Workplace Poetry: an essay
The power of poetry is in its ability to use a few words and a limited space and/or structure to convey vast ideas through the keys of shared human experience. The experience of reading or listening to poetry should bring emotional and even physical reactions, as the pin-pointed words find their way to exact psychological buttons in the audience. I am a poet and have worked with the power of carefully chosen words since I was first able to write. Recently I was asked to create a form of poetry without words through the actions of my work. I took the challenge very seriously.
First, in order to consider creating non-verbal poetry through work, we need to consider what the keys to the usual sort of poetry are. Poetry is the use of words and syntax in an innovative and unexpected way to communicate the essence of an experience.
Words are symbols. They are not things themselves, but they represent things, and not only things of course, but ideas, action, and relationships as well. In mystic thought, the symbol for a thing is equivalent to that thing. If no thing is real outside of our perception of that thing, then the perception itself is the only reality. Since the symbols we use shape our perceptions, the symbols shape reality. For the poet there is a delicate interplay between the experience shaping the words that are written and the words shaping whole new experiences.
The supply of words for poetry are usually bound by the language that the poem is written in. Poetry can be written in any human language, including the languages written for communicating with computers. There are many fantastic poems written in the Perl programming language, many of which run as applications and create some meaningful or usable output. Some poems are also written in more than one language at a time, such as the songs of Manu Chao which often switch between Spanish, Portuguese and French freely. In these poems, part of the shared experience is based on having learned these three languages and cultures to some level at some point in life. There is a certain amount of gnosticism in both the “code poetry” and the mixed language poetry, in that the shared experiences that the poetry relies on for meaning are limited to specific group of people who are “in the know”. There are other exceptions that are not gnostic, however, such as the British tradition of nonsense poetry, of which “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carol is a famous example. The interesting thing about nonsense poems is that they can be enormously moving, inspiring common emotions and images in audiences despite the lack of expected word symbols.
Syntax is the structure that helps give words meaning. A series of words by themselves have no real meaning at all. Only when we put them together in certain combinations do they begin to form a picture, an idea, or a feeling. The case of the nonsense poem makes it clear that the power of the poem is also in the structure, the rhythm and the music of it. This shows that the code of language includes more than just word units, but also a grammar that imbues the words with contextual meaning.
The avante guarde poets of the early 20th century experimented with the abandonment of linguistic structure in their poetry. They believed that the very structure of society was at fault for its problems and that the only way to fix society was to throw out the structure and create a new one from scratch. Understanding that language shapes culture, they experimented with the idea of destroying the structure of language as a way to start overthrowing the structure of society itself. The problem that they discovered with this theory is that when you take away the structure of language the basis of shared communication dissolves. There is not enough information inherent in a random string of words for people to form a shared conception of what that string of words means. As a result, every individual finds their own meaning in the words.
Its interesting to note here that people do find meaning in these structureless word combinations, even though they cannot generally agree on what that meaning is. Studies have been done on exactly this phenomenon. It turns out that the human brain is an amazing code-creating and deciphering machine. People are are wired to create understanding, to interpret the things in the world around them and make complete stories out of them, or at the very least, complete concept units.
Traditional poets often use increased structure in order to impose specific patterns of meaning on their words. Haiku, sonnets, quatrains and other poetry types offer rigid skeletons on which to hang the fabric of meaning in a poem. In each of these, the innovation comes in finding new ways to use that structure to convey meaning. Even free-form and slam poetry uses a specific stylistic syntax in order to pull the reader (or listener) into the ideas that the writer intends to express.
Poetry is powerful because of the exact equation of symbol and structure that works on the human psychological need to create meaning and the brain's ability to decipher a code based on the interrelation of previous experience. Often new meaning is brought about by using a word in a way that is unusual. Other times meaning is created when the structure is followed rigidly and then broken at a strategic point. Another common tool of the poet is to derive meaning entirely from the combinations of words, such that the words themselves change meaning in different combinations, highlighting the gaps and the transitions as much as the individual phrases themselves.
In the world of action as opposed to words, the syntax of language is replaced by the shared understanding of cultural norms. The symbols of such a poem are the actions taken during the course of a particular period of time. The structure is the expectations of the environment in which those actions are set. The structure of a conceptual action-poem could be set in a rigid structure such as office protocol or the careful dance of relationships between the sexes in the religious community. The meaning is found in the particular combination of actions taken in the given structure, or in the way that the structure is bent for the purposes of the actions.
In cinematography, this sort of poetry is brought out not only by the actions themselves, but in the way that the camera focuses on specific actions within the structure of a given story. In life, the focus is set by the words that we speak to each other about the events. This of course, brings us full circle back to the earlier discussion of the mystical equivalence between words and reality, between speech and perception. There are other ways to focus attention, however, and it seems to me that the act of de-verbalizing poetry forces one from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional context. Suddenly, the third factor of focus-mechanism becomes as important as the actions and the context of those actions.
My starting point was the question, “How can I create poetry without words through the actions of my work?” There is no poetry without a way to focus the attention, and barring a camera, something else must define the focal points. The best way to draw focus is through unexpected actions. Changing the pitch of your voice when speaking, saying something profound or incongruous, acting in a way that goes against the status quo... Each of these things draws the attention to a certain point and highlights the experience of the moment. But how can you do this on a regular basis? How can you be that walking poem at work? Or better still, in life as a whole?
The answer will sound terribly Buddhist. The path to a life of active poetry is through mindfulness. If you are aware of your every action, then you can plan those actions carefully, structure them just so, and increase the impact of every single one. But mindfulness takes time. It requires that you slow your breath a bit, watch yourself act even as you are in the process of acting. It requires you to think before you say, contemplate before you act, and that can be difficult in a world full of noise and the demands of life.
The trade off is this: while you may do fewer actions in any given day because of the time it takes to consider each one, those actions will each have a larger impact, and thus you will in fact be more effective overall. In other words, you can slow down the process of the work and yet accomplish more. Just as a written poem is able to say volumes through the use of a few well-chosen words, an active poem of working mindfulness allows you to do much with only the most appropriate actions. Just as the words in a poem trigger a cascade of ideas and emotions, the actions of the mindful person effect chain reactions that succeed where the frenzied actions of harried person may fail.
This is not new news. It is well known that projects which are planned well are more likely to succeed. It is said in software development that you can either spend 20% of your time planning and 80% of your time fixing code or else you can spend 80% of your time planning and 20% of your time writing good software. The idea of workplace poetry goes one step beyond even that, though. Plan not only your projects, but also which projects you will work on. Think through not only the words you will say in a major presentation, but also those words that you will share with coworkers at the water cooler.
Some inspirational speakers might say that you should always “act from a point of balance, not from pressure or fear,” but I suggest that in workplace poetry just as in written poetry, there is a place for your pressure and fear as well as your serenity. Simply bring those experiences into focus, be aware of how they affect your actions, and choose consciously whether you want their impact to show up in your poem.
After considering this challenge, I've gone on to wonder where the boundaries of a workplace poem might be. Are they the beginning and ending of each day? Are they the start and finish of a given project? Are they based on the time you spend with a specific employer? Or is your entire worklife a single poem that you are acting out? The most satisfying answer I can think of is that all of these are true. Worklife, just like the rest of life, is a tapestry of overlapping poems and prosaic stories. Some are good, some are terrible, but you can always edit and adjust the ones you don't like as you go along. So now I wonder what the impact of my current poem will be.
First, in order to consider creating non-verbal poetry through work, we need to consider what the keys to the usual sort of poetry are. Poetry is the use of words and syntax in an innovative and unexpected way to communicate the essence of an experience.
Words are symbols. They are not things themselves, but they represent things, and not only things of course, but ideas, action, and relationships as well. In mystic thought, the symbol for a thing is equivalent to that thing. If no thing is real outside of our perception of that thing, then the perception itself is the only reality. Since the symbols we use shape our perceptions, the symbols shape reality. For the poet there is a delicate interplay between the experience shaping the words that are written and the words shaping whole new experiences.
The supply of words for poetry are usually bound by the language that the poem is written in. Poetry can be written in any human language, including the languages written for communicating with computers. There are many fantastic poems written in the Perl programming language, many of which run as applications and create some meaningful or usable output. Some poems are also written in more than one language at a time, such as the songs of Manu Chao which often switch between Spanish, Portuguese and French freely. In these poems, part of the shared experience is based on having learned these three languages and cultures to some level at some point in life. There is a certain amount of gnosticism in both the “code poetry” and the mixed language poetry, in that the shared experiences that the poetry relies on for meaning are limited to specific group of people who are “in the know”. There are other exceptions that are not gnostic, however, such as the British tradition of nonsense poetry, of which “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carol is a famous example. The interesting thing about nonsense poems is that they can be enormously moving, inspiring common emotions and images in audiences despite the lack of expected word symbols.
Syntax is the structure that helps give words meaning. A series of words by themselves have no real meaning at all. Only when we put them together in certain combinations do they begin to form a picture, an idea, or a feeling. The case of the nonsense poem makes it clear that the power of the poem is also in the structure, the rhythm and the music of it. This shows that the code of language includes more than just word units, but also a grammar that imbues the words with contextual meaning.
The avante guarde poets of the early 20th century experimented with the abandonment of linguistic structure in their poetry. They believed that the very structure of society was at fault for its problems and that the only way to fix society was to throw out the structure and create a new one from scratch. Understanding that language shapes culture, they experimented with the idea of destroying the structure of language as a way to start overthrowing the structure of society itself. The problem that they discovered with this theory is that when you take away the structure of language the basis of shared communication dissolves. There is not enough information inherent in a random string of words for people to form a shared conception of what that string of words means. As a result, every individual finds their own meaning in the words.
Its interesting to note here that people do find meaning in these structureless word combinations, even though they cannot generally agree on what that meaning is. Studies have been done on exactly this phenomenon. It turns out that the human brain is an amazing code-creating and deciphering machine. People are are wired to create understanding, to interpret the things in the world around them and make complete stories out of them, or at the very least, complete concept units.
Traditional poets often use increased structure in order to impose specific patterns of meaning on their words. Haiku, sonnets, quatrains and other poetry types offer rigid skeletons on which to hang the fabric of meaning in a poem. In each of these, the innovation comes in finding new ways to use that structure to convey meaning. Even free-form and slam poetry uses a specific stylistic syntax in order to pull the reader (or listener) into the ideas that the writer intends to express.
Poetry is powerful because of the exact equation of symbol and structure that works on the human psychological need to create meaning and the brain's ability to decipher a code based on the interrelation of previous experience. Often new meaning is brought about by using a word in a way that is unusual. Other times meaning is created when the structure is followed rigidly and then broken at a strategic point. Another common tool of the poet is to derive meaning entirely from the combinations of words, such that the words themselves change meaning in different combinations, highlighting the gaps and the transitions as much as the individual phrases themselves.
In the world of action as opposed to words, the syntax of language is replaced by the shared understanding of cultural norms. The symbols of such a poem are the actions taken during the course of a particular period of time. The structure is the expectations of the environment in which those actions are set. The structure of a conceptual action-poem could be set in a rigid structure such as office protocol or the careful dance of relationships between the sexes in the religious community. The meaning is found in the particular combination of actions taken in the given structure, or in the way that the structure is bent for the purposes of the actions.
In cinematography, this sort of poetry is brought out not only by the actions themselves, but in the way that the camera focuses on specific actions within the structure of a given story. In life, the focus is set by the words that we speak to each other about the events. This of course, brings us full circle back to the earlier discussion of the mystical equivalence between words and reality, between speech and perception. There are other ways to focus attention, however, and it seems to me that the act of de-verbalizing poetry forces one from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional context. Suddenly, the third factor of focus-mechanism becomes as important as the actions and the context of those actions.
My starting point was the question, “How can I create poetry without words through the actions of my work?” There is no poetry without a way to focus the attention, and barring a camera, something else must define the focal points. The best way to draw focus is through unexpected actions. Changing the pitch of your voice when speaking, saying something profound or incongruous, acting in a way that goes against the status quo... Each of these things draws the attention to a certain point and highlights the experience of the moment. But how can you do this on a regular basis? How can you be that walking poem at work? Or better still, in life as a whole?
The answer will sound terribly Buddhist. The path to a life of active poetry is through mindfulness. If you are aware of your every action, then you can plan those actions carefully, structure them just so, and increase the impact of every single one. But mindfulness takes time. It requires that you slow your breath a bit, watch yourself act even as you are in the process of acting. It requires you to think before you say, contemplate before you act, and that can be difficult in a world full of noise and the demands of life.
The trade off is this: while you may do fewer actions in any given day because of the time it takes to consider each one, those actions will each have a larger impact, and thus you will in fact be more effective overall. In other words, you can slow down the process of the work and yet accomplish more. Just as a written poem is able to say volumes through the use of a few well-chosen words, an active poem of working mindfulness allows you to do much with only the most appropriate actions. Just as the words in a poem trigger a cascade of ideas and emotions, the actions of the mindful person effect chain reactions that succeed where the frenzied actions of harried person may fail.
This is not new news. It is well known that projects which are planned well are more likely to succeed. It is said in software development that you can either spend 20% of your time planning and 80% of your time fixing code or else you can spend 80% of your time planning and 20% of your time writing good software. The idea of workplace poetry goes one step beyond even that, though. Plan not only your projects, but also which projects you will work on. Think through not only the words you will say in a major presentation, but also those words that you will share with coworkers at the water cooler.
Some inspirational speakers might say that you should always “act from a point of balance, not from pressure or fear,” but I suggest that in workplace poetry just as in written poetry, there is a place for your pressure and fear as well as your serenity. Simply bring those experiences into focus, be aware of how they affect your actions, and choose consciously whether you want their impact to show up in your poem.
After considering this challenge, I've gone on to wonder where the boundaries of a workplace poem might be. Are they the beginning and ending of each day? Are they the start and finish of a given project? Are they based on the time you spend with a specific employer? Or is your entire worklife a single poem that you are acting out? The most satisfying answer I can think of is that all of these are true. Worklife, just like the rest of life, is a tapestry of overlapping poems and prosaic stories. Some are good, some are terrible, but you can always edit and adjust the ones you don't like as you go along. So now I wonder what the impact of my current poem will be.