Bewildered and Learning

So already, for the past month I have been taking a writing class. "Beguiled & Bewildered*: A Generative Poetry Workshop" is a self-guided month-long class offered by The Poetry Barn, and I have one more assignment to complete before the course ends in four days.

 

I decided to take the class because I felt stuck in the poetic same old same old and didn't know how to pull myself out of it. The poems I was writing seemed more apt to draw attention to me--my personal sensitivities, preoccupations (neuroses?), experiences--than to the objects, phenomena, and relationships about which I was writing. I wondered if my problem was my lack of tools or methods for getting closer to the sparks of meaning I believed were present in them.

 

A good course, I reasoned, might supply me with a new tool or method while requiring me to engage with something new, stimulating, and challenging. In addition, it would provide structure while relieving me of the need to design my own path "forward." And since I'd be spending my own money to take it--$99 to be exact--I knew I'd feel compelled to complete it.

 

And this course's title suggested something far less mechanical and craft-centered than some other course offerings I'd seen online. At its center was Fanny Howe's essay "Bewilderment." For each of the four sessions, we read approximately a quarter of it, wrote a reflection about both it and a poem by a contemporary poet exemplifying Howe's ideas and practices being focused on that week, and wrote a poem--really, did a directed poetic experiment--to maximize our chances of using and experiencing Howe's philosophy and poetic practices.

 

That "beguiled" was the first word of the course's title intrigued me, given its connotation of, among other things, deception: as a student in this course, would I be guided to cultivate some level of self-deception a means of moving toward an otherwise elusive kind of truth and poetics? Furthermore, that "beguiled" was linked with "bewildered" suggested that bewilderment could be compelling and attractive, even though so often it was associated with a state of uncomfortable, problematic disorientation. 

 

"Paired" by Scott Ketcham**

But courtesy of David Ferry's 2012 collection Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, bewilderment already interested to me: there was just so much there in Ferry's poems, despite the haunting absences he posited and sometimes described, that I had to imagine bewilderment as a well and a source. Furthermore, when I read Katherine May's Enchantment: Awakening to Wonder in an Anxious Age this past fall, I wondered whether May understood enchantment not just as an antidote to her own and others' post-pandemic anxiety, but as a remedying response to the disorientation often associated with bewilderment.

 

Or, from her perspective, was bewilderment desirable? In fact, was it synonymous with enchantment? I wouldn't have asked that question had Howe not put those two words together in this sentence in her essay: "Bewilderment is an enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability." Would that collapse have reduced or enhanced May's anxiety? Hmmm . .  .

 

Howe's statement sent me to the Online Etymology Dictionary, even though the real problem, I already understood, was that my everyday assumptions about "bewilderment" (as lost, confused, dazed, and disoriented) and "enchantment" (as magical, delightful, captivating, and enthralling) were casting them as antonyms. Howe was already challenging me, already suggesting that language was just  . . . language, even if it is all we have as writers. 

 

From the Online Etymology Dictionary, I learned that the roots of "bewilder" as understood figuratively imply a deliberate will to lead into "wild, uninhabited, or uncultivated" wilderness: "'perplex, puzzle, confuse,' from be- 'thoroughly' + archaic wilder 'lead astray, lure into the wilds,' . . .."**** Similarly, the medieval meanings of "enchant," as "derive[d] from Old French enchanter 'bewitch, charm, cast a spell' (12c.), from Latin incantare 'to enchant, fix a spell upon,' from in- 'upon, into' . . .  + cantare 'to sing' . . .,"***** suggest an intentional leading away from the orderly known and towards the rare, less commonly encountered, less "organized" unknown.

 

So given bewilderment's and enchantment's shared foundations in the experience of being enticed or lured away from the generally understood and experienced, why couldn't bewilderment be understood as an enchantment? Frankly, I don't have an answer to that question since Howe's ideas are still new to me. But that doesn't mean I haven't been able to experiment with them for the sake of rescuing my poetry from the same old same old.

Which brings me to what I've really appreciated about the course: the poem writing assignments for each session. Each has aimed to orchestrate an experience of bewilderment as a starting point for our writing, and then to have us write a poem related to it. 

 

Without sharing the first week's assignment--since one should pay to have access to the course--I will explain how I personally experienced randomness as preparation for writing my first poem-experiment. First, I made a set of directions for staying healthy; then a wrote a list of statements describing purpose. Then I put the two of them together so that their elements alternated, almost like I had riffle shuffled a deck of cards.

 

Next I examined the arbitrary whole I'd created for internal connections and resonances that my poem might explore or build on. Finally, given free rein to add to, subtract from, and otherwise use what I'd already generated, I wrote a draft poem, a poem-experiment that didn't feel same old same old:

Instructions for Purpose

Relish eating wisely and well

Since the animal self needs fuel

And wisely and well are a tonic for you.

 

Dance with abandon 

Since abandon may liberate you 

From purpose needing negating.

 

Sing with the sparrows,

Who don’t worry about purpose but have it. 

Or did you mean grand purpose?

 

Stretch in every conceivable realm or way 

Though you’re bound to judge

Which ones best serve. 

 

Sleep deeply,

Though dreams make vague suggestions 

Oblivious to the logic of plans. 

 

Walk even just part way 

Since street and byway scenes

Restore vision to the mind’s eye. 

 

Sit still and breathe

Since your animal self has needs

And knows how you wish otherwise.

 

Love what and who you can, 

Though loving with a whole heart 

May pull you from your purpose-- 

 

Just the kind of conflict you hate.

"Zippered Mates" by Scott Ketcham******

As the course has gone on, it has highlighted poetic techniques for creating some coherence in poems marked by the seeming randomness of their content. I think of the poems we've written each week as "collide-o-scopic"--the result of colliding elements that might not be found together in poems not guided by a poetics of bewilderment--and that, upon colliding, spark and illuminate. Both to read and to write such poems asks for openness to and even trust in uncertainty.

Dinner with Donald and Manuel

Despite my take-down of purpose above, I've enjoyed having a writing-related learning purpose during this damp, gray January. So it seems right to be posting this on Donald Burroughs' birthday since literature and writing were so important to him as a teacher and a person. In fact, I wrote a poem for the course about a dream I had about Donald not too long ago. Maybe I'll share it one of these days.

* Adjacent graphic screen shot from the top of an essay by Lydia Wei appearing in The Stanford Daily on February 8, 2023. 

** Scott Ketcham's "Paired": https://www.scottketcham.com/post/737247742754242560/2025-paired-2023-30-x-22-oil-on-prepared-paper 

*** Etymonline (n.d.). Wilderness. In Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved January 28, 2024 from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=wilderness

**** Etymonline (n.d.). Bewilder. In Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved January 28, 2024 from https://www.etymonline.com/word/bewilder#etymonline_v_11100

***** Etymonline (n.d.). Enchant. In Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved January 28, 2024 from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=enchant

****** Scott Ketcham's "Zippered Mates": https://www.scottketcham.com/post/737247864351309824/2027-zippered-mates-2023-24-x-36-oil-on-prepared