Paul Auster, Collected Poems

I have finally picked up a collection of Paul Auster's poems, all originally published prior to his fiction, works of which I have enjoyed for quite some time. This post is primarily focusing upon Auster's earliest writing, dating back to 1967 and titled "Notes from a Composition Book", and his final poetry publication, "White Spaces", published in 1979. I'm glad I finally worked through some of this material because the writings clearly demonstrate the themes upon which his fiction is based, those being the random and chance occurrences in life, the limitations of language, and the layers of story one's life develops and becomes immersed within.

The base topic Auster focuses upon within his poetry would be the use of language, often referring back to biblical mythology for analogy,

"The fall of man is not a question of sin, transgression, or moral turpitude. It is a question of language conquering experience: the fall of the world into the word, experience descending from the eye to the mouth. A distance of about three inches."

Prior to the spoken word experience is one of sight, or perception, only. Language, or our interpretation, is then relied upon for the understanding of our perceptions, for the organization of experience. But language is limited due to our perception being limited. The limitation stemming from the basic fact of our perceptions being in flux because of the world's constant motion, where "something happens, and from the moment it begins to happen, nothing can ever be the same again". This constant motion leads to the randomness of events that pervade life, a theme most attributed within Auster's fiction,

"And no matter how small, each and every possibility remains. Even a motion reduced to an apparent absence of motion. A motion, for example, as minimal as breathing itself, the motion the body makes when inhaling and exhaling air."

"...the need to remind myself at each moment, that things do not have to happen this way, that there is always another way, neither better nor worse, in which things might take shape."

"For this is a landscape of random impulse, of knowledge for its own sake- which is to say, a knowledge that exists, that comes into being beyond any possibility of putting it into words."

However, we are not content to live within the randomness of events. Instead there is the base desire of "the body's need to be taken beyond itself, even as it dwells in the sphere of its own motion", as well as our need to attempt to develop "a consistent sense of what is happening, even as it changes, moment by moment". Words then are relied upon. But with development of language existing in limitation, this in turns leads to isolation as we make our feeble attempt to describe the details of the moment with words that "lag behind what was happening". In our attempt to relate the moment, or to ascribe meaning, or to share and extend beyond ourselves, we simultaneously remove ourselves from the perceptual, fall from the eye to the mouth. As soon as we make an attempt at clarifying an event or moment with language, the moment has passed and only exists in memory. But still there is the need for self definition,

"I want to be present inside the space of this moment, of these moments, and to say something, even though it will be forgotten, that will form a part of the journey for the length of the time it endures."

Through reading Auster, we are reminded of the basic distinction between our perception and the need for meaning. There exists the perceptual, the phenomena of the world, ourselves existing equally within the constants of flux and motion, our sight which places our bodies at an equal plane with that which we perceive. Yet, once we begin to search for meaning and identity within the experience, there is then the removal of ourselves into self isolation. But through art, the experience of the perceptual prior to our fall can at least be remembered, if not regained,

"A few scrapes of paper. A last cigarette before turning in. The snow falling endlessly in the winter night. To remain in the realm of the naked eye, as happy as I am at this moment. And if this is too much to ask, then to be granted the memory of it, a way of returning to it in the darkness of the night that will surely engulf me again. Never to be anywhere but here. And the immense journey through space that continues. Everywhere, as if each place were here. And the snow falling endlessly in the winter night."

And we are also reminded of both the freedom and responsibility involved when choosing language to develop meaning within our lives. The perceptual has no meaning per se, it is an existence with a knowledge of its own, a self contained experience. The moment words are relied upon, there is only the imaginative act to rework and interpret the perceptual, a process of selectivity among the myriad possibilities that are available to us. Creation at that point is ours.