Brother Damien's Poetic Impulse

Brother Damien came by mid-morning. I had just gotten back from fishing - kept several that were 10 - 12 inches. I thought they would make a nice lunch for the two of us. I also found a little patch of sorrel that will spruce up a salad nicely.

When he first arrived I could tell he was a little nervous. (I would think that he had told Father Joseph why he was coming up here. I sure hope so.)

For whatever reason, he was timid about this meeting. I've noticed this before, though. There is a certain high-strung something in new poets - or, rather, in those who wish to be poets. They also tend to have confessional instincts and a bent towards self-expression. What concerned me particularly in Brother Damien's case was that he might be feeling these things to be powerfully at odds with his monastic vocation. I do not want to be the cause of his unnecessarily abandoning the life of the Coenobitic Seeker for the life of a Seeker-Errant. There are too few as it is who follow the quest according to such a disciplined pattern of common life.

But new poets often wish, as Brother Damien does, to give vent to some hidden thing, some essential core, some secret self that lies buried within, barely visible beneath the surface but throbbing away down there in the depths. And be it devil or angel, it must out!

Not only is this dangerous for a new monk, however, it is not, in my opinion, particularly helpful to learning how to write good poetry. I think this is why most poetry written even by good poets early in their lives is just bad. The impulses are disordered an chaotic. The vision is too self-conscious, even self-referential. Nothing is restrained by the richness and beauty of the language itself. All gives way before the terrible power of self-disclosure. But, hey, we all have to start somewhere - and the Dionysian violence of the hidden, misunderstood self is at least a power to be reckoned with.

I gave him several directions we could take and then after discussing them and plotting a course, we began some poetic exercises - transformations from free verse to iambic, experimentation with trochaic substitution, enjambed versus end stopped lines, etc. This kind of formal manipulation is often just the cure for the overactive ego in a new poet. Fortunately, Brother Damien really took to it. He has a good ear for the language and that is important. A poet who can't hear may be worse than a poet who can't feel. Brother Damien is certainly neither.

We were in the process of working up some childhood memories of home into blank verse, though, when Camilla showed up for lunch.

Oh boy.

Brother Damien was quite taken aback.

He had, apparently, met her during her brief stop at St. Godric's, but was under the impression that she was leaving the valley from there.

After 10 or 15 minutes of a relatively awkward exchange of pleasantries, Brother Damien announced that he had better be getting back, as he needed to be home for his late afternoon chores. I gave him some exercises and said I would see him on Thursday.

Given what I observed, I am not sure Camilla wasn't the efficient cause of Brother Damien's coming to me for help in learning how to tell people poetically that he was "not just a brother in a monastery." The timing is certainly suspect and his behavior upon her arrival was odd. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean anything. He could just be peculiarly sensitive to feminine beauty, merely shocked to find that she was still around, or embarrassed to have been found writing poetry with a crazy eremite. And he is, after all, a monk - forgive me. There are a hundred possible explanations.

But I suppose it's worth keeping my eye on if he is to be my student in any way.

Perhaps I should also talk to Father Joseph.

But this is not what I came out here to do! (More on this later.)

Camilla spent the afternoon and early evening at the cottage again. She helped with some of the gardening. I gave her her first fly fishing lesson and showed her a few native edible plants. She asked for a book. I lent her my copy of The Four Quartets.

Sigh.

What a life! Glory to God! Heels up!