Dialogs: submissions

Sam Taylor: Poet and Orphic Prophet by Cheryle Van Scoy-Mosher  

“For the misapprehensiveness of his age is exactly what a poet is sent to remedy” (Sewell 3).

Elizabeth Sewell, in this introductory phrase to The Orphic Voice, suggests that poetry has the power to realign a misdirected humanity. Poetry’s capacity to move the mind and the body, to align them with the natural order, is related to its inherent mythological underpinnings (4).  In early Greece, poets were the instruments of the gods, divinely inspired to poetic speech for the purpose of transmitting traditional knowledge (myth) that was deemed “absolutely reliable and authoritative” (Downing 3).  Poets are charged with asking us to remember a truth that lies beneath the misperceptions of cultured views, which Sewell suggests are too often distorted.

The Orpheus myth lends insight into how poetry may nourish us if we access its depths. Sewell summarizes his story in three parts:  first, Orpheus’ voice makes the natural world sway and renders the beasts harmless, “music being wedded to language and poetry by natural right” (The Orphic Voice 3); second, his beloved wife Eurydice dies and he seeks to retrieve her in the underworld, using his poetic powers to gain entry and call her back, but he defies the restrictions of retreat and loses her to Hermes; lastly, Orpheus is dismembered by the Maenads, though his head continues to float down the river, still singing, and eventually settles in a cave, yielding prophecy until Apollo renders it silent.  Orpheus’ accompaniment, the lyre, ascends to the heavens to become constellating night-light. (3)

Important also to note is the heritage from which Orpheus descends:  Orpheus is the son of Calliope, mother of the muses, and grandson of Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of Memory (Downing1).  Inherent in his mythological biology is inspired return to forgotten truth.  Such was the nature of my quest when I happened to meet Sam Taylor. Sam introduced me to my personal yurt, the nest in which I would reside during a week’s wilderness retreat high in the New Mexico Carson national forest.  I was drawn to this mountain refuge as a seeker, edging my way back to more natural origins, to the inner voice; I was hoping to remember my own truth. In beautiful synchronicity, the first person I meet, far away from the city, is a poet.

Sam Taylor is a young man, not an elder in age, yet his presence speaks of wisdom of many decades, even ancestral guidance.  He greets me from his stance as a part-time caretaker of a precious, pristine landscape, one of a noble few who carefully preserve natural treasures.  Sam is so aligned with the landscape, it is as if he and it are one; there is no difference between Sam and the glowing Aspen or the glimmering spring-fed pond.  That is the experience of Sam:  humble, yet incredibly generous of heart.  Kindness and spirit radiate within and from this gentle human giant.  It did not come as a surprise when he revealed himself as a poet.

The story of the mythological poet, Orpheus, speaks of access to fundamental wisdom, in a bed of love and loss, and the painful, dismembering task of breaking through the hardened layers of the heart (culture’s bandages) to the prophetic, guiding light hidden within each of us.  What a burden to be called to transmit that voice.  It frightens me to find such a young person wearing those clothes, digesting the substance of culture in the service of creation for the greater good.  When gifts come so early, I wonder how long the body can bear the burden.

And what, really, is that burden, the call to tell the story that speaks to who we are, why we are here, and the fundamental nature of existence?  It seems this is the poet’s task.  Originally, such truths were transmitted through human voice, in storytelling (Kearney 8), through the medium of language.  “The storyteller ‘tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart’” (Kearney 6). Language can rise to an art form, as the ascension of articulation.
           
Poetry arises from the body, then is processed through consciousness, actively engaging the self in its down-to-earthness to create a form that has the capacity to unify (Sewell 39). Sam Taylor is seeded in the earth, and speaks from its essence, far beneath the soil—a place beneath us all, yet which circles to include the heavens. I could not fully discern him when we met that first day, yet something about his presence resonated within my own visceral frame, generating an impulse to take notice. I could not help but respond to Sam’s exceptional nature. This original impulse came forward again later in the week, and compelled me to ask if he would read his work for our intimate group. In sacred humility, Sam read “Accident” (Taylor 17), and immediately I realized why I had been so touched by his presence; his connection to the primal well was exposed, and we, him, all become one through the vehicle of his art.

“A beacon moving through the darkest crime scene," my friend said when I told him I didn’t know what love was(17).  Sam reveals himself in the first line; his concern is love.  Love suffuses his landscape and his work.  Reality presents as the darkest crime scene, filled with struggle, death and the depths of the soul, yet in the center is light, the beacon of love.  Love, he seems to suggest, is the gem we seek, the Holy Grail. And Sam guides us into the wisdom hiding in the dark reaches of experience through the light and language of love—poetry. I am reminded of Thomas Mann who “celebrates man as a ‘noble meeting […] of Spirit and Nature in their yearning way to each other’” (Campbell 154).  In the artist and poet this union may potentially be modeled and therefore, made accessible to our own aspirations.

Michael Vannoy Adams quotes Spengler’s orientation to myth:

“Today we simply no longer know what a myth is.” A myth, he says, is “no mere aesthetically pleasing mode of representing something to oneself.”  Rather, it is “a piece of the most lively actuality,” an experience that “shakes the innermost structure of being.” (The Mythological Unconscious 14)

Such perception aligns with Campbell’s notion that myth’s primary dynamic function is to “awaken and maintain in the person” the sense of ultimate mystery in everyday existence (Thou Art That 12).  He further suggests that it is the shocking, awe-inspiring experience of the mystery that is most significant, and refers to Carl Jung as having said, “one of the functions of religion is to protect us against the religious experience” (13). Direct confrontation with mystery can terrify and overwhelm. Poetry can be a portal to the safe experience of mystery in its capacity to reveal the hidden layers of outer perception; it allows us to see in and under, with fresh eyes, eyes that open the heart to love. Sam Taylor accomplishes such wonder in “Accident,” and also reveals how death, in its confrontation with loss and grief, can expand the full-of-love heart to even greater dimensions.

He leaned down
to her, but she did not move. He was terrified then
of the silence he felt that moment
which was not the quiet of trees or the moon
or of hot tea, but the silence of somewhere else,
of a lake being where a girl should be.  (Taylor 17)   

Joseph Campbell perceives love as an ultimate mystery, and articulates his musings in a beautiful essay on “The Mythology of Love” (Myths To Live By 148-168). Among the types of love are two extremes: one which gives rise to transcendental bliss and one which is born from genital lust, the origins being associated with either heaven or hell.  In contrast is the love described in the poetry of the troubadours, particularly Guiraut de Borneilh (158); this love, according to Campbell, is neither indiscriminate spiritual compassion nor “will to sex,” but highly personal and discriminate eye to heart transmission within one individual in response to a particular other. This is the love Sam Taylor references: the paradox of indescribable joy (a beacon) and its loss, which only heightens the awareness of its beauty, a lake where a girl should be. It is bittersweet amor (159), sweet in its scent of eternity and bitter in its time-bound reality. This love is both heaven and hell at once, requiring far greater courage than does either polar extreme.

Poetry reveals life as love articulated; it replaces perception of experience with a fresh image, so that we may see the full bloom, in contrast to our cultured, diminished view that may not even reveal the presence of a bud. Amor and life,however, are transient. Sam Taylor presents the image of love as a beacon, and then rips it away: “I didn’t ask him if he saw a beacon in that field, the windshield shattered sixty yards away, the sky a frigid wishing well” (Taylor 17). The brilliance was there only briefly, then in its wake left longing.

Through Orpheus, we learn that love, revealed in union with the beloved, is a lost memory.  We can strive to retrieve it, but in our human form, there will never be the sustained achievement.  Change, love and loss, are constant.  The myth informs us of the inevitable dismemberment that precedes revelation.  What appeared to be true must be destroyed in order for the authentic prophecy to be unveiled.  What was once a generous landscape of love becomes a frigid wishing well in the absence of what we thought we needed to be whole.

I imagine what he would have to say […]
That there was no beacon, just taillights
and windows scattered in the weeds, the truck’s steel carcass,
and the stars they had shared, now his alone,
tickling her shell. The beacon was nowhere. He was the beacon (18)

In the torture of loss is revealed the fullness of each participating element. The shattering of the vehicle is a metaphor for the shattering of the ego that created inauthentic separateness and less-than-ness.  The poem continues:

he would have to say, standing alone, his pulse snapping
against the sky, filling the veins of the night,
plasma, cartilage, bone—crying out for her,
her jacket flapping in the bush. He would have to say
that love does not mean preservation alone,
but also creation and destruction, and only then

is a thing complete, is it revealed, (18)

Here, as in the myth of Orpheus, death becomes the portal for illumination. In the darkest crime scene, the crime of life itself, the heart of the individual is opened to penetrate and caress the being-ness of the void.  Night, through Sam Taylor, is revealed as living, primordial chaos, the source of all new beginnings, only evident in the hunger for the bright light that has all too soon disappeared.

As Orpheus’ severed head (consciousness) floats down the river of life, continuing to generate harmony and prophesize to hungry wanderers,  “Accident” circles around tragedy and settles at a center truth:

The truck
towed and gone, he found her spilled menstrual pads
still caught in the sumac, left them, sobbing. I imagine
what he would have to say: that there is no thing

that is not a beacon. (Taylor 18-19)

The creative feminine, visibly apparent only as a whisper of bloodless pads, yet they too can illuminate the mystery in a moment, is always available.  “No thing that is not a flag in a mute’s hand, trying to reach us” (19) Taylor presses even more urgently here, like the mystery itself, always extending a hand to those ready to awaken to its ever-present messages.

Campbell quotes Plato in the Timaeus:

“there is only one way in which one being can serve another, and this is by giving him his proper nourishment and motion:  and the motions that are akin to the divine principle within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe” (Myths to Live By 264).

I read this as love’s task, both the discriminating, personal love and the indiscriminate, spiritual love of compassion (Chodron): to accept the natural course of life, its comings and goings, its losses and gains, and the beautiful uniqueness of individuals, beings, and each moment.  Plato’s poetic language invites us to align with nature’s harmony and in so doing, we can be of nourishment to ourselves and a generative impulse for one another. 

The couple in Taylor’s “Accident” leaves us with two lingering images, paired bare feet and one empty boot.  The feet are where we meet earth, the union of body and ground, human and nature; a bare foot is vulnerable in its exposure to the elements.  With enough sensitivity, perhaps we could feel the energy of the cosmos as it pulses through earth, drumming against our feet. A bare foot is open to penetration; it exposes us to the fullness of life.  In the death-dealing tumble, both the masculine and feminine lose protection of the left foot.  The foot that left, stayed behind, the foot that follows, as most of us are right dominant.  Like Orpheus’ beloved Eurydice, who remains in the shadows of the underworld, Taylor’s last images leave our heart and fall to the ground.  In aching loss, he opened us to a deeper, inner beacon of the heart, and then reconnects us to the body and our earthy nature. We must find a way to go on after devastating grief; we must fill that empty shoe with something new.
 
The boot is strong; it is a feminine, sturdy boot that lingers, standing upright and tall, laced as if filled with presence. What is lost still remains, yet not so. The left shoe, the shoe left.  Left is less often dominating, more often considered the feminine, as is the receptive shoe itself.  It is mother nature waiting for the seed, strong in her capacity to nurture and protect what is imbedded within her.  It is also the emptiness of loss, waiting to be filled with the next moment, receptive to the urge for creation.

Another of Taylor’s poems speaks to me now, “Postscript” (47).  It suggests the last word and how to follow, where to move on:

It’s not words we need tonight, but the antidote
to what has already been said.  […]
A bowl left out in the rain. We fill it
with so many thoughts. As if afraid to merely live
in love.  As if even fear belonged to us.

To merely live in love, he eloquently tugs.  Oh, but to be so lucky to live and to love with the depth that Sam Taylor, and poetry, know. 

                                               “Accident”

                        A beacon moving through the darkest crime scene
                        my friend said when I told him I didn’t know
                        what love was. Two months later, Joel woke up
                        reclined in a truck that had no doors or windshield,
                        his left shoe missing, the driver’s seat beside him
                        empty. Somebody was calling his name—

                        no, not his name, just calling him, so precisely
                        it tugged his sternum like a name. He rose,
                        walked around the vehicle—the tires
                        were gone, two wheels stripped to their anxles—
                        and there she was on the ground, sitting
                        against the truck, legs outstretched. He felt relieved,

                        she must have collapsed, pouting at herself,
                        sheepish for the mess she’d caused. Where was the road?
                        He heard it humming in the distance. He leaned down
                        to her, but she did not move. He was terrified then
                        of the silence he felt that moment
                        which was not the quiet of trees or the moon

                        or of hot tea, but the silence of somewhere else,
                        of a lake being where a girl should be.
                        I didn’t ask him if he saw a beacon in that field,
                        the windshield shattered sixty yards away,
                        the sky a frigid wishing well. I imagine
                        what he would have to say—waking in the twisted metal

                        dark, walking round the Ford to find her
                        sitting in the grass, already gone, her suitcase open
                        fifty feet away. That there was no beacon, just taillights
                        and windows scattered in the weeds, the truck’s steel carcass,
                        and the stars they had shared, now his alone,
                        tickling her shell. The beacon was nowhere. He was the beacon

                        he would have to say, standing alone, his pulse snapping
                        against the sky, filling the veins of the night,
                        plasma, cartilage, bone—crying out for her,
                        her jacket flapping in the bush. He would have to say
                        that love does not mean preservation alone,
                        but also creation and destruction, and only then

                        is a thing complete, is it revealed, like the windshield
                        shattered sixty yards away, like Somayyah dead,
                        sitting calmly in the grass, after the truck she crashed
                        flipped over fifteen times. Some things are impossible
                        and they come true. Maybe all things. Two days later,
                        he returned to the road, found a true inch groove

                        that trailed into the shrub, followed it, picking up
                        his wallet, a cell phone, her water bottle. A letter
                        he had written her last summer, half rain-bled. The truck
                        towed and gone, he found her spilled menstrual pads
                        still caught in the sumac, left them, sobbing. I imagine
                        what he would have to say: that there is no thing

                        that is not a beacon. No thing that is not a flag
                        in a mute’s hand, trying to reach us. Or a window
                        holding a face. Except in some spots, the face shines through
                        more than others, like in Somayyah alive,
                        or like that night as he leaned over her, noticing
                        her left foot in the grass was bare, like his own,

                        and two days later—when his father drove him back—
                        he found, on a sun-washed hill, beneath a tall pine
                        her boot, standing upright, still laced and tied. - (Sam Taylor. Body of the World 17-19)

  “Postscript”

It’s not words we need tonight, but the antidote
to what has already been said. Yes, there’s a man
sitting lakeside in an idling car. Yes, there’s
a slug crossing a road in the rain, and a drugstore
where people sway like tropical leaves—in a wind
that thinks of antibacterial soap and condoms,
a two-liter coke. Yes, my father is dying
and the soil turns with its vocabulary
of beetles, its glistening, diamond vowels. Yes,
any face is a temporary face, and God knows
enough about when the mangoes must turn red,
when the garbage man must wake in the dark.
Here. There. A bowl left out in the rain. We fill it
with so many thoughts. As if afraid to merely live
in love. As if even this fear belonged to us.

(Sam Taylor. Body of the World 47)

Works Cited

Adams, Michael Vannoy. The Mythological Unconscious. New York: Karnac Books, 2001.

Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. New York: Penguin Compass, 1972.

---. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001.

Downing, Christine. “Looking Back at Orpheus,” Spring Journal. Fall 2004. 1-35.

Kearney, Richard. On Stories: Thinking in Action. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Sewell, Elizabeth. The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960.

Taylor, Sam. Body of the World. Keene, NY: Ausable Press, 2005.

Compact Discs

Chodron, Pema. “Good Medicine: How to Turn Pain into Compassion with Tonglen Meditation,” The Pema Chodron Audio Collection. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2004.

About The Author
Cheryle is an artist who grew up along the Ohio River, in West Virginia, then Grace landed her in Southern California in 1968, where she continues to live oceanside, still with one leg in the waters.

Addtional Links