Discussion and Review of Duane Locke's "Yang Chu's Poems" (Crossing Chaos Press)
written by Connie Stadler

Before engaging in any discussion of Duane Locke’s opus, “Yang Chu’s Poems,” the reader must acquire a basic understanding of this poet - perhaps the greatest living poet. To that end, the author’s introduction to this work is requisite reading. With more than 6,300 poems published in print and e-zines and 17 volumes of poetry spanning a forty- year career, Duane Locke is one the world’s most prolific and enduring poets; this volume represents the culmination of decades of artistry.

To fully appreciate Duane Locke’s poetry, one must grasp this artist’s personal views, for they are not only distinct, but a herald of his art -- adding to much deeper engagement with his work. On poetry itself, as well as the mind of the poet, Locke’s thoughts are strong and definitive -- a manifesto:

I feel that the difference between a craftsman and a genuine poet is that a craftsman knows what he is doing, he has conscious pre-knowledge, and he through deliberate labor developed a skill that can manipulate the reader. He knows the formulas to simulate feelings, and cause the indiscriminate, weak reader to participate in this simulation of feeling. A craftsman is a liar providing lies for a weakling who has faith that the lies he lives by are truths. I would call this obtuse reader, “an I-they, non self-owned, slave mentality.” There craftsman con-men, although these con-men might not be aware of their chicanery, are prevalent among those who write non-poems that are palmed off as poems.

Now, on the other hand, a genuine poet does not know what he is doing. He does it. A genuine poet does not write with conscious foreknowledge to manipulate an obtuse reader. This rare being, a genuine poet, writes to discover what is not in the archives of standard perception, standard feeling, and standard thinking, and what at the time is not even in his conscious awareness. He sends his discovery out into the world with the hopes that someone, adventurous and open, will discovery some of his discovery.[1]

For Locke, each poem is ‘a miracle,’ so authentic poetry is a gift of the ‘elite’ and is subsequently quite rare indeed. Although this may seem superficially arrogant , it is imperative to examine the posit more deeply, for its truth lies in the realization that Locke the poet must be absolutely free from ego and anything remotely associated with it. As for the creation of a poem, it is ‘a process, a living linguistic reality…not something like a butterfly with a pin through its body… As one reads, the poem flutters.’[2] He decries the ‘non-self owned’ -- the ‘Bukowski lovers’ -- who lack any appreciation for ‘linguistic music.’ Thus, this is the ‘Age of Stillborn Poetry’ :

I have not met any poet, except the few that come to salons at my house, who are concerned about having a caesura in the middle of the line, if their rhythms are rising or falling, if the poem has a masculine or feminine ending. These current young poets are not in the least concerned if a pyrrhic adds rapidity to their lines, or if a spondee slows. These young poets are, as I have said, stone deaf to music in poetry.[3]

As master philosopher in his own right, Locke has studied and embraced the full range of ancient and modern philosophers; many of the concepts of Merleau Ponty and Heidegger can be seen in his work. With respect to the latter, his main concern is ontology or the study of being, Dasein.[4] This isn't simply a synonym for ‘consciousness,’ but rather indicates the vital concept that human beings—and only human beings—truly exist in the fullest sense only when being-there-for-themselves. Thus, we see the importance of the deprecation of “I-THEY” beings -- those who are defined by the interpretations of others. In terms of phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty echoes this same line of thought; existence is defined by self-autonomy. To extrapolate from Phenomenology of Perception: ‘the first thing I have to realize is that when I see, I cannot give others access to the vision I have; simply, it is mine.’

In “The Poems of Yang Chu,” Locke writes through the character of ancient Taoist philosopher Yang Chu. In his introduction, Locke speaks of the historical vs. the poetic Yang Chu -- a distinction which makes this volume of over 300 poems even more astounding.

Now, my persona Yang Chu in my book “The Poems of Yang Chu” in real life was a Taoist, but he was called a renegade Taoist. He lived about 300BC, but in my book, I write his poems, which are actually my poems, as if he were alive today. During his life, I don’t think the real Yang Chu ever wrote any poems. We only have fragments of his philosophy, and what attracted me to use a fictional Yang Chu as a vehicle of my expression was the real Yang Chu’s philosophy that expressed the body had never been properly understood, the body and the soul were not separate, the soul was a function of the misunderstood body, and the soul was not a distinct entity or essence that could be separated from the body. The soul is the neural functioning of the body, and of course, the neural functioning of the body has never understood.[5]

Body-soul unity in the context of Zenist thought is thus established as a major theme of “Yang Chu…’s” wisdom, particularly in light of Western posits of dualism.

The poems here are grouped to illustrate some of the many and various aspects of Locke’s intellect and creativity. This necessitates a differential that must frequently cross cognitive boundaries: the wisdom of Locke’s Yang Chu vs. that which distinguishes Locke as a master poet.

While the real Yang Chu, a renegade Taoist philosopher, lived from 370-319 BC, Locke’s protagonist lived from 370BC to the present and is always young and vital.

The stillness and distilled purity of Zenist thought is found in “Wasted Life,” the very first poem of the volume:

At age ninety six

He became aware

That he had wasted his life.

He should have spent

More time

On the bank of a river

Where a fisherman

Never visited.

In “Manyness,” we glean the essence of the philosopher’s concept of individual existence:

So I, Yang Chu, stand on a deck,

Gaze at the glitter of English Water…

… Waves wave up water drops

I gaze to grasp

The multiplies not dimmed

And derogated by a oneness

I am the manyness

“Anti-Tertullean” gives insight both into the values of Yang Chu and the genius of the master poet in a statement of declaration:  

I, Yang Chu, I am conquered 

By the coquettery of 

                                          Calla lilies 

Their haughty wide eyes 

Inside their corollas …

The emotions that arise and suffuse 

My corporeality 

When gaze on Calla lies 

Exalt 

And make me glad I was born

While the Christian philosopher Tertullean takes ‘greatest pleasure’ in contemplation of the ‘eternal damned,’ our sage is conquered by the flirtations of flowers. Although this is a lush juxtaposition in itself, such beauty presented in declaration form with specific words propelled by hard consonantal energy –‘conquered/coquettery/Calla/corollas/corporeality’ - additionally serves as delightful contrast and gentle but fierce impulsion, thus layering meanings.

That which draws Locke to the philosopher -- the false and hideous dualism of mind and body -- is strongly averred in ‘Scholastics’:

The body is so clothed in lies, falsehoods,

That no one in the 21^st century can be naked.

Even when they take off their clothes,

They are not naked,

For they have no body.

They have turned their bodies

Into apparitions, hallucinations

By their lies about the body.

No one has a real body,

For no one can hear

The music of the pan pipes.

As a whole, Locke’s renegade Zenist takes the inner completive and inverts it to the plane of the all encompassing ‘Sacred,’ which is so gently luminescent in “Socrates Prayed to Pan”:

A dried-up stream,

Dried-up due to plans

Of the far away city planners

I looked at the dried-up stream

Its sand was the color

Of a blonde lover’s skin

I cupped my hands

Lowered my hands

Towards the sand.

When my hands

Touched the sand,

My cupped hands

Became filled with water.

I drunk. I drunk.

In the taste of the water,

I heard the music of panpipes.

I was no longer

Thirsty.

Let us examine one image: ‘[i]ts sand was the color of a blonde lover’s skin.’ There is such a fine precision here; every sensitive reader could visualize it perfectly as the fairness of a natural blonde’s skin. It is an indelible mixture of flesh and fairness and gives the vital tincture of purity, clarity and hope that facilitates ease in transition to the single word en pointe dénouement.

Locke creates images that bedazzle and then, in reflection, stun. In this excerpt from “Cleansed Perfection,” much is evidenced:

All the preconceived vast linguistic patterns

That power strut

And close-order drill meaning

Can be subverted, subordinated

By

Cleaning from the consciousness

Cleaning from perception a la William Blake

All but

A field of cabbages, white butterflies,

And blonde caterpillars.

While the linguistic musicality is immediately evident, a more specific focus reveals a gentle drifting softly downward. These words are of the mind but there are hard glottal stops as well: ‘linguistic/strut,’ then the softer ‘subverted/subordinated.’ The alliteration tempers the cooling from ‘subverted’ to ‘subordinated.’ The lone conjunction ‘[b]y’ affords a wondrous transition. We are next doubly ‘cleansed’ to be ready for the beauty we are about to behold: we stand on the precipice of ‘[a]ll but’, then fall into the blend of frond leaves in pastel shadings; the translucent perfection of the butterfly carrying us with heighted sense of the most perfect, most subdued. We come to rest in gentlest green, cream, light sifting upsweep, to embed on light gold-furred life. Locke has taken us from analytical starkness to this triad that cries out of ‘The Sacred’ in our awakening apprehension. If one were to examine metrics and note the creation of this prosodic tapestry, one would understand something of this arrival; however, cognition is by then virtually irrelevant.

Locke’s structure at times markedly heightens these same rarefied aesthetic gifts, as can be seen in “Oak Bark”:   

Furred scrap of bark floats 

                                                                                                      On 

The mild protean existence 

Of whitish water 

                                                             Of a small 

Shore puddle. 

                                                        The fur, 

A growth, velvet, silkish to the 

Touch, 

                     The growth, a consequence 

Of a fall and separation, 

                                                                                         A natural 

Miracle.   

Locke defies convention in his cry for the ‘self-owned’ Word. While many poets dash for a thesaurus in an effort to avoid repeating a word in a work, Locke creates tidal upsweeps in lavish waves of repetitive indulgence, as in ”Chiarra”:

A grass green, the hands of grass touch,

The lips of grass

Are against your lips.

An eye green, a green that pulls you through

Its solidity to rapturous state of green liquescence.

And again, in “Oriole”:

We never saw the orange colors

Of the orioles in the orange orchard

We only saw our illusions.

This can only be compared to death immersed in the finest aged cognac. Here we are all Prufrock, timid and overwhelmed but, in this case, blessed. Our ‘ending’ in closing this book is a glorious immersion in the Word Divine:

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

[1] “Duane Locke: Interview with A Legend”, Mukul Dahal and Constance Stadler, Eviscerator Heaven Volume 4, Part 2, pp. 11.

[2]“Duane Locke: An Interview” Paul B. Roth, The Bitter Oleander, Vol. 10. No. 1 pp 26, 54.

[3] The Bitter Oleander, p. 34

[4] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

[5]Eviscerator Heaven 4, Part 2, p.22.

"With thanks to Rich Follett"

© Connie Stadler June 09