Saint John and the Back-Ache

Reading through the Auroras of Autumn, the mode and mentality I tried to capture was one of reflection. As Stevens goes through the seasons, different mentalities or moods are acquired and we are along for the ride, subject to Stevens's imagery and color. Yet, it seems to be a somewhat depressing reflection. Or at least one more somber and morbid. In the title poem Stevens writes, "Is there an imagination that sits enthroned/As grim as it is benevolent, the just/And the unjust, which in the midst of summer stops/To imagine winter? For me, this captured one of the many essences of fall. While we are in the midst of summer, cheer, and sunshine, we realize that it is going to end. This realization brings us to fall, and the coming of a new, darker season. One defined by cloudy skies, fateful winds, and dead leaves smattered on the ground.

While skimming through this section, looking for a poem that would capture my interest and speak to me, I came across Saint John and the Back-Ache. Honestly, for the simple reason of amusement, this title grabbed me. I thought it was a little silly and sounded like a kid's poem.

Of course when it starts out, my assumption was quickly shattered with the opening line, "The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father/Because, in chief, it, only, can defend/Against itself. At its mercy, we depend/ Upon it."

After this opening stanza, my mind whirled to recategorize the poem, defining it in a neat box that I could understand and conceptualize. There is a debate going on. This is now about philospohy. Okay.

Saint John then says back to the back-ache, "The world is presence and not force. Presence is not mind."

I reread these two stanzas a few times to catch a sense of what they meant. The back-ache represents suffering and physicality. It is saying that the mind is the most powerful force because we can't escape it. To define it, we have to use it. We are at its mercy for everything we do in life. The back-ache is here talking to Saint John as father, which I took to mean that the back-ache is Saint Johns back-ache. Saint John replies with something that I first saw as irrelevant, "The world is presence and not force."

What does the world have to do with the mind? Or better yet, what does force have to do with the mind? Yet the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. The mind tries to force it's impressions and memory on to every landscape that we come across. It makes everything familiar and we as humans are agents of destruction.

Then comes the question of what is presence and how is this separate from the mind? The next stanza addresses this and the one after and here is where I initially got lost, or rather my mind did. To define presence with words is a most difficult task and one in which Stevens does with remarkable aplomb. Reading the stanza of presence, our mind grasps for meaning at the words flying by, discombobulated, bouncing around, and popping on our reaching fingers. Stevens shows by the first line, "It fills the line before the mind can think." It can't  be described, yet he tries describing it. And to do this, we have to step out of our mind. Going back to the primitive, the basic, where vagueness is the option and the world is still unknown. A chasm of thought. This is what happened when I read this stanza the first time haha. My mind blanked out for twenty lines and came back when the back-ache was talking. After re-reading and re-reading this stanza I think I have some sense of what he is saying.

He keeps saying it is not this and not that, and when he brings these things to mind images flash before our eyes and are instantly dismissed. By using the tool of saying that presence is not these things he is denying the images from staying. It is not the thing itself that matters but rather the feeling that accompanies it. These feelings and brief glimpses at no preconceived reality are what keep us sane and human.

The most important lines for me were, "The little ignorance that is everything/ The possible nest in the invisible tree." The way I interpreted this