Thanks for letting us know, Ed. This is very important information so that the ensemble can figure out how to find the right pace for optimizing our mutual flow states. When our attention is distracted or we are getting too much information, this can disrupt our capacities, as you have indicated, to catch the rhythms of the other(s). This is not something that is easy to do, as I find myself having to limit my participation, in order to make sense of what is going on. Too many hyper links without a grounded sense of what is happening can create exhaustion. So, let us all take a breath, and perhaps, take a break and come back when we are refreshed. We enjoy your insights, Ed, so don’t stay away for too long!
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Hi @AndrewField81, in response to your super-long post, I do follow what you are saying re: the difference in complexity, craft, and aesthetic value in the poems, “American Hero” and “The Friend,” by Essex Hemphill and Reginald Shepherd respectively.
As sensitive readers, experiencing the poems themselves, we can judge one to superior to the other along any number of axes of evaluation. By “superior” is meant more worthy of being remembered, taught, published, anthologized, etc. These are canonical concerns. However, you would also grant, I believe, that context determines rightness—in other words, that depending on the occasion, mood, audience, or the like (even politics), one might choose to read or teach or publish, etc., the aesthetically “inferior” poem, because it is more appropriate?
In your original post, you wonder:
And so I wonder back, at this stage in the conversation, have you learned anything about integral literary theory? Have we iterated anything new? I feel resoundingly that I have in that I am learning to disambiguate the different ‘zones’ belonging to different kinds of evaluations and perceptions relating to aesthetics, ethics, and considerations of depth and span in practice. I realize: I must keep them separate, at the same time that I recognize their interconnectedness and the quantum fuzziness of it all.
I can therefore read someone like John Ashbery and appreciate the consciousness transmitted in his strange, sometimes simple, yet beguiling word-configurations—at the same that time I notice a certain always-there ironic distance (and distance on that distance, and thus a kind of intimacy, and so it goes—) and wonder how that influences the quality of my being in the world, what I consider to be important and put attention on, in other words the context of my life.
I feel that Harold Bloom and perhaps you, sir, are part of the kinds of heroes we need in this, our singular age. For who can we possibly be, as people, if our cultural memory (which could be deep and vast as aeons) as encoded in our literary traditions doesn’t span beyond our Facebook newsfeeds, Google search results, and ethno-tribal (identitarian) politics, which fail to embrace worldcentric let alone cosmocentric vibrations?
At the same time, at this stage in human history, when there is growing awareness of extinction-level ‘meta-crisis’ possibilities and no real time, allowance, or margin of error for culture-as-usual, maybe it’s time to dig deeper than the Western Canon—however vaunted, and venerable as it is—but deeper and wider, extending to the planetary scale (so as to transcend and include multiple Canons, along with multiculturalism and all that is Zones 2, 3, and 4), even saving the babies of rationalism (aka science and systems thinking via Zones 5-8) and postmodernism generally (while septically treating their stinky bathwaters)—such that we might regenerate and sustain an authentic humane tradition suitable to an emergent/futuristic always/already 2nd or 3rd tier or order (4th or 5th-dimensional) integral-aperspectival whatever terms you want to throw at it—but some kind of ecologically-attuned cultural and spiritual renewal of the best of what’s left after the deluge of technological civilization?
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Thanks for writing, @madrush. Yes, I do agree about what you said about context - depending on the situation, a certain poem might be more appropriate. That is true.
Your question about what might have been learned about integral literary theory so far has really stayed with me since you asked it two days ago, and I’ve been wondering about it. I guess I don’t really know - what exactly is integral literary theory, anyways? I guess we could define it as somehow touching upon, or informed by, Wilber’s AQAL framework - and I think that has at least some relevance for literary theory, since I personally find some value using Wilber’s model to think about, or use as a map for, other theories that are literary and aesthetic. For example, I have found it helpful for thinking about Senior Bloom, and his relationship to structuralism and ethics, if I am at all right about any of that. I have also found Wilber helpful for thinking about and critiquing a thinker like Richard Rorty, who is more of a philosopher than a literary critic, but who does practice some criticism in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, a book I used to love and now am very puzzled by. Lastly, I do think Wilber is helpful for helping a reader assess other literary theories in the context of the quadrants and levels, i.e. are they practicing “quadrant absolutism”? Do they have any awareness whatsoever of structures of consciousness?
So maybe what I’m saying is that I’m finding AQAL helpful as a meta-lens through which to think more clearly about literary theory (I think you pointed out something along these lines in an early post, i.e. AQAL as a metadiscourse). But what exactly is “integral literary theory”? I confess that at this point I’m not really sure. Also, if we are defining integral literary theory through the context of AQAL, can integral literary theory actually help us read and evaluate poems (and not just literary theories)?
I think the jury is still out with that last question, though I’m leaning towards a “I don’t really think so.” When I think about appreciating and evaluating a poem through something rather clunky-sounding in the context of poetry, like “structures of consciousness,” I become aware that Wilber, like Jennifer Gidley argues, is really more interested in cognition than aesthetics, and that many of his terms, while absolutely relevant for developmental psychology, might not be totally relevant for the practice of reading and studying and thinking about and falling in love with poetry. (For an example of the difference between cognition and aesthetics, many have claimed that Whitman was not really a thinker per se, though of course he was one of the world’s, and not just America’s, greatest poets. Shakespeare, many would say, represents the absolute height of cognition and aesthetics.)
Having said all that, I do think there is another way to think about integral literary theory, although I don’t know if I would even call it that. And this is what I’ve really been thinking about lately. For example, I would love one day to write a monograph about American poetry through the lens of spirituality - looking at Whitman, Stevens and Ashbery in the context of what Bloom calls “religious criticism,” and using as my forebears Emerson and William James. James has been a hero of mine for a long time, and I’ve read a bunch by and about Emerson over the years; the three poets are my favorites, and I’ve also read quite a bit from and about them over the years. I feel like there is a reason why I’ve spent so much time with these poets and sages, so maybe if I continue to study them something beyond just thought and talk (well, thought and talk on a page) would come out of it, though if it doesn’t that’s totally fine, too. Why am I saying all this? I think James and Emerson teach us very many things about aesthetics and spirituality. I think they are pretty much geniuses - cognitively, aesthetically, spiritually, maybe other ways, too - and so they write from very “high and deep levels of consciousness.” Wilber is, in his own way, a genius, too, but he is not the first religious/spiritual genius to write about spirituality, as evidenced by Emerson and James and [insert your favorite 19th century or earlier sage here]. And, for me, right now, for my money, I think for the interpretation of poems, that I prefer Emerson and James. They seem closer to the spirit of poetry than Wilber. And, maybe this is what I’m trying to say, Emerson and James seem to me to be integral. They might not use that term, and they might not be like nondual Ramana Maharshis, but my gut/instinct/intuition tells me that whatever integral means, Emerson and James are at least that (and the same can be said for Ashbery and Stevens and Whitman, and many other poets, straight, gay, female, male, African-American, White, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and so on). I suppose that the AQAL framework is something new, in that it weds, in a really elegant way, holarchies of being with the four quadrants, and then onto the zones and so on, which are fascinating. But the actual state of consciousness of integral was not invented by Wilber, of course, and we have many thinkers throughout the ages that were decidedly integral before we started using the term recently.
Is the term “integral” helpful? Yes, I really do think so (and apologies if I’m not citing Gebser here more; I’m just not as familiar with his work), but with some serious caveats. I mean, if we think about it, was Jesus integral? There is something absurd about the question, to me at least, because we are yoking an ancient something with a very recent something, like arguing that the Lascaux cave paintings should be interpreted through the lens of some contemporary art theory. (Gadamer and his “horizons” are probably relevant here.) The truth is, I think, that yes, of course Jesus was integral, and much more, I’d say, but that the actual language of integral seems ill-suited here, like an odd fit. Maybe I’m wrong - there is a book out from a few years ago about integral Christianity that looks fascinating, and for all I know that author finds a robust and authentic way of situating Jesus within the context of integral theory. (A few years ago, when I was a graduate student at the University of Toledo, I had a really great teacher, who was also a scholar of the New York School. Around the time when I was going to graduate, I was not sure what I was going to do next, and I was thinking about social work. So I went to talk to said teacher about that, and told her I was considering that field. And the teacher turned to me and said, “But Andrew, the paucity of their vocabulary!” 
I’ve always loved thinking about this moment (and no offense to the social workers out there, who do incredibly important work). In other words, there is a kind of paucity of vocabulary when it comes to applying integral theory to a figure like Jesus, or for that matter to poetry. I’d love to hear what other people think about this, but again, maybe it’s not surprising - Wilber is not a poet or literary critic, except in a very flimsy way. He is first and foremost a philosopher and transpersonal psychologist.)
Okay, I am talking about Jesus and probably insulting social workers when I really wanted to talk about poetry. But maybe that’s my point - what exactly is the difference between the aesthetic and the spiritual? There is a difference - Jesus is not exactly a poet; Elizabeth Bishop is not exactly a saint (maybe she is?). Or, to put it another way, Bloom, in The American Religion, makes the great point that Joseph Smith was a spiritual/religious genius, but often a poor writer. That leads me to think that aesthetics in the verbal arts has to do with strong writing, let’s say, and spirituality has to do with strong spiritual experience, (visions, revelations, etc.) and/but the two can (and often do?) overlap in the arts, or at least the arts that last, but that they involve different things. But this also suggests that the relationship between aesthetics and spirituality is not really like a spectrum - with aesthetics sort of bleeding over time into the high levels of spirituality. They seem to be more, and here is Wilber and Howard Gardner, like different intelligences. Literature really can and does augment the self, and self-augmentation is both an aesthetic and a spiritual thing - it involves both intelligences. So, in that sense, literature can improve (I think…?) our spiritual and aesthetic intelligences. Put a better way, as Bloomasauras has been arguing since forever, literature blesses us with more life. I am reading a book right now about Harold that argues that he is, philosophically, an “antithetical vitalist,” and should be viewed within the context of audacious, heterodox Jewish speculation and speculators, like Freud (one of his many heroes), Kafka, Derrida, and Gershom Scholem. This is probably a different conversation for another day, but it’s nice to see new and valid contexts to think about Bloom’s career so far, especially thinking about vitalism, which I know nothing about, but which seems sort of right, at least currently.
I just took out a book about James called William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, and this seems relevant in terms of your invocation of quantum fuzziness. I totally agree that that we should honor differentiation and fuzziness. And maybe that’s where I’ll end this post. If there was ever to be something called “integral literary theory,” its beginnings would have to be vague and fuzzy, but in a rich, ample, abundant, promising, pregnant way. Rather than “reaching after fact and reason” (people have mentioned Keats and negative capability in earlier posts), we should live with and “love the questions themselves,” as Rilke counseled. It’s probably a cliche to quote Rilke’s quote here (or anywhere?), but I love this quote and think about it a lot, so here it is (from Letters to a Young Poet):
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
p.s. Wait - also, Marco, I found your comments specifically about Ashbery fascinating, and would love to hear more - I didn’t understand what you meant by your conflation of irony and distance with intimacy, and I would love to also hear more about how you think about and experience poetry’s influence on “the quality of [your] being in the world,” or, as you also put it interestingly and intriguingly, “the context of my life.” And, @Geoffreyjen_Edwards, thanks for asking about what I meant by the “transverbal heart.” I’m still cogitating on this, and hopefully sometime in the future, or near future, I might have a better explanation for said term/idea/concept, though I think it has to do with real feeling (though not really emotion), as well as the conscience.
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I probably sound like a one track horse (although that may be a mixed metaphor!), but part of the reason we got into quantum poetics was in an attempt to find a richer vocabulary to talk about poetry in the context of integral thought - at least, that figured into my motivation. And reading Wendt this past month, it appears the quantum connection to language and literature may not be as “merely fortuitous” as even I realised. Wendt cites several studies of language and text analysis that show “interference effects” in a way that parallels quantum experiments such as the two-slit experiment suggesting wave effects (this work assumes a Heisenberg-style coupling between word and meaning, which is the same assumption we made!). This goes to your criticism that quantum poetics may be just another arbitrary frame applied to litterature and hence ultimately inadequate. Of course, the evidence is still very tentative, and the approach may be inadequate, but in our experience it gave us some common elements to talk about elements of poetry that resonate with, say, Gebser’s approach (we presented three related talks on the subject to last year’s Gebser conference, and others seemed to find the approach of interest…).
Interestingly, Wendt also resituates James’ radical empiricism within the quantum argument as well. In essence, he provides a stronger argument in favor of what James called “direct perception”, the idea that we do not perceive the world via sets of representations we maintain “in the head” but directly, via a form of quantum entanglement.
I find this idea very interesting, and you are almost certainly right, that folk who are good at one are not necessarily good at the other, but I don’t think that means there isn’t a region of overlap between the two. I suspect we are fortunate that a number of key spiritual figures can be good writers, although, of course, many others were historically orators rather than writers. I am going to think more about this, and I think it is an interesting topic for discussion.
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While sorting through some papers looking for something else, I stumbled cross this blog post by Matt Segall about Integral Poetry that might be of interest.
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Ed, thanks for the article. I just looked at it, and confess that I am puzzled by an article called “Integral Poetry” that does not actually really look at one single poem. There is a poem at the end of the essay, but no gloss on the poem is really offered - it’s just sort of dumped there. There are a lot of philosophers mentioned, but no actual literary critics. Last but not least - and this struck me as somewhat glaring and strange, and perhaps the biggest and most revealing problem in the article - the only poem the author cites, at the end, without gloss, is not even preserved with its stanza and line breaks. The author seems himself to just add ellipses into the poem. The technical response to this is probably, WTF? All of this is, to my mind, rather absurd and ridiculous, and suggests that whatever argument this person is making - however grand, or inspiring, or whatever - it is not really close to helpful for thinking about actual poems and actual poetry. This to me is a good example of what integral literary theory should not be.
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Michael Clune on the need for aesthetic evaluation, and/but also the dangers of expertise. A lot of this stuff we have covered in this thread.
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Can’t access the article without a subscription, Andrew…
Sorry about that @Geoffreyjen_Edwards - I don’t know how I was able to access it, as I do not subscribe to the Chronicle. Maybe it was not behind a paywall for a bit after it was published?
It was pretty interesting, though we’ve also covered a lot of the stuff he talks about.
Very moving video of Ashbery from 1966.
Haven’t finished reading this, but thought this was an interesting so-far essay by Thylias Moss.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0014.215?view=text;rgn=main
Poetry Foundation bio on Moss:
Her emphasis on poetry’s oral qualities led her to establish Limited Fork Poetics, an interdisciplinary field of film, sound, poetry, and computer science that produces what she terms “poams,” an acronym for products of acts of making .
I love this sentence from the link above, about the difference between analog and digital environments, and how these media affect thinking:
The external virtual unlocking of dynamic qualities of thinking already embedded in text gives rise to forms conventional books do not reveal physically without more complex material architecture such as folds, pockets, extensions, tears, variations in texture and transparency—creation of additional areas in which to place information and explore relationships between those placements (such as pop-up books). Both spatial and virtual folding offer opportunities for expansion of thinking and development of many forms of outcome from interactions with folding.
(“folds, pockets, extensions, tears, variations in texture and transparenct”) 
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