the postmodern thinkers began to interrogate concepts related to practically everything modern—nation, political boundaries, national literatures, dictionaries, history, cartography, identities, and social sciences. The shift has brought into focus the fixing/unfixing of the narrative and the history of representation both in creative writing and academic research. Other aspects of Aristotle such as purgation, reversal, and miscalculation, what the Romantics called a tragic flaw in character, have lost their importance. Lexis and melos are still quite important but spectacle has lost its power. Modern predicament itself is a spectacle and we poets cannot do better than the television, Internet or the newspaper in creating awesome spectacles. When we were in college we studied Aristotelian notion of tragedy and we still remember by heart its definition,
Tragedy then is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play, in the form of action, not of narrative, through pity and fear effecting the proper catharsis of these emotions.
I remember we had to explain the word catharsis as the purgation of the excess of emotions of pity and sympathy as our drama teacher would think we were complete idiots if we could not recite these lines. However, in modern times, life itself is so tragic that talking about tragedy is rather meaningless.
R.W.: Do you think poetry should communicate emotions recollected in tranquilly, should possess negative capability, use objective correlative or escape from emotion?
M.W.: Yes, the ideas of Wordsworth, Keats and Eliot have partial validity today, but these ideas also create hegemony of sorts, literary theories that tend to be dictatorial in nature. Aesthetics and literary theories have limited validity and sometimes none beyond a framework. Look who reads The Sacred Wood today? Who reads Keats’ letters to understand his concept of negative capability, the uncertainties of the poetic endeavor? Who reads Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads to understand the “spontaneous overflow of emotions” or “emotions recollected in tranquility?” Poetic theories are expressions of the philosophical, political and social thinking of the times and cannot be therefore separated from them. Today these theories about poetry have little value.

For more read The Copperfield Review

Japan and Intellectual Property Rights

My 17th July lecture entitled "Japan and Developing Nations: Expanding and Redefining Trade and IPR Safeguards" is now on the UCIP homepage at the follwing web address http://ucip01.ucip.jp/procenter/portal/card/EDUCATION
They have translated the speech from English into Japanese. So the homepage contains both my English text, my Japanese synopsis and their Japanese translation of the entire speech. The speech was well received and had many positive responses. UCIP was quite happy with it. Many Japanese business professionals, university experts and my students from Soka and Keio attended. Here is a synopsis in English and Japanese:

Japan and Developing Nations:
Expanding and Redefining Trade and IPR Safeguards

by
Mukesh Williams

Abstract in English

In the last 15 years trade amongst countries in Asia has increased generating issues related to non-tariff barriers and protection of intellectual property rights. Developed countries doing business with developing countries find themselves at a disadvantage when dealing with a weak civil society, lack of awareness of IPR culture and cumbersome administrative and legal process in developing countries. At the same time developing countries find the exorbitant price of IPR goods beyond their reach. There is a strong need to expand and redefine IPR rules to make them flexible to benefit everyone and not just big corporations from the developed world. As a developed nation Japan wants to do business with developing countries such as China, India, Vietnam and Thailand and at the same time protect IPR with strong redress systems. Japan must use the business and academic machineries in its own country and Asia to generate more egalitarian IPR awareness and negotiate IPR treaties that can protect business and the poor and create a win-win situation for all. In 2008, Japan’s trade with India was 5 billion yen while that with Vietnam 1.45 trillion yen, Thailand more than 2.8 trillion and with China 25.7 trillion yen. There are great possibilities to explore in the domain of trade and IPR with India, Vietnam and Thailand in the near future.

Abstract in Japanese　

先の15年間のアジア諸国間における貿易の増加とともに、知的財産権の保護や非関税障壁に関する問題が増えてきています。途上国とビジネス面での関わりを持つ先進国は、現地において、貧弱な市民社会制度や、知的財産権に対する意識の欠如、複雑な事務的・法的手続き制度に対処する際、不利な立場にあることを自覚します。同時に、途上国も、知的財産関連商品が、購入不可能なほどの法外な価格であることを知ります。先進国の大企業のみならず、全ての人々が利益を享受できるような知的財産権に関する規則・法律を拡大・再定義することは、強く求められています。先進国として、日本は、中国、インド、ベトナム、タイのような途上国とのビジネス関係の構築、及び、強固な制度による知的財産権の保護を望んでいます。知的財産権に対する平等主義的な意識を喚起し、企業と貧しい人々の保護とWin-Win状況を実現することが可能な知的財産権に関する協定・条約を締結するために、日本は、自国とアジア諸国のビジネス・学術機構を活用しなければなりません。2008年の日本とインド、ベトナム、タイ、中国の貿易額は、それぞれ、50億円、1兆4,500億円、2兆9,000億円、25兆7,000億円でありました。近い将来、貿易と知的財産権の側面において、日本、インド、ベトナム、タイの関係がさらに深まる可能性は高いでしょう。



MUKESH WILLIAMS

Beyond Luminous Consecration

Into labyrinthine light,
Around leopard shadows,
In the by lanes of wasting perceptions,
You must find yourself
Or leap instinctively beyond
The imagined terra firma.

俳


the red plum bonsai
hidden behind the stone frog
reveals its blossoms

The Hibernating Black Bear

Amidst the falling berries and cherry leaves
You curl into a tight black globe
Of winter lethargy
And shuffle a pelt-warm dream
Of open fields, larger family and aplenty.
Along with raccoon dogs, skunks and chipmunks,
You hide in dark inaccessible places
To let nature die of predatory instincts,
And unmindful of the snow and wind
Slumber till early spring into a vision realized.


This poem was first published in the Poetic Portal, February 19,2009. To read this poem in the original published format or browse other poems by Mukesh Williams please visit the website Poetic Portal.net

Wild Grass

The amber softness and
The figural logic
Of the wild autumn grass,
Sway gently in the night wind,
Divesting conviction and emotion,
Leaving a yearning for the imponderable.

Its bewitching long aureate wings
Reify symbols, concepts, philosophies,
Challenging in their audacity
Even the dusty gold of the moon
That spreads its gilded icons
In a bewildered expanse of eidolon.

First published in Best Poem: A Poetry Journal, January 26, 2009

To read more poems by Mukesh Williams please go to The Copperfield Review and Best Poem: A Poetry Journal by accessing the following websites http://www.copperfieldreview.com and http://bestpoem.wordpress.com/

Cogitating the New Year

We calibrate time,
Imagine temporal structures,
And celebrate the New Year,
Welcoming the sweet misery of life,
Measuring months, weeks and days,
Converting them
Into an expectant whole and
In elation or despair,
Enter the etesian time zone
At the stroke of twelve;
Believing that the cog
Has served its purpose.

We miss the seasons,
The fog on the mountains,
The sunshine on the rooftops,
The dark corridors of our fantasy,
The quiet contemplation of the mind,
The snow footprints of the badger,
The fluttering of the cicada,
The bespattered maple leaf,
The budding branch,
Our very heartbeat itself;
Life passes us by and yet
We look for virtue in chronology.

We seek the New Year
In a department store
In cheap bargains,
Steam ejecting gadgets,
Discounted apparel, foundation cosmetics,
Stuffed toys, plastic insects,
Imitation shrubbery,
Tinsel, doodads,
Chocolates and pasties,
To sweeten our choice;
We wish to seize the celestial universe
In pretentious artifice.