Just
a Higher Form of Thinking
A
poet’s mind is not like yours and mine.
Well,
not my mind actually; because I’m a poet,
and
I know how poets think. It took a long time
before
I saw it, but it became obvious with each
new
poem that I wrote; and what I saw confirmed
American
Zen poet Jane Hirshfield’s insight on how
poetry
did her thinking for her. It was her mind,
actually;
a highly specialized aspect of Jane’s mind
that
saw beyond the images of life into the essential
nature
of the experience, an aspect of the mind
that
thinks in symbols. That’s the secret of the poet’s
genius,
to look beyond the images of life and translate
what
it sees into symbols that reveal the essential
meaning
of the experience and integrate that truth into
the
conscious personality. It`s not a mystery, actually;
just
a higher form of thinking that Carl Jung attributed
to
our “transcendent function,” poetry’s way of integrating
our
unconscious and conscious self into a more fully
realized personality, which he called “the
process
of
individuation.”
Composed
in Tiny Beaches,
Georgian
Bay, Southcentral, Ontario
Tuesday,
February 4, 2025
