Arete

A Critique of Arête:

Moral Imagery and the Use of Metaphor:

Metaphor, as Nietzsche put it--is not just a means of explanation; it is a way of differencing one’s self. The use of metaphor in figurative language is one of the main tropes that a writer uses in the great game of angst & anxiety, known as influence. In the case of Arête, the main influence is not a latent echo; it differs from say, the subconscious resonance of Shakespeare’s Iago, and Hamlet within the speeches of Milton’s Satan. In this particular poem, the poet is very open about the influence of Alan Ginsberg.

Theme in this poem is that of excess and decay, a moral landscape that centers on the observation of a non-Whitonian America. The same non-Whitonian modality was paramount in Ginsberg’s work, a type of reactionary lamentation of a long-passed romantic America. Ginsberg’s work was an observational poetry, adorned with a grubby layer of urban sketchiness, and synthetic nuances. Persisting at the core of Ginsberg’s imagery is a modernist type of urbanism, expressed through the poet’s romantic (and sometime metaphysical) perception. No other piece written by Ginsberg expresses this better, than his poem “A Supermarket in California” wherein we are shown:

“…the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?”

Similarly, what makes Arete so eclectic (like Ginsberg) is the how the moral landscape is represented by the poet’s main trope, metaphor. The great phalocratic totems and stereotyping banners puts a certain ethical discourse into the reader’s mind. Just like Ginsberg’s musing on a neon luminous America, it’s flashy and the people come out like utilitarians to the produce isle, but where is their imagination? Walt Whitman’s beard was apparently leading Ginsberg to García Lorca in the watermelons. The landscape varies, and mixes to put into the readers head, “what is the new ontology of America?”

Arete is not so much concerned with an American loneliness, and loss of romantic imagination (like the supermarket poem), it is concerned with the American systemic of excess, and decay. Ubiquitous nail salons, and pragmatic dictators lording over the once free prairies, not to mention the horny ‘teenage’ trees that were once more than rural distractions, adds to an atmosphere that is both eclectic, and waning. Trees adorning the salon like baubles of green, or hungry oranges, makes one think that the person(s) who ‘put them there, is unsure of their present micro (self) and macro (national) ontology. There may be dictators ruling the parries, but it is not so abject that the bison do not wallow atop the cool terrain.

From the setting, one might deduce that this uncertainty (this, never exactly going towards a pure ontology) lets part of the social structure awkwardly drift. There is however, a seemingly marrow deep recognition of urban infrastructure, and how it synthetically consumes things that were once staples of romantic imagery. Trees, livestock, agricultural produce all have an urbanite spin. (Think, Eliot’s “Preludes” and the ‘sparrows swallowed by the gutters’.)

Arete, is an interesting word, it is both the peak of a mountain and an old classical Greek word for chief good. Not only does the imagery of this poem stick out, the main trope also adds to the aforementioned moral discourse, “what is the new ontology? Is this good for the country etc.”

Technically: the poem maintains an overabundance of adjectives, one wonders if this is on purpose to add to this notion of excess, gluttony etc? Is the poem exuding the theme, by employing a bombastic diction.(As was famously done by Milton in "Paradise Lost".)

One way in which this poem is not like Ginsberg, is that it lacks the same kind of prosaicness, moreover it does not include the poets own emotional juxtaposition towards the moral landscape. The poet does not add himself into the eclectic mix, and the poem feels somewhat lacking because of it. These kinds of observational pieces perhaps need a type of personal human interaction, to break up the swaft of bureaucracy and decay being explored. Ginsberg himself never reached the same connection of self, poetry land and song that Whitman did in his magnificent pieces “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” and, “As I ebbed with the ocean of life.”

In conclusion, this poem is reminiscent of the Beat generation, especial Ginsberg and the recrudescence of the Whitonian romantic America. Personally, the poem is enjoyable. Though the diction may be considered verbose for some, the poet includes an interesting mix of words, images and musings that are worth a read.