Discourse on Intercourse
The poem is an exercise of animation. A poem is the vivification of words and through laying one word against another, each line upon line, a new idea is given flesh. Poetry is the elevation of mere words to glorified speech. The same words used to fill the instructions for operating a microwave oven are rearranged in a unique Sutra that has the power to penetrate the human pysche and be born anew. Allegorically, poetry serves its purpose in preserving the humanness of speech in discourse. In poetry, words preserve the humanness of speech through intercourse. The most glorious poetry bears new fruit each time the reader sits down to read it.
Literary Intimacy
I am tempted to compare poetry to sex for two reasons; the first is because it is how we receive poetry from God. Whether it is looking toward the Song of Solomon, the Psalms of David, or the poetry that Christ himself would use to compare himself to His beautiful bride, God uses poetry to properly express both a sexual and erotic love. Secondly, I believe that poetry naturally demands virility. As XJ Kennedy points out, “poetry appeals to the mind and arouses feelings,” and demands intimacy beyond any other form of literature. Poetry demands potency.
Many theologians have pointed out that the Song of Solomon is an allegory to the love that God has for humankind, that He chooses sexuality in the marital relationship as the expression of His love. At the same time and significantly, He uses the form of poetry to express this love. Even the language used for the Holy Sacrament of His Body and Blood are described as Holy Communion because they represent the most intimate relationship between two people. In marriage and communion, two become one.
Passion, Prose & Poems
Here we have passion coupled with prose, sex coupled with poem – manliness tied to the form of literature in a way that our modern culture would find foreign. Although the virility of a man is tied to the nature of a poem. For any that consent to be swooned, the poem can ravish them in ways that other words, other pictures, other gestures, will always fail. The poem penetrates our inner being and each interaction with that set of lines brings us closer to their author and yearning to drawn more from our interaction. Our intimacy is intensified with slower, labored readings and subsequent encounters increase our growing appetites.
Virility finds purpose in creation or rather procreation as the idea bears new ideas. The seeds of thought are spoken into newness born, carried, and delivered through love. The potency of masculinity is revealed as the giver finds an ear for his gift. Poetry and reader are complementary like husband and wife: the two interlock in the only way to create new life. Love and intimacy grow in the same way in marriage and poetry, so that the one is no longer room enough to contain it. The two that became one burst like old wineskins and create again. This is poetry.<>
