Fall 2019 Writing-Intensive English Capstone
Winner: Best Undergraduate Writing in Non-Fiction (up to 15 pages) at the Marquette University Department of English Undergraduate Writing Awards
For as long as I can remember, I have reveled in the beauty of the senses. I find nearly everything to be overwhelmingly beautiful, and feel the need to say it. My mom used to yell at me for constantly exclaiming my love for all. I never really apologized, and don’t wish to. Why shouldn’t I relish the beauty of life? I also never really stopped to wonder why I so deeply relish this sensation of wonder. I’m generally quite happy to just be, here in this awe.
It has been a profound joy to discover communities of wonderers across a variety of disciplines in this Capstone. English Romantic poets convey an imagination of beauty that moves me, and in some ways, even heals me. Poetry offers aesthetic truth, and I find this utterly beautiful.
This project began with awe for the transcending, lifting experience of singing. For me, singing is a full-body type of beautiful, an all-encompassing experience of creation. I feel like the truest, most authentic version of myself when I am singing. Also, this project was always about my grandmother. My Grandma Anita is in her mid-eighties, and for the past decade, I’ve had the unsettling suspicion that I have never really met her. She had a major brain tumor before I was born, and has been living with dementia since. My grandpa, her husband, sometimes comes off hostile after living with depression for decades, but I know what he loves the most: my grandma, and music. He sang in barbershop quartets for years, and often communicates in riddle, limerick, and song. He has been singing for my entire life.
In college, I have learned that when my grandma wakes up every morning, my grandparents sing together. Sometimes she knows the words and tunes, and sometimes she doesn’t. I guess after her body wakes up, this is how Bob greets Anita good morning and tries to rouse some familiarity in her mind. She frequently gets lost, but it seems there is always hope for the embodiment of song to help her find herself.
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Art makes us, so it seems. I spent a lot of time studying this process of formation. Throughout studies of Robert Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”, the construction of cognitive scaffolding through embodied receptiveness, and intercorporeality; I have come to understand that personhood is developed through interaction. Communicative art — like music, painting, or language — provides a necessary outlet in the process of learning to, finding out, and rediscovering that one exists. In examination of varying levels of bodily existence, Kristin Zeiler presents phenomenological analysis of “intercorporeal capabilities” which spring forth through and in interaction. Much like Naomi Rokotnitz’ argument for unconscious cognitive scaffolding, Zeiler’s intercorporeality links the relationship between personal and co-existence. Where Zeiler and Rokotnitz offer psychological evidence in mirror-neurons, successful simulation, and joint-motor activities, as well as philosophic theory; Browning uses language to convey Lippi’s unconscious making of his own self.
Joint musical activity in dementia care was what initially drew me to Zeiler’s work. She explains this “intercorporeal memory” in an elderly woman with dementia “materializing rhythm of music into bodily movement” while singing with her nurse aid and feeling a surprising sense of lost personhood rediscovered. In this communal music-making, there was the miraculous capacity for song to gain a life of its own, for this woman, Gladys, to find a version of herself previously thought lost.
The concept of soul and sense growing through learning was consistent throughout this research, and the creative outlet for such learned personhood manifested in different forms of art. Zeiler highlights the therapeutic qualities of joint-musical activity in dementia patients; Browning’s poem depicts what made the person of the painter. Rokotnitz emphasizes not only childhood nurture through song, but the healing power of linguistic expression through writing as the ultimate outlet
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for Claudia’s wellbeing as an adult. Embodied receptiveness leads to artistic expression as the narrative. We learn to, find out that, and rediscover that we exist, through and in our interactions with others.
My adolescent milestones are marked by emergencies; in stressed phone calls and hushed announcements from my mother that Grandma Anita had another fall, or a stroke. I witnessed the infantilization of my grandmother from across the country. The potential for proximity to my living elderly relatives was a major factor in my decision to move to the Midwest for college. My grandparents have been like this, or similar, for most of my conscious life. The normality of the situation kind of automatically makes me assume emotional detachment. I can’t really miss a grandmother I never genuinely met, and depression doesn’t excuse my grandpa’s frequently churlish behavior. But I guess where conscious emotion lacks, I am connected to my grandparents through singing. I’m pretty sure I feel what my grandpa feels when he sings. Likewise, I have witnessed flashes of reanimation, of a woman I’ve heard so much about, in the body of my grandmother, if only for a few minutes, through the mystical power of song.
Anita and Bob met at Marquette, by the way. Their memories of their alma mater offers a bridge between us. When I go visit my grandparents, a few times a semester, we talk about the humanities, our travels, and Marquette. We have something to talk about, at least Grandpa and me. Grandma Anita sits in her chair, in a seemingly perpetual state of mild confusion, occasionally chiming in. And it is wild, that even in the most senile moments, she can still recite The Canterbury Tales. Literature lives within us, beyond us. It helps us find our ourselves again.
You cannot help but feel touched, when you watch Grandpa’s eyes as he sings. From barbershop quartets to Turandot, from show tunes to Motown, he is so clearly lifted in song. His eyes
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twinkle, his voice sometimes crackles, and a toothy smile appears on that old man’s face. It is a marvelous thing to witness, the affirmation of self through song.
My first hypothesis studied how communicative art provides an all-too-necessary outlet in the process of becoming. My second aimed to bridge this theme of soul and sense through an analysis of art “resurrecting” the art itself, and grounding the identity of the beholder. I was rather frustrated to attempt to articulate some objective truth about the paradox of incarnation, and failed to make tangible sense of incarnational embodiment… for a while. Theological exploration provided some clarity. Reverend Alicia Walker writes of creating, calling, sustaining, and imagining holiness in the context of choral experience. Her interpretation of what singing does, in the way it makes us feel, and simultaneously empowers the individual and community experiences of song-making, makes me smile. This is what art does, and this is what writing about art does: it recognizes the great promise of “hope beyond our present life, comfort in the idea that loss is not eternal, that the struggle, pain, or evil of this life is temporary, that there is indeed a significant purpose to the living of these days.”
Poetry, itself a form of communicative art, is — simultaneously and inseparably — truth and beauty. With reference to the final couplet of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Michael Austin references human beliefs that our judgements about “truth” (an entirely objective judgement) and beauty (a wholly subjective judgement) directly influence one other. His article is a thoughtful reflection on the his relationships with “Ode,” and the “Book of Job,” through decades of English academia and Mormon faith formation. Austin examines the problem of trying to find truth in, rather than of, art. Ultimately, he asserts the truthful beauty of poetry, not in final answers, but in articulating a humanity made infinite. Poetry has always been true, and its immortally embodied revelation is what Austin argues is the primary function of Wisdom Literature: the poet can lead
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readers to understand what they already know. The glimmer of the divine in poetry is not externally imposed. It is inner wisdom simply made accessible, unhidden, and revealed to the mind that has always contained it. This is what Austin says poems are good for.
Comfort in art, affirmation and poetry, language and healing. Oh, what gorgeous therapeutic truths we find in the arts. Poetic truth is beautiful and revelatory, and different from, although not mutually exclusive to, scientific fact. The way poetry gives voice to thoughts many people have had, but nobody has ever expressed, “constitutes a type of truth all its own” (Austin, 126). Poetry can lead readers to understand what they already know, and to unlock, unhide, reveal, and make accessible the divine inspiration already within them. Michael Clune’s “Writing Against Time” considers Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement with “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and the race against time; aesthetic pleasure extends into the future, beyond present capacities to feel (such as happiness or sadness), and rescues one’s life from time. Clune uses the text’s representation of “unheard” music to compare with another Keats poem, “Hyperion.” Here, Clune suggests “Ode” stops time by spacializing music, and embodying stillness. The truth of poetry is paramount here, for giving voice to truth is not only what poetry can do, it is the most valuable thing poetry should do. Raymond Gawronski explores theological aestheticism of Hans Urs von Balthasar in imagined form. Clune’s discussion of Kantian aesthetic pleasure translates to this Catholic imagination of divine revelation. Gawronski examines von Balthasar’s beauty in “uncontained splendor” within his famous “theological aesthetics” (and not aesthetic theology), and its correspondence to the three transcendentals: the beautiful, the good, and the true. Here, Gawrownski calls for analogy in fathoming the revealed form of divine revelation; for true beauty, itself, summons to holiness.
Through and in poetry, beauty and truth transcend our mortal worries of time, existence, memory, and knowledge. Joel Kroeker uses Carl Jung’s famous description of an original psychodynamic method, archetypal music psychotherapy (AMP), and a brief survey of literature, to
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investigate how music-based symbolic processes can assist in constellating conflicting polarities towards a reconciling third way (also known as terium non datur). This leads to the integration, and possibly the resolution, of oppositional tensions. While Kroeker’s study is thoroughly psychoanalytical, I found his reflection to be extremely helpful. Restorative AMP work helps to bring unconscious elements to consciousness through amplifying inner symbols, and helps link the inner and outer aspects of the human experience. As I have pondered for months now, it seems that poetry (I will extend Kroeker’s larger range of creative material — music, dreams, insight and images — into the realm of “poetry”) can help bridge our internal and external experiences, sometimes serving as guide from the unconscious to conscious. Kroeker gives me hope for my grandmother’s wellbeing: “The process of creating and experiencing this AMP process, and analyzing its results, has shown me that creatively reconnecting with these inner characters who are often disowned thorough trauma or neglect can significantly contribute to re-establishing a greater sense of well-being” (200). Even when our memories feel lost, this beauty and truth we write can still lead us to unlock previously inaccessible inspiration within us, and so move us. There’s comfort in this concept of truth.
Upon deep self-reflection, it seems only fitting that I wound up reading Keats, a rather sensually explicit Romantic poet, in studies of cognition and identity. For how can a poem like “Ode on a Grecian Urn” so artfully illustrate the devastating enormity of everything, and yet nothing at all? The “Thou” is no one, and yet everyone, and only the first word. This is an elegic poem of paradox, both pining for immortal lifelessness and mourning his life bound to be lost. It’s a tantalizing and terrific telling of unanswerable questions. The only response is perplexingly “yes.”
I received a letter from my mom a few weeks ago, where she mentioned that I’ve always — since infancy — been a highly sensual person. I’m sure it’s a coping mechanism for my disordered
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attention, but I’ve never wanted to merely read or see the world around me. I have to feel it, in all of my senses. So to spend a full semester encountering literature, the senses, and the formation of self is extremely true to my character. It’s interesting that despite just about all of my research carrying a heavy focus on the development of identity and personhood, I have held tightly to prioritizing holistic, humanistic, and creativity-based care for memory patients. I was just remarking to a friend about this project, and how it would have been much easier to research with a focus on trauma, but I never really strayed from the original theme of dementia care. Maybe I should be more focused on prevention, but I have this seemingly compulsive need to fathom what we do after diagnosis. The trauma of memory loss feels inevitable; I’ve seen it in my grandmother. My sisters and I make mental notes of any worrisome early behavior from our mother, and I just have this intuitive sense that it’s bound to happen to me, someday. It’s not a question of if or even when we lose our minds, but if and how we can find them again. I’m a forgetful person. I lose stuff all the time, but I almost always find it again. Will that happen to my mind?
The deterioration of memory, of the senses, and by extension, of the self, seem to have rooted themselves in me as my deepest fears. I’m certainly curious about how we as humans initially manifest our identities, but I already feel like I’m racing a ticking clock to prevent the deterioration of personhood in life. When the people and places that made us are gone, and all we have left is ourselves in our dissonantly-deteriorating bodies, will the songs our mothers sang to us as small children still make us feel like us? Will our embodied receptiveness in sensory perception save us when our memories fail?
There is plenty of neuroscientific research on memory loss and recovery, which I can hardly read now, so I’m not sure how I will grasp it when I lose my mind. I care about science and history, of course, but I am much more preoccupied with the poetic truth of the matter. The truth and beauty of poetry and literature made me who I love to be, and guided me to catch whiffs of the
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inaccessible divine from deep within. I don’t want to age in a world where history and science are the only truths; I want poetry to summon me with its beautiful truth.
Play me Pavarotti when I lose my mind — “Nessun Dorma,” please. Read Keats and Browning poems aloud and wait for my return. Make me do Hamilton karaoke and remember that I will never be satisfied. Sing Bill Withers songs to find me. Ask me to recite Robert Frost. I’ve had the
memorization of “Nothing Gold Can Stay” tattooed on my soul since the fourth grade. Check the lost-and-found for my favorite things. Remind me who I am with what I love. I don’t want to live forever; I just don’t want to live without poetry.
Works Cited
Austin, Michael. “What Kind of Truth is Beauty?: A Meditation on Keats, Job, and Scriptural Poetry.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 46, no. 4, Winter 2013, pp. 122–142 Browning, Robert. “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” Poetry Foundation. Web.
Browning, Robert. “Fra Lippo Lippi.” Poetry Foundation. 1855. Web.
Cervone, Cristina Maria. Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love. University of Pennsylvania: 2012.
Clune, Michael W. “Imaginary Music.” Writing Against Time. Stanford University Press, 2013. Garvey, John. “An Unimaginable Intimacy: The Mystery of What God Has Done for Us.” Commonweal, vol. 138, no. 14, Aug. 2011, p. 6.
Gawronski, Raymond. “The Beauty of the Cross: The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar.” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3., Summer 2002, pp. 185–206.
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Poetry Foundation. 1820. Web.
Kroeker, Joel. “Jungian Music Therapy: a Method for Exploring the Psyche through Musical Symbols.” Canadian Journal of Music Therapy, vol. 20, no. 2, June 2014, pp. 180–204. Nerstad, Erin. “Decomposing but to Recompose: Browning, Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Dramatic Monologue.” Victorian Poetry. Morgantown, vol. 50, iss. 4, Winter 2012, pp. 543- 561, 626.
Rokotnitz Naomi. “Constructing Cognitive Scaffolding Through Embodied Receptiveness: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Style, vol. 41, no. 4, 2007, p. 385.
Walker, Alicia W. “Hallelujah! Credo: The Incarnation of Giver and Gift.” The Choral Journal, vol. 50, no. 8, 2010, p. 53.
Zeiler, Kristin. “A Philosophical Defense of the Idea That We Can Hold Each Other In Personhood: Intercorporeal Personhood in Dementia Care.” Medicine, Health Care & Philosophy, vol. 14, no. 1, Feb. 2014, p. 131.
