An experiential "turn" in poetry
The turn towards the body happens to every human being but in very exceptional circumstances the symbolization of the experienced sensation occurs through speech. Nevertheless, the verbal unification of the outer world with the inner body has always been present, though not frequent. He who has no contact with the body will not attempt to symbolize the subtle and indistinct experienced sensation, but he will symbolize occasions when the body 'cries out'. Usually symbols are chosen which are already common such as 'butterflies in the stomach', 'something heavy in the chest' and 'a knot in the throat'.
The turn towards the body is found in many poems. In contrast to the turn towards the body as mentioned above, poets symbolize more subtle sensations. Possibly it was at some point their own experienced sensation that took on the symbol they offer us through their poems.
The outer world may have been described by the first poets, but the inner body is a field which is quite virgin in terms of the symbolization of the phenomena that govern it. For example, the lyrics of Alexander Pushkin:
'If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.'
They describe well the experiential process of every human being who would like others to be able to perceive what is happening inside them, but at the same time has enlisted logic and tries to suppress this experience.
The Greek poet Dionysius Solomos also in several of his verses turns the attention of either his own or the heroes he describes towards the body. Here, in a verse from Free Besieged he turns our attention to the body of the hero whose courage is symbolized by the image of the angry sea:
My gut and the sea never rest
Charles Bukowski's poem "blue bird" takes us inside the body where he describes his relationship with the experience of the bird that he often feels in the place of his heart. Within the poem there is a conversation with the blue bird, to whom the poet admits that he treats it cruelly and does not allow it to free itself because he is afraid of it, in particular he fears that if he frees the blue bird, it will ruin his success in Europe(!), he plies it with whisky to calm it down and only releases it when everyone is asleep. At the end of the poem and in the piece I quote he admits that this experience sometimes makes him cry. The poem is quite reminiscent of the symbolization of the inner world. It is possible, of course, that the blue bird refers not to a single experienced sensation but to all that is happening inside the poet's body:
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
The experiential "turn" in songs
The turn towards the body, towards inner experience and the symbolism of experience within the body is very common in the lyrics of songs. Often they blend wholes that happen outside by taking them inward, as in the song ‘Prigipessa’ that the lyricist takes us from the outside world to his "inner home":
Outside the wind blows and yet inside me,
Inside this house, my princess,
your light and the light dance around us
unbelievable is our world and our character.
Also noteworthy is the song "Andromeda" where the lyricist chooses to create through the poetic images he gives us a journey that starts from the fiery center of the earth, passes through the constellation of Andromeda and ends up on the surface of the earth but before that he makes a "pause" in his inner body where he describes to us in a poetic way what happens there:
Deep there, deep, deep in my gut
there's something going on, lady
A thousand horses are turning blindly
And they're asking for an exit and they're chasing me.
The list of poems and songs that refer in an experiential way to "something there" happening in the body of the poet or lyricist is inexhaustible. There are folk songs and even pop songs that attempt this inward turn. My own judgment is that the songs and poems that attempt this are quite beloved and leave a lasting mark on the art.
Clearly this proves that the turn inward is something natural, something that is experienced by everyone regardless of educational level, and it is something that touches the sensitive chord found in every human being even in the most popular, the most general audience. I'll close the list with the lyrics of a song that apart from drawing attention inward, to the body, maintains it throughout its lyrics:
I've got a tiger inside me wild and starving
That's always waiting for me and I'm always looking for her
I hate her and she hates me and she wants to kill me
But I hope we will be friends in time
She's (the tiger) got teeth in my heart and claws in my mind
And for my own sake I'm fighting for her
And all the good things in the world make me hate her
To sing to her the heaviest of sorrows
She (the tiger) pushes me over mountains, valleys and cliffs
To embrace her in the craziest dance
And when the nights are cold she remembers her cages
she gives me her coat to wear
Sometimes we get drunk and fall down
Almost loving each one to sleep
And this silence is like the silence just before the storm
like the last hour when she will attack.
Here it should be made clear that what these songs and poems are doing is not necessarily describing the listener's felt sense. It is not even certain that the poet as he wrote them was constantly in touch with his own felt sense. But what they certainly accomplish is the experiential description of an experience. According to Gendlin this process is what can make any approach therapeutic, so why not art?
One could of course ask whether there is poetry and art that is not experiential. In the sense that Gendlin defines the word "experiential", that is, one that turns towards the physically focused experience, the answer is that there is art that keeps the reader in the "head". Without diminishing the value of this art I will give an example from Antonio Porcia's poetry collection "voices". In voices there is no reference to the inner, bodily experience. Yet there is a strong sense of experientiality but not in the way Gendlin defines it: it is a collection of extremely short poems which show that the man who wrote them looked at his experiences with a very deep eye. An example is the following:
When it seems to me that you hear my words, it seems to me that my words are yours, and then I only hear my words.
With these lines the poet shows us in a very person-centered way how two people interact in a relationship through speech. Perhaps the deepest point of understanding of each other is when “what you said" and "what I said" become what "we said". Clearly, there is no attempt to turn to the body through these verses, as there is through all the other poems in the collection.
Lets now return to the F.O.T. approach. Efficient response is one that aims to make contact with "that" from which the client is speaking. We can see that the verses I mentioned above accomplish this to a certain extent. They certainly speak of the poet's experience, but the moment they "touch something" to the reader, if anything, they at least help the reader to turn inward. They also bear a strong resemblance to the experientially focused conversation that can take place in an F.O.T. session. The fire in the chest, the bird that chirps and demands at the same time, the guts that never rest, the blind horses looking for an exit, the dancing light, the tiger that I fear will attack me, all of these expressions are like something out of a Focusing or F.O.T. session. In particular, Purton uses a similar image in a session excerpt he provides: A snail curling up the moment the client tries to get close to it and talk about it.
Gendlin himself uses the example of a poet trying to complete a poem but cannot find the last line. He acknowledges that he has a "feeling" about what the last line should be, but he does not yet have the words to express it. This sense is vague and guides the poet in finding the right words to complete the poem. This process is similar to what happens in psychotherapy, where patients look for words to express their feelings and deal with their problems.
Poetry, this art of creative curiosity, tries to identify pre-conceptual parts of the world and give them a symbol. Since it has now assisted in the symbolization of the whole external world and in the creation of abstract concepts, it enters the body and meets the therapeutic process there to such an extent that their utterances now coincide.
Kostas Mavromatakis
