Motist Poem 1

Motist poetry in its strictest form adopts a categorical method for transforming from one idea to another, leading towards a deeper and yet interrelated understanding. This poem, the first and only poem I have written and recognized as typically Motist, eschews strict categorality in favor of an interpretive method more native to the poetic temperament. Each line was considered as the most sincere translation of the previous line, in terms of individual elements. The pretext-prelude, a concept borrowed from e.e. cummings, allows time to become comfortable with the context within which the poem is prefigured.

Each of the individual lines after the pretext is composed of three elements, each comparable to the corresponding portion of the shorter stanzas in the pretext. For example, "waves crashing" is translated into "flirtatious wave" in terms of comedy, and "destruction" in terms of tragedy. "Flirtatious wave" and "destruction" are then translated into "Flirting with death" for tragicomedy. In this way there is a logic, perhaps a categorical logic, to defining terms such as "tragedy" "comedy" and "tragicomedy".

That set of categories becomes a context for each of the lines in the remainder of the poem. "Flirting with death" becomes "brinkmanship", "expecting the worst" becomes "default", and "tragicomedy" becomes "familiar territory". The lines that follow then try to refine towards a notion of meaning more as an experience than as an abstract contextualization.

Always within the poem, "movement" forward becomes more important than the absolute rationality of any given statement. Yet interpreted specifically in the context of preceding or proceeding lines, it becomes more apparent how much is intended.

MOTIST POEM 1 modified from former post 6/14

PRETEXT/PRELUDE

waves crashing
or not crashing
the heart leaps

flirtatious wave
apprehension
this is comedy

destruction
desolation
this is tragedy

flirting with death
expecting the worst
this is tragicomedy

PART 1
brinkmanship default familiar territory
war peace deity
extremism reason answer themselves
madness the method of madness different things

singularity systems a ground for comparison
nature law compatible
self universe one
knowing becoming a knot

wisdom suffering intelligence
principle bleeding promise
soul revealing mystery
divinity past sight holy
gods infinitely good

archetypes immeasureably valued
meanings qualified by articulation
truth being intricate
motism living byzantine
mind sprawling labyrinth

reactor passages codex
heart verses secret
psyche written dark
wild annotated sublime

PART 2
liberated deep beauty
unfettered layers bloom
escaping onion flower

fugitive unity heady
lawless everything returns
laws are territorial again

justice categorical duplicates
order axes ennumerated
levels mapped hierarchy
existence concept ladder
book of qualities ideation transcendent

dreams history to walk above
heart story mind story heaven
parable theory answers
hidden truth, answers hidden, truth answers
secrecy scries socracy

hermeticism labeled rhetoric /evil symbolic (vis.
‘impressions’, ‘birth of distinctions and the
distinction of distinctions’)
metaphysics dubbed logical
philosophy declared reason
bookmanship swearing light

--Eucaleh Terrapin