The
Eye
As
Inspiration
in
Modern
Poetry 1




Art
means
keeping
up
with
the
speed
of
light.

Edgard
Varese



To
see
with
our
own
eyes
is
second
sight.

Norman
O.
Brown



In
Waking
Dreams
(137)
Mary
Watkins
observes

that
the
reason
magicians
can
pull
rabbits
out
of
their

hats
with
both
alacrity
and
mystery
is
because
they

put
them
there
when
no
one
was
looking.
If
we
only

paid
attention
we
could
see
the
very
source
of
their

art.
But
can
we
ever
see
to
the
ultimate
source
of
the

art
of
the
poet‐magician/
What
is
the
actual

phenomenological
inspiration
behind
a
great
poem?

Inspiration
means
literally
to
breathe
in,
to

become
larger;
it
is
the
opposite
of
expiration
I
suppose.
Even
“Being,”
the

immensely
difficult
concept
which
Martin
Heidegger
and
modern
ontology
have

resurrected,
is
an
etymological
next‐of‐kin
to
inspiration—since
the
verb
“to
be”
is,

in
fact,
a
metaphor
derived
from
Indo‐European
and
Sanskrit
roots
which
mean
“to

grow”
and
“to
breathe”
(Jaynes
51).
Yet
inspiration
need
not
be
a
breath,
although

its
phenomenal
source
might
lie
within
the
poet
even
more
tacitly
near
to
him
than

his
own
respiration;
for
modern
poets
have
again
and
again
testified
that
inspiration

springs
from
the
physical
eye.

In
Hart
Crane’s
“The
Marriage
of
Faustus
and
Helen,”

for
example
the
poet
petitions
Helen
to



Accept
a
lone
eye
riveted
to
your
plane.

Bent
axle
of
devotion
along
companion
ways

That
beat.
continuous,
to
hourless
days—

One
inconspicuous,
glowing
orb
of
praise.
(Complete

Poems
29);
my
italics)


1

This
essay
originally
appeared
in
New
Orleans
Review
8.1
(1980):
10‐13.

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 2

In
Crane’s
poetic
thinking,
the
eye
is
indistinguishable
from
the
poem.
His

words
praise
Helen
and
show
their
devotion
to
her
image,
but
those
same
words

proclaim
that
the
medium
of
that
devotion
is
his
own
“glowing
orb.”
His
words
and

his
eye
are
one
then,
and
both
are
one
with
Helen,
for
they
follow
“companion
ways”

which
exist
somehow
beyond
time
in
“hourless
days.”
Yet
despite
the
sublimity
of

Crane
imaginative
bridging
of
the
dichotomies
of
body/poem/object,
the
praise

which
emanates
from
his
“bent
axle
of
devotion”
is,
nonetheless,
“inconspicuous.”

And,
we
may
infer,
so
too
is
inspiration.
Crane’s
poem
seems
to
reveal
to
us
only
this

much:
that
the
real
bridge
is
the
eye,
and
yet
its
gifts
as
muse
are
tacit.

But
why
is
the
eye
of
“Faustus
and
Helen”
a
“bent
axle
of
devotion”?

Presumably
Crane
is
attempting
here
to
image
the
eye’s
rotation,
its
movement

around
its
centered
position,
its
ever‐shifting
set‐ups,
hardly
ever
detected
by
our

consciousness,
from
foveal
vision
to
widely
peripheral,
in
its
tracking
of
our
field
of

vision.
The
movements
of
adjustment
of
our
eyes,
after
all,
are
almost
always

“inconspicuous,”
yet
they
lend
themselves
perhaps
more
than
any
other
aspect
of

our
haptic
awareness
to
our
orientation
to
the
spatial
world.




Crane,
of
course,
always
exalted
the
powers
of
vision.
The
Bridge,
for

example,
is,
as
Richard
Sugg
has
shown,
really
one
long
tribute
to
light
and
to

vision’s
“unfractured
idiom.”
From
this
predisposition
for
the
visual
came
his

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 3

pronounced
admiration
for
photography
and
film,
often
expressed
in
his
letters.
He

praised
the
camera’s
ability
to
record,
as
a
technological
extension
of
the
eye,
what

the
eye
often
overlooked.
In
his
comments
on
the
photographer
Steiglitz
(from
an

unfinished
essay),
Crane
celebrated
the
camera‐eye’s
ability
to
capture
the
minute

intricacies
of
the
moment:



Speed
is
at
the
bottom
of
it
all—the
hundredth
of
a
second
caught
so

precisely
that
the
motion
is
continued
from
the
picture
infinitely:
the
moment

becomes
eternal.



The
“essence
of
things,”
Crane
even
went
so
far
as
to
say,
are
only
to
be
found

“suspended
on
the
invisible
dimension
whose
vibrance
has
been
denied
the
human

eye
at
all
times
save
in
the
intuition
of
ecstasy”
(Letters
132).
Such
moments
of

ecstasy
Crane
constantly
sought
to
attain.

But
has
not
Crane’s
overreaching
after
another
mode
of
consciousness
taken

him
beyond
the
premises
of
his
own
poetic
genius
in
“Faustus
and
Helen?”
The
eye,

as
he
clearly
implied
there,
need
not
leave
the
body
in
ecstasy
to
get
at
the
essence

of
things
or
to
receive
inspiration.
As
the
phenomenological
thinking
of
the
French

philosopher
of
perception
Maurice
Merleau‐Ponty
endeavored
to
show,
the
source
of

creativity
lies,
not
in
some
search
for
transcendence,
but
in
the
“invisible”—invisible

because
too
near
us
to
objectify—orientation
of
our
eyes
to
what
he
came
to
call
the

world’s
“flesh.”
Creativity,
Merleau‐Ponty
believed,
is
a
result
of
“the
baroque

proliferation
of
generating
axes
for
visibility”
in
the
embodied
human
eye.
To

Merleau‐Ponty
even
the
ultimate
human
creation,
language
itself,
comes
from
that

tacit
dimension,
for,
as
he
argues,
language
is
actually
already
present
in
“the
infra‐
structure
of
human
vision”
(The
Visible
and
the
Invisible
145),
its
“intertwining”
with

the
visible
creation
and
resulting
“routes”
the
eye
comes
to
negotiate.
(My
debt
here

and
throughout
the
essay
to
Michael
Polanyi’s
The
Tacit
Dimension
is,
I
hope,

obvious.)
Presumably,
then,
poetry
as
well
must
spring
from
this
same
“infra‐
structure.”
But
it
is
not
necessary
that
we
accept
this
on
faith,
this
theoretical

testimony
of
a
philosopher
on
creativity,
even
as
poetic
a
one
as
Merleau‐Ponty.
We

have
the
corroboration
of
a
poet
as
well
that
the
routes
of
the
eye
are
the
sources
of

the
poem.

In
“Notes
Toward
a
Supreme
Fiction”
Wallace
Stevens
describes
a
poet’s

intertwining
with
the
visible
in
a
image
unmistakably
derived
from
the
same
insight

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 4

into
the
source
of
creativity
as
Merleau‐Ponty’s
theorizing.
A
poet
sits
on
a
bench

beside
a
lake
in
a
park,
but
it
is
no
ordinary
day.
His
vision
becomes
something
like

time‐lapse
photography
of
his
environment.
The
bench
becomes
his
“catalepsy,
his

Theatre/Of
Trope.”
All
that
he
sees
becomes
“artificial,”
“Like
a
page
of
music,
like

an
upper
air,/Like
a
momentary
color,
in
which
swans/Were
seraphs
were
saints,

were
changing
essences.”
And
then
he
begins
to
realize
how
this
imagined
world—
imagined
in
that
he
alone
bears
responsibility
for
sustaining
its
description
and
its

ordering—has
become
so
ordinary
and
quotidian
to
him;
he
sees,
as
if
for
the
first

time,
that:



The
west
wind
was
the
music,
the
motion,
the
force,

To
which
the
swans
curveted,
a
will
to
change

A
will
to
make
iris‐frettings
on
the
blank.
(397;
my
italics)



In
these
lines,
Stevens
has
imagined
how
the
iris,
that
part
of
the
eye
containing
the

regulatory
muscles
which
govern
the
movements
of
dilation
and
contraction
in
the

pupil,
becomes
covered
with
“frettings”
(that
is,
a
net,
or
grid,
or—by
extension—a

map),
although
it
is
initially
a
tabula
rasa,
a
blank,
and
how
the
poet
comes
to
feel

the
process
as
it
happens
to
him,
as
part
of
his
actual
experience.
That
is,
the
iris

becomes
a
network
of
coordinated,
tact
movements
within
which
the
forces
at
work

in
the
visible
creation
(the
wind,
the
swans)
work
their
will
upon
it,
are
caught
and

embodied,
turning
the
primal
blank,
the
eye
which,
as
the
French
philosopher

Condillac
once
astutely
saw,
initially
is
light
rather
than
sees
it
(quoted
in

Zuckerkandl
342)
into
all
the
complexities
of
mature
vision.

But
Stevens
has
here
witnessed
as
well
the
truly
“invisible,”
not
that
which

Crane
sought
to
find
in
ecstasy,
but
that
which
Merleau‐Ponty
has

described
as
“the
light
that
is
not
something
seen
but
.
.
.
that

which,
or
according
to
which,
one
sees”;
“what
inaugurates
vision
of

things,”
Merleau‐Ponty
observed,
“is
the
elemental
alliance
with
the

invisible
light.”
Like
Crane,
Stevens
has
caught
his
“bent
axle
of

devotion”
in
the
act
and
frozen
its
motions
momentarily
for
poetic

reflection.
But
he
has
done
more:
he
has
seen
that
the
“real”
world

is
creation
of
the
eye’s
intertwining
with
the
world
and
the
light.
For

all
of
the
world’s
things,
all
of
its
movements,
have
gone
into
the

making
of
“iris
frettings
on
the
blank,”
that
is,
they
have
been

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 5

accommodated
in
the
web
and
patterning
(or
frettings)
of
the
muscular
adjustments

of
the
eye,
its
tacit,
haptic
mimicry
of
the
visible
creation
as
it
gazes
upon
it.
It
is
for

this
reason,
as
Stevens
explains
elsewhere
in
“Tattoo,”
that



The
Webs
of
your
eyes

Are
fastened

To
the
flesh
and
bones
of
you

As
to
rafters
or
grass.



There
are
filaments
of
your
eyes

On
the
surface
of
the
water

And
in
the
edges
of
the
snow.
(81)



The
routes
of
the
eyes
are
the
routs
of
the
world
and,
in
a
sense,
mark
out
the
very

textures
of
poetry
itself.

Even
a
poem
like
Wendell
Berry’
“To
the
Unseeable
Animal,”
whose
title
and

epigraph,
a
quote
from
the
poet’s
daughter
(“I
hope
there’s
an
animal
somewhere

that
nobody
has
ever
seen.
And
I
hope
nobody
ever
sees
it”),
seem
to
promise
little

for
a
study
of
the
eye
as
inspiration,
reveals
the
presence
of
the
eye
as
the
source
of

poetry’s
magic.
I
quote
the
poem
in
full:



To
the
Unseeable
Animal



Being,
whose
flesh
dissolves

at
our
glance,
knower

of
the
secret
sums
and
measures,

you
are
always
there,

dwelling
in
the
oldest
sycamores,

visiting
he
faithful
springs

when
they
are
dark
and
the
foxes
have
crept
to
the
edges.

I
have
come
upon
pools

in
streams,
places
overgrown

with
the
woods’
shadow

where
I
knew
you
had
rested,

watching
the
little
fish

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 6

hang
still
in
the
flow;

as
I
approached
they
seemed

particles
of
your
clear
mind

disappearing
among
the
rocks.

I
have
waked
deep
in
the
woods

in
the
early
morning,
sure
that
while
I
slept

your
gaze
passed
over
me.

That
we
do
not
know
you

is
your
perfection

and
our
hope.
The
darkness

keeps
us
near
you.
(118)



The
poem
is
an
attempted
description
of
the
“unseen
animal”

his
daughter
hopes
never
to
see.
He
names
his
animal
“Being”

and
claims
that
his
flesh
“dissolves
at
our
glance.”
He

describes
its
omniscience
and
omnipresence.
He
relates
how

even
the
deepest
recesses
of
a
forest
seem
“particles”
of
its

:clear
mind.”
He
feels
watched,
seen,
by
it,
though
it
is
itself

invisible,
and
he
feels
near
to
it
even
in
the
darkness.

Has
not
Berry,
like
Crane
and
Stevens,
given
poetic
voice
to
Merleau‐Ponty’s

invisible
light?
The
flesh
of
the
invisible
he
describes,
of
the
light
by
which
we
see

and
the
“iris
frettings’”
capturing
of
that
light,
dissolves
at
a
glance
because
it
is
our

glance.
It
is
omniscient
and
omnipresent
because
it
has
helped
primordially
to

constitute
our
knowledge
and
our
means
of
knowing.
It
watches
us
in
the

intertwining
of
seer
and
seen,
as
Merleau‐Ponty
explains,
because



since
the
seer
is
caught
up
in
what
he
sees,
it
is
still
himself
he
sees.
.
.
.

And
thus,
for
the
same
reason,
the
vision
he
exercises,
he
also

undergoes
from
the
things,
such
that,
as
many
painters
have
said,
I
feel

myself
looked
at
by
the
things
.
.
.
so
that
the
seer
ad
the
visible

reciprocate
one
another
and
we
no
longer
know
which
one
sees
and
which
is

seen.
(The
Visible
and
the
Invisible
139)



Is
not
Berry’s
“invisible
animal”
“Being”
a
poetic
evocation
of
what
Merleau‐Ponty

described
as
the
world’s
“flesh”?:
“an
ultimate
notion
.
.
.
a
relation
of
the
visible

 The Collected Works of David Lavery 7

with
itself
that
traverses
me
and
constitutes
me
as
a
seer,
[a]
circle
which
I
do
not

form,
which
forms
me
.
.
.”(The
Visible
and
the
Invisible
140),
and
thus
is
“something

to
which
we
could
not
be
closer
than
by
palpating
it
with
our
look.”
It
is
the
world
of

“things
we
could
not
dream
of
seeing
‘all
naked’
because
the
gaze
itself
envelops

them,
clothes
them
with
its
flesh”
(The
Visible
and
the
Invisible
131),
and—dare
we

say
it?—creates
as
well
the
very
fabric
of
poetry.
But
such
an
understanding
of
the

wellsprings
of
poetry
must
remain
almost
unspoken
and
returned
to
the
tacit

dimension,
for
as
Berry,
following
the
lead
of
his
daughter’s
genius,
saw,



That
we
do
not
know
you

is
your
perfection

and
our
hope.



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Wendell.
Farming:
A
Handbook.
NY:
Harcourt,
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1970

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Hart.
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Crane.
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Brom
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___.
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 The Collected Works of David Lavery 8

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