The Poetic Matrix
by James Stewart
Poetry is both functional and esthetic. Poetry is a creative effort by the poet to understand him/herself
and the world. It is involved with exploring and understanding the very nature of creativity itself through
the mimicking of Earth's forms, geometry and signatures.
The poet does not simply string words together, but sends out a syntax [from Greek, syntassein to
arrange together, syn + tassein to arrange] of consciousness using rhythm and the voice, rhyme and
refrain as methods to form steps up which his own consciousness can rush.
Syntax is a connected or orderly system. It is an harmonious arrangement of parts or elements into a
whole. A syntax of consciousness is a harmonious arrangement of aspects or elements of consciousness
into the creation of an interconnected system that mirrors the essence of the Creative Presence in Nature.
As a true artist, the poet is always primarily a psychic or a mystic. The poet's specific art is multifaceted.
It is his or her method of understanding their own creativity. It is a path for exploring the vast creativity
of the Universe. And it also serves as a container [vessel] or showcase that displays their own
knowledge as best they can.
A poet is a creator, a maker, a gatherer, who contemplates the heavens, the patterns of the earth, and
the movements of his own body and soul. He then spontaneously arranges his discoveries and insights
together as a way of organizing his world [the world] and communicating with its spirits. He is a bridge
between the invisible and visible worlds. If pure in his imagination and vision, and focused in his
integrity, he then reflects, and becomes, the symbols and geometry of creative movement, thus
mimicking and translating the pattern of the original creative moment. A poet's primary relationship is
with his Creating Spirit. The degree of purity of this primal relationship is reflected into the mirror of his
art and his life. A poet is a vessel of transformation and manifestation.
I desire and embrace the vessel of my self-transformation and allow the movement of change. Knowing
that I am, I receive the wisdom of my Light.
The poetic matrix implies a vessel, a mater, a mother, who brings forth - gives birth to - the magical
codex of poetry, that mysterious, runic system of signals, spells or symbols of revelation and
communication. Like the divine ideas of Plato the codes of poetry are those archetypal, creative
patterns that resonate, insinuate, emanate, infiltrate, and permeate thoroughly, influencing and affecting
every aspect of the poet's life and his world.
The Poetic Matrix was born in the womb of Yosemite Valley, that vast, awesome, fecund, living
ecosystem. Yosemite, a Spirit Place, a Place of Spirit, which, while obviously an aspect of the body of
Earth, resonates its own unique Placeity [platysity]; its own unique syntax of Earth consciousness, rich
in the beauty of the wild. A beauty written and sung in the musical extremities of subtle delicacy and
powerful awe-inspiring ferocity - a beauty containing infinite possibilities and probabilities within its
embrace.
And of course this Spirit of Place will nurture the Poetic Matrix in its own individually creative way
revealing the wisdom and grandeur of its seasonal permutations. I would suspect the codes of this Spirit
Place to be "of the Earth" but quite different from a poetry birthed and nourished by the environs of
downtown New York City, or for that matter the middle of the Sahara Desert. For these are different
syntaxes of Earth consciousness, yet all are sustained and nourished by the larger, encompassing Unity
of the whole planetary body, by the solar system, fractal pattern, within fractal pattern, ad infinitum.
In the web of the Life, in the unified field of consciousness, there are no separations except in the
ephemeral shimmerings of the fleeting nanosecond.
I can imagine Yosemite, like a poet, revealing its spell in its language of flora and fauna, its atmospheres
of temperature, light and shadow, moods and seasons. Or in its changeable weather, or the delicacy of a
muted sunrise or the brilliance of a magnificent sunset. In stormy winter or the blossoming of wild
flowers and the dance of flora and fauna coming to life in spring's renewal. All of these events are like
exquisite poems expressed kinesthetically and synchronistically for all to experience; that is, if the lenses
of perception are clear and the channels to the heart and other centers of perception within the human
instrument are completely attuned then the human steward might sense the full magnificence of this
living spirit of place which is also encoded within their own piece of earth, the human body.