the first time she felt lost she had walked along alone for five miles; she was four what did it mean the old man asked he forgets that Zimmerman says what matters is how it feels it meant her feet began to hurt         right in the middle of a question regarding isolation but alot of people began showing up & spoiled the question & somebody else came out of a house with a box of crackers—surely the little girl must be hungry or (like an animal) easily stayed; somebody else called the police; the little girl wore a red dress and knew about holes there was one (in the hedge) that was how she got out but when she tried to get back in the hole had vanished and there was only hedge formed like a dense edge along Wertz Avenue worst avenue she thought madly no way either way what d’ya think it means now he asks it means once upon a time  somebody called the police to come pick up a street-walker in a red dress   ©2007 Secrets, A White Stocking Tale

Credits

© 2007 Richard Lance Williams December 5 & she counts noses (drawn to the buffalo stew: the red lining of the wide boulevards: for Gary Kent & David Kramer)

Regarding Theopoetics

Thea/opoetics - A method of interpretation in the field of religion (mythology, theology and comparative religions) developed by Stanley Romaine Hopper and David L. Miller in the 1960's. This method is used to articulate the spiritual import or meaning of a text or symbolic object, especially, by deriving and amplifying 'radical metaphor' ('ontological metaphor'; 'antimetaphor') for 'ontic' experiences, i.e., experiences of existence, being, becoming, iterativity, or aftermath. Such experiences are 'concealed' with experiences of everyday objectness or activity in the life-world. The criteria for the validity of an interpretation is not its 'falsifiability' but its 'compellingness.' Thea/opoetics names and characterizes the divinity that manifests itself in a particular material object of symbolic sacred significance.

see David Miller

"Theopoiesis: A Perspective on the Work of Stanley Romaine Hopper," first published in: S.R. Hopper, Why Persimmons and Other Poems (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), pp. 1-11. republished 12-24-07 to mythopoetry.com


Robert More in "Original Self" writing on Hopper's theopoetics...

""Stanley Hopper's solution for our sense of mythic vertigo is a new appreciation for the role of imagination. He recommends that we replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self. This is a theology for a period highly influenced by technology and by psychoanalysis.

More continues,

"In this time of deep change, we may feel dislocated ... Sensing the waning of a myth, we may take several different steps: We may try to reinstate the old myth, insisting that it is the only truth that will hold us together. We may try to invent new myths, but these, Hopper says, are ... too rational and fail to give us the deep inspiration we need. We may also turn to countermyths, stories that emphasize a vision opposite to that of the dominant but weakening myth."

more theopoetic

-Myth & Meaning/Stanley Romaine Hopper see ARC

-Theopoetics that the dead may become gardeners again



Want more theopoetic discussions?

see Theopoetic BlogSpot


Author Note: - regarding the poem, "Secrets" & myths of absence

After exposure to the following lines, what does it mean the old man asks/he forgets that Zimmerman says/what matters is how it feels, from " & she counts noses" by Ric Williams, I jot this poem and while editing the lines a bit further, I begin to contemplate some things other conversation partners have said to me. I first think of the poetries of Stanley Romaine Hopper and when I do, I also think of David Miller quoting SRH to me with regards poetry.

SRH said a poem must not mean; a poem must be. Following fast upon this thought in a close second is Bachelard’s notion; if the image presented doesn’t make you think of something else not present, you do not have an image of the imagination expressing itself at all. In this I come to realize good poetry suspends meaning something to reveal something else at work in the background where words are now hanging. This always makes me go back and rework poetry further and further toward letting the image in the background proceed to narrate a story in the memory of the metaphor from its own relative space, its h’ere.

Having recognized the existence of the fantasy metaphor and its space—the h-space, I have begun to notice how the phantom chair seats itself and when it does it lays a pattern in my soul. I let this imagination take over and chair the conveyance the way it seems to wish to do. This is how meaning something takes the back seat.

The intersection of the “h” happens like a magic just as I write the word, “wore”; the little girl wore a red/ dress. That is how the phantom wore itself and how it lay claim the facilitator chair. Keep in mind I have dyslexia and learned to read by reading through the imagination which weaves back and forth through the holes in a text what holds it together the way it appears. Also keep in mind it was this nobody who taught me how to read by misreading in the first place!

Memory eidola matter to image formation and reality experiences that’s for sure. Sewn into the verse is my own memory of Mom’s pleasure telling the aunts how early in life her second daughter became a street-walker with a police record on file at the local police station. I had forgotten this part until the misread word reminded me of it.

What this re(en)counter may have accomplished leaves me a profound appreciation for the moments we are lead out of an experience in isolation. [The isolated experience itself is lead out of its posit(ion) as veiled, both 'within' and 'shut out'!] It is, for me, a moment when the guardian at the h/edge comes and I am most able to be/come another unsayable not saying woman becoming woman.