ars metaphorica by Ben Shaw

sometimes i think about poetry as a body

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:19:28 UTC

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a poem can be broken

like a body. a poem

can be examined

like a body.

a poem can be read like a body. (or maybe it's better to say a body can be read like a poem)

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:20:48 UTC

i sometimes think that poetry can be more like

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:21:12 UTC

our minds?!

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:22:04 UTC

poetry can be meandering, messy, sporadic

what do you think!

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:22:49 UTC

but!!!

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:24:57 UTC

i've recently been considering that maybe both views could be right

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and the bridge that connects the body and the mind in the poem is...

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:26:41 UTC

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my reasoning is this:

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:31:39 UTC

metaphors are a way of understanding the internal through reference to the external. they let us comprehend something messy and hard to understand (like minds, emotions, mental states) through reference to things we do understand (the physical world, the body)

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:37:11 UTC

a product of instinct and pattern, both conscious and subconscious

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:37:16 UTC

an impulse and an expression that transcends the mereness of the physical

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:41:28 UTC

this seems to be the more traditional school of thought regarding poetry

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:42:43 UTC

poets have gone running with this idea, interpreting caesura, enjambment, rhythm, and form as metaphors for our bodies as able or disabled, injured or healthy, whole or fractured

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:44:13 UTC

poet Andy Jackson has written about how disabled bodies, or "free verse bodies", can be represented by poetry. free verse, he suggests, allows poets to resist hegemonic poetic form and structure, much like the disabled body resists the hegemony of able-bodiedness.

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:45:22 UTC

sometimes, i like to imagine a poem written by uncontrolled natural chance as well as uncontrolled human chance

shabs1 — 2025-09-11 12:47:43 UTC

whether crafted by human hands or natural chance, poems, as a body that is physical, as written words and cracks and splendid chance, tell a story about the physical world that created it

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despite this...

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lightning carving a beautiful sequence of letters onto the trees, or the repeated waves crashing morse code holes into the rock

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:25:13 UTC

but what, exactly, is this expression?

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:26:26 UTC

one of the most interesting explanations i know is that given by philosopher R. G. Collingwood. he claims that expression is coming to know the particularities of an emotion and thereby becoming liberated from the oppressive burden of an emotion you feel but do not understand

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:27:11 UTC

i have come to know

my emotions through writing

haikus in the past.

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row of dumbbells

with metallic gleam

oh, envy

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three songs at once

gym speakers and headphones

and silence

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cool white light

sometimes i think of

the morning sun

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:33:14 UTC

side note: i recently learnt that haikus don't even need to follow the 5-7-5 syllable structure! as long as they're minimalist and strive for a "haiku moment"

(my notes form a poetry class i did a while back)

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:41:56 UTC

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:43:40 UTC

maybe that halcyon haiku moment in which every paradox seems self-evidently true, in which the subject and object coalesce in an intimate and flawed union, is a perfect example of poetry as a facet of the mind

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:44:17 UTC

a haiku moment transcends the physical to some degree. a body is only ever a body and is only ever discrete. it lacks the union of a haiku moment, lacks the capacity for opposites to meet

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:45:00 UTC

but a mind? a mind has no such restriction. it is the mind, i think, that creates and revels in the haiku moment. the mind is where the haiku takes place.

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:50:50 UTC

the most interesting thing about Collingwood's theory, though, is that he says art is this expression! the painting, the play, the poem - these are mere art objects. the actual ART is inherently...

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:52:48 UTC

interestingly, this aligns with the most unique (and controversial!) part of Collingwood's theory of art, that art is inherently...

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:55:22 UTC

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:58:06 UTC

if poems are art, art is expression, and expression is a mental process, we might suggest that poetry is a mental process?

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 09:59:19 UTC

disclaimer: Collingwood's art as a mental process idea has been debated extensively by philosophers. most think he's wrong. whatever. i like his theory

shabs1 — 2025-09-14 10:07:56 UTC

some haikus by Grant Caldwell which i like to think exhibit this "haiku moment"

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_{(((highlighted quote from Eleni Stecopoulos' book 'Visceral Poetics', embedded in Andy Jackson's piece 'Caesura and the Deforming Poem: Rupture as a Space for the Other')))}

shabs1 — 2025-09-16 09:09:06 UTC

this isn't my idea, by the way. George Lackoff and Mark Johnson explore this notion in their book 'Metaphors We Live By'

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:50:32 UTC

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:50:57 UTC

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:52:07 UTC

the gist: when you compare something abstract with something concrete, you develop a new way of seeing the abstract thing

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:52:41 UTC

so, if we say that the body is concrete

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:53:04 UTC

and the mind is abstract

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:54:09 UTC

then metaphor, in bridging concrete and abstract, could connect the body and the mind?

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:54:59 UTC

maybe an example would be apt

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:55:48 UTC

a few years ago, there was a lemon that hung on the tree in my backyard all winter long. every lemon fell off apart from this one.

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at the same time, i was growing up. i was worried about this, about my loss of youth, my loss of silliness, my loss of what made me myself

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:57:42 UTC

i looked to the lemon - concrete, external, objective - to make sense of my emotions regarding ageing - abstract, internal, subjective

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:58:14 UTC

"the lemon is my youth". and from this sprung a web of entailments:

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:58:23 UTC

my youth is fruitful

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my youth is ephemeral

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one day, my youth will fall onto the ground and rot into oblivion

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:59:00 UTC

the loss of youth is natural

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:59:13 UTC

the loss of youth is inevitable

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:59:42 UTC

the loss of youth is useful (i.e. dropped lemons can make lemonade, lost youth can make...adults?)

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 14:59:56 UTC

new phases of my life will grow...

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 15:00:03 UTC

...and this is also beautiful and inevitable

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 15:02:26 UTC

let me tell you, this was a metaphor that i obsessed over. it helped me a lot. i wrote songs about it. i made art about it

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 15:02:48 UTC

and when the lemon did eventually, inevitably fall

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 15:03:11 UTC

i was weirdly at peace with at all

shabs1 — 2025-09-18 15:03:31 UTC

(incidentally, the love heart of leaves became a metaphor as well, giving me solace through its own network of entailments: to be loved is to be changed, to move on is a process of self-love, etc.)

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_{the lemon, as immortalised in a spotify playlist i made at the time. i cannot find the original photo anymore.}

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shabs1 — 2025-09-19 01:33:45 UTC

_{this one was painted by my dear friend Rose}

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shabs1 — 2025-09-19 02:25:25 UTC

maybe my obsession with the lemon was excessive. but i do generally want to be attentive, look with care, dig beyond the surface of the concrete things for their minds, their meanings

shabs1 — 2025-09-19 02:25:44 UTC

do you want to have a go too?

(open this link and run the game to continue!)

shabs1 — 2025-09-19 03:28:35 UTC

shabs1 — 2025-09-23 08:56:13 UTC

reflecting back on this, i think this metaphor gave me a way of seeing and understanding my flurry anxieties: my youth was the lemon, something that follows rules of physics, changes in predictable and inevitable ways. this metaphor helped me understand my emotions through connecting them to the world. it united the mental and the physica

shabs1 — 2025-10-31 02:01:16 UTC

NB: i'm assuming that the mind and body are separate things (i.e. the cartesian split), which you might disagree with! i think it's an interesting assumption for the sake of a good metaphor to understand poetry through, but whether the split is actually a true reflection of reality? that's a different can of worms entirely!

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_{(the cow does not like the cartesian split)}

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shabs1 — 2025-11-02 05:16:00 UTC

^{text conversations with my ex-partner}