The Poet Intellectual
There is little room any more for the intellectual in public discourse. Even less for the poet intellectual.
“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus
What is an intellectual? I want to suggest and argue, it isn’t an academic, as so commonly thought. Intellectuals are out there in many stripes. They aren’t defined by locality, level of education or look.
So, what is an intellectual? An intellectual is someone at home in their mind. At home living in the land of ideas. I’ve always defined an intellectual as someone who doesn’t need a phone, a book, a companion to keep them awake, aware and “in this world”.
Many times, I’ve been on a bus, train, delayed at the airport, without a book, a phone, laptop or money to spend. Yet, never felt unease. I would sit there for hours pondering how the building was built, looking at people passing by and wondering who they are, entering their imaginative histories. I’ve spent hours just alive in my mind, looking outside and thinking about this, waxing mentally about that.
So an intellectual is someone who can sit, enjoying their coffee and pass the time watching people passing by on the street. I did this in this video, for hours. Just over a decade ago, I landed in Vancouver, returning to my home and native land after an extended exile. I put my Go Pro on the table and recorded the street scene - Robson Ave. Boxing Day.
Intellectuals are less and less common, in this world full of stimulation and adulation. Our imaginations are drying up. And let me tell you - science is included. Science is so dependent on the imagination. It would not exist without those dreaming, imagining, performing their thought experiments in the silence of their own happy minds. Science and imagination are bedfellows.
“Poetry that lasts a thousand generations, comes only as an unappreciated life is passed.” - Tu Fu.
The poet intellectual is even less seen. Gone is the poet as a force of social justice, a Dante like figure taking on the magnates. The poet that Plato exiled from his Republic because of their seditious, so truthful thoughts and demands.
The poet intellectual is now a false one - MFL graduates in academia, with pretentious copying skills and infinite access to adjectives. Dross, drivel. Where are the Auden’s, the Rexroth’s, the Mandelstam’s of our own time? Yes, I don’t mind Billy Collins but hey, he’s a little too vanilla.
What society thinks is an intellectual - is not an intellectual. Intellectuals are not dependent on education but exist as a form of mind. A peculiar and special orientation towards the world. The intellectual can exist outside the world of time, for a time.
I’ve long been on a journey of my mind, my homeless mind. Friends will tell you that I do live there in my thoughts. And in that cooking, comes a few poems that are keepers. But the good part of it is that I'm never bored. I have no problem with “being in the world”. Even alone, even on a train journey across Canada - which I took after taking the video above.
An intellectual is not a tourist. From thought always comes a thirst and demand for social justice, of a more just world. Action. Praxis. Learning that then seeks activity in the world. So an intellectual isn’t just in their head - they are also active change agents in the world, in the word.
I’m reminded by the word “tourist” of the poet, McGrath. Not many poets can hold a candle to him.
Maybe with maps made, the going would be faster.
But the maps made for tourists in their private cars
have no names for brotherhood or justice, and in any case
we’ll have to walk because we’re going far.
- Thomas McGrath. Last stanza of “The Seekers”. 1947.
An intellectual is walking, because they are going far. They are trying to bring the world into truth, turn its face towards justice.
Mentioning Tu Fu, I’m reminded of writing a poem that same year before that journey back to Canada. My own inner thoughts. I’ll leave you with it and the thought that we should embrace our intellectuals and nurture them - like an extinct species, we see their passing at our own peril.
What I learned from the Chinese poets
- July 19th, 2010 — 04:40 pm
More than 40 years
have spun by me like
a drunk hurricane.
I have spent my life
going here, doing there
a homeless mind.
Now, I ache for
my land,
the unswum lakes and
fields of pine.
Two oceans away
gray hairs sprout on
my inflated head,
the travels only kept
me dizzy, busy.
I skipped between continents,
got As and gave As.
Spoke to applauding audiences
and slept in Hyatts on satin sheets.
What for?
Better I stayed home
and chopped wood.