“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us … There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Charles Darwin, concluding paragraph from the first edition of On The Origin of Species.

Charles Darwin by John Maller Collier. The image is from the WikiMedia Commons.

Robert Pinsky spoke in the Hunter Lecture Series in Chattanooga a couple of nights ago. I knew I was in for a good evening when I swung into Moccasin Bend on I-24 and the biggest moon I’ve ever seen appeared, a massive golden orb in the blue dusk over the city lights. I was moved to invoke aloud the name of a Hebrew man-god. I had no camera, so was free from the temptation to risk my life by pulling over for a shot, and I was forced to just enjoy Lady Moon’s full spectacle. On top of that miracle, I found an unoccupied free parking spot near UTC.

Pinsky did not read his poems (bummer), but instead gave a great talk (bummer erased) about art, education, the evolution of grunting, the physicality of poetry, and the Favorite Poems project. In other words, here was another Rambler (albeit a three-time poet laureate, so an über-rambler). I had a great time.

I will not attempt to give an abstract of his talk, but instead I’ll share a few interesting ideas and links to his great online poetry videos.

One of the questions he asked was, “why has an unpromising little ape [Homo sapiens] done so well when so many other species have more impressive physical attributes?” His answer: we cooperate, not just with those alive now, but with past and future generations. That sharing of knowledge is extraordinarily powerful. How do we accomplish this? Well, these days via the web. Before that, with the printed or scribbled word. But for most of our life as a species, by “moving and grunting in certain ways.” In other words, by dance, music and poetry (he left out story-telling, aka sitting around the fire BSing…). Art, he claimed, is the key feature of our species that has allowed us to thrive.

(Side thought: some skill with thrown rocks and spears probably helped. Give me poetry, but give me meat also. Poems about spears, maybe – Homer?)

After some discussion of taxi drivers in Russia, W. E. B. Du Bois, the Boston Arts Academy public high school, Robert Frost’s assessment of the poetry-college athletics nexus, the desirability of extending the educational philosophy of the ruling classes to all people (i.e., everyone gets to take art seriously, not just the aristocrats), and his experience of Aristotle as a college freshman, Pinsky made a convincing case that, for art, physical experience is central, not peripheral or ornamental. So, art is central to our existence as a species and the physicality of art is the ground on which all this is built. He illustrated this with some examples from the Favorite Poems project – “normal” people reading and talking about their favorite poems. These are not profs, critics, or specialists. Pinsky claimed that their giving voice to the poems allows us to “see the work of art happening in the reader,” a “deep connection” back over tens of thousands of years to the core of our nature as humans.

At a time when our lives often revolve around uploads and downloads to “the cloud,” with physicality reduced so often in our culture to tasteless gluttony and tawdry lust, his emphasis on artful embodiment was refreshing. Occupy: your body. I wonder how much of this embodiment can be captured in online videos? So asks the blogger through his Ethernet cable, coming to your Android (aye, language is telling).

Homo sapiens, let’s be the lightning that connects cloud to ground. We’re the one species that can do it. Yes, we can have both; sparks fly when they connect.

Thousands of Jesuses have colonized the front lawns of America, surrounded by clusters of people and animals. What substance Jesus is made from varies by social stratum: carved wood is very upper crust (but is usually not displayed outside for the general public to see), plastic is a solid middle class option, and painted plywood indicates a rugged back-to-the-workshop blue collar household.

Regardless of the medium, Jesus lies in his manger alone. Other species cluster around as supporting characters, but they are not the ones that are going to get saved. There is a discontinuity here, a break that runs through our idea of the world: us (Homo sapiens, but probably not other Homo species, were any to show up at the communion rail) and them (a few million other species).

The Catholic Church is quite clear about this (my italics): “The magisterium of the Church takes a direct interest in the question of evolution, because it touches on the conception of man, whom Revelation tells us is created in the image and likeness of God … man is the only creature on earth that God wanted for its own sake … In other words, the human has a value of his own. He is a person … It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity … the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God. With man, we find ourselves facing a different ontological order” Pope John Paul II, Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Oct 1996.

So, although there may be physical continuity between us and other species, we’re the only lucky winners of the soul, of dignity, and, they say, of consciousness. Other denominations follow suit, although usually without a well articulated public statement of epistemology (gotta hand it to JPII: his comments are meaty and well-reasoned). And, the vast majority of society buys in also, including modern science (experiments on chimps, anyone?).

So, fellow Humanoid Earthlings: a lonely Christmas? Or might we truly be kin with our fellow creatures?

“Tree” of life, showing relationships among species for which we have complete genome data. Center of circle is the common ancestor. Kinship is shown by branching order as you move out from the center. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

From the Keystone Tar Sands protest this weekend, borrowed from Occupy.

To up-twinkle:

…the crowd expresses its approval with a silent roar of waving fingers. Another victory for the soundscape.