The Writer as a Hero

Allen Ginsberg once wrote; ‘What can I do to Heaven by pounding on Typewriter?’, seemingly addressing poetry as a life form; a seething hatchet just bursting to the brim with salty likeness to nothing seen before, and nothing to be seen again. I would like to address thy Ginsberg, and tell him the answer quite simply: You write, pounding the heavenly keys with a hum in the heart and a shallow breath. Then, and only then, can you become one of them, one of the mad people deep enough to see the ocean in its entirety; to be a writer, one can ascertain from this, is to be a follower of Heaven, in the words of William Blake, ‘The poet has must to learn from the scientist.’ Keeping reference from these two heroes, I must admit to myself that nobody can truly write, because no one man can search the entire ocean. But still, we do this futile passage of light, astounding those around us with rich textures of following seas and bishops of satin robes. Is this what it means to be a writer?

Many lengths have many humans travelled in answer to this question, asking the birds and flowers for the answers to give truth; and to light the brimmed candle of glowing fortunes, allowing a soul to bubble with words of truth. So, then, is a writer the fellow of truths? One must ascertain that, in all great depths, two futile lines from my master, Mr Auden must be considered all beautiful and bountiful; ‘Will you turn a deaf ear/ To what they said on the shore?’ For this with all art and death is humiliation; Art is the humiliation of the soul when it burns; ‘Art is born of humiliation’. So, in uttermost humble opinions, one can credit that a writer is one that breathes art bred of a raw texture; a painful memory repetition form of breeding embarrassment. I want to allow here for a jointed measure of faith – for how can one write in textures grand with no complete faith? John Donne allowed for the reader to accredit faith to his compositions, stinging them with personal qualities so different. These metaphysical poets did yearn for something akin to a glowing worm; something to nestle into, breathing fire yet rejected and squished into a tiny puddle. A writer must, above all uncertainty, allow for the overall breathing and fluctuating of the verse, to stunt the growth of this encasement. Through this, we rise through a flowing, veiled material never quite managing to stop us from seeing all, yet encasing the words in a tight locket; ‘and we rose in the dark’. Indeed, Sir Blake’s assumption here leads one to assume a purely platonic role in fastening the ideas of a piece of literature, yet never quite knowing if said ideas are that of quality.

So a writer must be a platonic reference of written words, being seen through single lines or verse as a bare object; unsealed, un spoken – for. It is then that the poetry seeps in and snags the writer, never letting them go for fear of ultimate abandonment. And, of course, as Mr Blake earlier commented, we, as the writers of the sea, and flowers, and birds, and air, see it as our duty to act as scientists; tearing apart the world in realms of words and beautiful phrases of delighted praise. A writer is the ultimate hero; the epic must be a tribute to the poet, as the poet has taken apart the world, looking into the cracks, exposing the beautiful truth there lien. For, as John Keats has so entice fully engraved; ‘Truth is beauty, truth beauty/ That is all ye know on Earth, and that is all ye need to know.’ So a writer is everything to the world; a hero, a scientist, and a maker of beautiful truths, exposing the deep triumphs of a single rose thorn. The flower has seen daylight, moon – rise, and the undying love and attention of the writer, the poet, and the friend.