A Sonnet on the Jerusalem Cross

For me, the Jerusalem Cross is endlessly inspiring:  Christ before Paul; the Kingdom that’s within; the wisdom of the Buddha; William Blake and all he tried to do, say, draw, and paint; the semiotics of the endless signified and signifier; the freedom and choice in how we frame; the crosses we bare and bear; the number 5 that I somehow took as “my” number when I was a child.  Such crosses cross beyond mere prose:

               The Jerusalem Cross

Her references are kingdoms built within,

Are centers of what is, are plots of peace,

Are emanations of Blake’s Albions,
Are heavenly vistas of Jerusalems,

Are fresh imaginations testing worlds,

Are fourfold noble truths, are eight crossed paths

That frame a centered cross that wisdom bares

To study all the crosses that it bears.

Her signifiers are two crossing lines,

Four smaller pairs, too, eight paths framing round

Just four right angles centering sixteen more

That also form at most a single square--

Or four or five depending on the count.†

                          *****


†(The cross's lines are personal as well
  In ways they interweave both "H" and "L,"
  In ways they cover Everyone with "E"
  Should some find some initials tough to see.)

 

Gorsuch and Originalism: Some Critiques from Logic, Scripture, and Art

(This blog combines, expands, and end-notes two prior blogs)

Originalism and the Fall of Icarus

Well, here we go again. With Neil Gorsuch as the current Supreme Court nominee, once more we hear praises of “originalism” as a judicial interpretive philosophy. As Gorsuch puts it, judges should “apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be . . . .” Since law generally looks forward to govern future and not past behavior, and since context drives meaning in much more complex ways than Gorsuch’s words suggest, I’m amazed that people take this backward-looking and overly-simplistic philosophy seriously. I’ve written at length about the problems with such an approach but now also wonder if an old painting might more quickly dispatch such error.

Blake Within Blake Within Blake Without End

As I have written before, the great William Blake magnificently employed signs beyond mere words in his poetry.  His powerful illustrations of verse add much additional meaning to his work.  As I have noted before, his symbols such as words are greatly supplemented by other types of signs such as the iconic signs of his drawings.  He applied these same principles in reverse in his great illustrations of the verse of other poets such as Thomas Gray and Edward Young.  Such illustrated verse injects blocks of symbols within Blake's icons, and it can be fascinating to replace these blocks of others' symbols with additional iconic expressions by Blake himself.  Blake's illustrations repeat common themes and can build on each other in such fascinating exercises.  I think Blake would enjoy seeing others doing this with with his icons, and I would enjoy seeing how others might attempt the endless possibilities of such substitutions.  For example, in the illustration above I have replaced Gray's verses about the "Stern Rugged Nurse" with one of Blake's illustrations of Urizen, the severe god of reason who traps the imagination with his compasses and strict categories.  The compass in fact is an awful symbol for Blake.  It's no accident that the "Stern Rugged Nurse" has one in her hand just like Urizen.

Beyond Words Alone: Poets as Artists of the Intentional

 

In his wonderful The New Book of Forms, Lewis Turco tells us that poets “focus on mode, on language itself.”  Focusing on language, a poet in Turco’s view is therefore an “artist of language; his or her concentration is upon the language itself.”  Taken this way, “[p]oetry can thus be defined as the art of language.”

Though these definitions of poets and poetry are correct as far as they go, they do not go far enough. Poets are artists of the intentional; they are artists using signs that point to things beyond the signs themselves.  Since words are not the only signs, why should poets limit themselves to words?  Using C.S. Peirce’s terminology, there are in fact three kinds of signs: symbols (arbitrary signifiers such as words), icons (signifiers such as paintings that resemble what they signify), and indexes (signifiers like photographs or weathervanes that participate in what they signify).  In the realm of symbols, why should poets limit themselves to words?  In the broader realm of signs, why should poets ignore icons and indexes?  They should not of course, and William Blake gives us excellent proof.   

Wittgenstein's Sonnet: No Pictures See Themselves (Addition to "The Apology Box")

    Wittgenstein’s Sonnet

When I was young, words worked a different way.

We hung them round like pictures on a wall

To replicate real objects.  Words used ink

Instead of photographic plates and dyes.

In replication either method worked

So long as illustration captured truth

By rendering objects as they really are.

What more to say?  It all seemed obvious

Until I pictured pictures without us.

No pictures see themselves, their objects, or
A world that is unfiltered by a mind.

Words and their objects are no different.  Thus,

Duck-rabbits now play games within the mind
Where certainty's more difficult to find.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Two Greeks Whose Bones Are Lost in Egypt Now (Additions to the Apology Box)

              Alexander The Great's Sonnet

Sweet novelty of death!  You’ve heard my prayer,

O gods!  There’s more adventure!  I am not

Condemned to idleness.  In brief despair

My reason was confounded. I forgot

The underworld that can be molded by

My sword and genius, too.  Profounder war

Will justify me further.  O gods, I

Shall meld from parts a better whole.  Once more,

I’ll combine East and West and redefine

The normal taste in men--my own won’t be

Scorned but admired.  Good standards will be mine

And I the norm.  Have confidence in me,

Commission me, O Gods.  I’ll serve you well.

I’ll take my sword to every inch of hell!

                    Cleopatra VII's Sonnet

O gods, you should receive at least as large

A welcome as mere Romans had from me.

The Styx of course should waft me on a barge

To you with purple plumèd finery

At least as grand as that displayed before

Mere men.  You’ve no less right to girls perfumed

As sweetest flowers (or to soft skin that’s more

Inviting than a couch or to queens groomed

More perfectly than sculptures to be found

In shrines.)  You’ve no less right to unwrap each

Fold of some gentle garments that surround

A pleasure that lies well within your reach.

Gods, take me now so no fools ever can

Pretend that gods are favored less than man.


© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Poets and Lawyers: Birds of a Feather

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 12/15/2015 in The Huffinton Post

Three Sonnets in Paint

Of course pigment and its forms cannot translate to word.  Paintings must be seen not heard.  Though we cannot speak paintings, we can, speak about paintings.  Thus, I share three sonnets where I try to speak about three paintings.  I picked these three paintings because they themselves seemed to try the reverse impossibility I note.  They try to be sonnets in paint.