Numinous

One writes poetry because one is compelled to do so. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel in his dream the poet must deal with the conflict between the demands of our rational civic existence and his intuitive feelings about life in its illuminated as well as darker aspects. W.H. Auden's vision characterized the poetic odyssey as a descent into the vortex of extra-rational experience. Robert Graves in much of his poetry and in particular in his seminal work The White Goddess, views the process as an almost interminable series of trysts and inevitable struggles with an entity that psychologist Carl Jung himself might describe as the archetypal Muse of pre-Apollonian matriarchal cultures. Defining the true nature of the evolved human male uncontaminated by warlike or patriarchal tendencies and tuned to a more love transfused and peaceful mode of existence in relationship to women in particular and life in general may seem an utopian task. The poet's journey requires grappling with this sort of idealism. Many contemporary neuroscientists believe all creative impulses originate in the right temporal lobe of the human brain. Indeed the visionaries among them postulate that this area of the brain may function as both a receiver and transmitter that is in contact with realities beyond space-time continuum in which we exist. No matter the esoteric mechanics of the process, I believe one writes poetry because one cannot help it. I started writing it in the 1960s, some were complete poems, most others fragments retrieved from the imagination during frequent journeys to that tenuous "vortex." I consigned my work to a box in the attic in the 1970s and ignored the compulsions of twentyfive years to write more. In 1999 I exhumed my writings and realized I might have greatly exaggerated their demise. Thus the muses beckoned again. This collection is the result of editing many of my earlier poems and fleshing out the other fragments of earlier inspirations. Now the muses have engaged me with a vengeance for which development I owe them my sincere gratitude whether they exist even only in fleeting moments in the right temporal lobe of my brain. Poetry should never be viewed as autobiography even though most of the love poems herein were inspired or provoked by women who must remain unnamed as much as to honor the poetic impulse, for which I cannot claim sole credit, as well as to protect their privacy.