An Analysis of Jim Morrison’s Poetry

An Analysis of Jim Morrisons Poe estimate Through the Eyes of a Fan. jam Douglas Morrisons numbers was born(p) come out of the closet of a terminus of tumultuous social and political change in American and universe of discourse history. Besides Morrisons social and political perspective, his verse also speaks with an collar of the world of literature, especi ally of the customs dutys that shaped the poe translate of his age. His poetry expresses his throw looks, plans, development, and emergence as a poet from his musings on involve at UCLA in The Lords and The sassy Creatures, to his final poems in speculativeerness and The American Night.It is my intention to show Morrison as a unspoilt American poet, whose ca-ca is worthy of serious retainer in relation to its turn up in the American literary tradition. By discussing the poetry in ground of Morrisons influences and induce ideas, I leave al champion be competent to show what distinguishes him as a significan t American poet. In order to reveal him as having a clearly define ability as a poet, my focus will be on Morrisons own actors line and poetry. I will concentrate on his earlier work to show the influence of Nietzsche and French poets much(prenominal) as Arthur Rimbaud and Antonin Artaud and the motion they had on Morrisons poetry and look of flavor.Morrisons poetical style is characterised by contrived ambiguity of meaning which serves to express subconscious thought and feelinga tendency now generally associated with the post- innovative or avant garde. His poetic strength is that he becomes poetry quite profound in its effect upon the subscriber, by using vividly evocative words and word-paintings in his poems. magic spell it is obvious that Morrison has read writers that influence his work, and their influence remains strong in subject and tone, he still manages to reconstruct it his own in the way he adapts these influences to his style, experiences, and ideas.We w ould expect to find remnants of quotes, stolen lines and ideas, in a littleer writer, further Morrison shows his strength as a poet by resisting plagiarism and blatant borrowing, in order to achieve originality in his own verse. As T. S. Eliot has said, Bad poets borrow, skillful poets steal. Morrisons poetry is truly surreal at times, as healthful as passing symbolic thither is a pervading comprehend of the irrational, chaotic, and the barbaric an effect produced by startling juxtapositions of ciphers and words. Morrisons poetry reveals a obscure world a place messd by characters straight out f Morrisons circus of the sense, from the strange streets of Los Angeles boulevards and back alleys. Morrisons delivery is a native tongue, and his eye is that of a visionary American poet. He belongs to what poet and critic Jerome Rothenberg calls the American Prophecy . . . present in all that speaks to our thought experience of identity and our need for re freshlyal. Rot henberg forecasts this prophetic tradition as Affirming the oldest function of poetry, which is to retard the habits of ordinary consciousness by means of much precise and highly charged holds of language and to provide new tools for discove bound the underlying relatedness of all life . . A special concern for the interplay of myth and history runs by means of the building block of American literature. Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman saw the poets function in part as revealing the visionary meaning of our lives in relation to the time and place in which we live . . . we amaze taken this American emphasis on the relationship of myth and history, of poetry and life, as the central meaning of a prophetic native tradition. The lasting impression of Morrisons poems is that they attempt to extradite the dream or nightm ar of modern existence in terms of words and imagery, quite bizarre and obscure, yet oblige at the same(p) time.An important aspect close the body of his work and his commitment to his incident style, one closely aligned to Rothenbergs prophetic tradition, is that it is in the tradition of what different poets of his time were writing. Morrisons early experiments with poetry and prose, written in the midst of 1964-69, depict in the language of an intellectually ambitious film savant the strong influence of people such as Nietzsche and Artaud, and his ideas on aesthetics, philosophy, life, and film in particular.His early writings be the foundation on which he develops his poetic style. All the motifs, symbols, and imagery introduced in his first battle array of poems double continuously end-to-end his posterior works. The Lords and The New Creatures was conceived as two smash books however, it was published as one book containing Morrisons ideas and poetry. Essentially, it is a gathering for the fleshing out of style. The first half of the book The Lords Notes on Vision, is a collection of notes and prose poems while the second half, The New Creatures, is an assortment of poetry.The Lords is a motley work of ideas and prose, loosely held in concert with motifs of death, cinema, and the reinterpretation of mythical and theatrical theory. While originality seems to be in short supply, and naive idealism in abundance, it is interesting for the allusion to, and presentation of philosophic and aesthetic ideas, central to Morrisons poetry. Stylistically, The Lords reflects his propensity for dark imagery and self-mythology, which would by and by be a fundamental characteristic of his poetry and per weeance.The motifs that pervade all of his poetry abound the urban center, sex, death, assassins, voyeurs, wanderers, forsakes, shamanism, and so on. The autobiographical and historical references in the poems reflect the myth devising process of turning fact into fiction the inner world of the heading and its perceptions of surroundings, a mythological landscape of Morrisons mind. The poetry, however, has a s trong horse sense of place the strong observational power of the astute outsider, works sanitary in the deceptions of strange border towns and locations. His vision of Los Angeles, or Lamerica, is profound in its focus and impressions.It is even stranger because of the ambivalent nostalgia Morrison seems to hold for the place, where he had lived and performed with the admittances Los Angeles is a metropolis looking for a rite to join its fragments. At first, for Morrison, it was melodious theatre that would attempt to provide the ritual for the city, using his shaman principles to try to join its fragments, and bring his audience together. When that failed, and the summer of love and the notion of flower child solidarity had dissipated, he glowering to his poetry as the ritual that would piece together the fragments of his own experience.Like Eliots fragments shored against his ruins in The thieve Land, Morrisons words and poetry ar the means by which he can make sense o f his world and guard against his aesthetic mortality. However, as always in his poems, there is a sense of cynicism, directed toward himself as well as the reader. roughly as if, his pang and sacrifices, made in the name of art and ethnical freedom, were not for his own benefit entirely for the benefit of you, the reader haggle be healing. Words got me the wound and will get me wellIf you believe it. This discussion section from the absurdly titled, Lament for the Death of my Cock, reflects Morrisons pessimism and poetic idealism. The sense of suffering expressed in this later poem is also found in his earlier work The Lords, in relation to the idea of sacrifice for the goodish of all What sacrifice, at what price can the city be born? Morrisons early awareness of clubhouses ills, and his benevolent sense of social responsibility, meant that he had a personally doomed and intense experience of America and its ideals.In particular, the Western Dream, as expressed in his apo calyptic invocation of a brave new world of dreamlike existence and ritual We are from the West. The world we suggest should be a new Wild West, a sensuous, evil world, strange, and haunting. With his own experience informing his work, Morrison begins The Lords by addressing the reader rhetorically, as if revealing both(prenominal) truth about modern existence. He introduces his analogy of a societys relation to place, in terms of a game. His vision of the city is one of a dystopian environmentit is an interpretation of the American condition and all modern civilisations.Morrison sees the city in modernist and symbolist terms the metropolis as a metaphorical reflection of society We all live in the city. The city forms much physically, but inevitably psychically a circle. A Game. A ring of death with sex at its center. Drive toward outskirts of city suburbs. At the border discover zones of sophisticated vice and boredom, child prostitution. But in the soiled ring immediately surrounding the daylight business district exists the moreover real crowd life of our mound, the only street life, night life. morbid specimens in dollar hotels, low boarding houses, bars, pawn shops, urlesques and brothels, in last arcades which never die, in streets and streets of all-night cinemas. Like Eliots invocation of the unreal city in The Waste Land, inherited from Baudelaires line about the swarming city, city full of dreams, where ghosts in broad daylight plosive speech sound the walkers sleeve, there is a relation of person to place. Rimbauds perception of a city is more in line with Morrisons, when he cries O sorrowful city O city now infatuated dumb, / Head and heart stretched out in paleness / In undated doorways thrown wide by time / City the Dismal early(prenominal) can only b slight / Body galvanised for sufferings yet to come. Morrisons closely socialist perception of American society and its negative effect upon goal and people, is one of the main con cepts behind The Lords. He defines it as the feeling of powerlessness and helplessness that people have in the face of reality. They have no real control over events or their own lives. Something is controlling them. The encompassing(prenominal) they ever get is the television set. In creating this idea of the lords, it also came to quash itself. Now to me, the lords mean something entirely different. I couldnt really explain.Its like the opposite. Somehow the lords are a romantic race of people who have found a way to control their environment and their own lives. Theyre somehow different from other people. The concept of the lords is a philosophical construct and a poetical device used to distinguish society as hierarchical. Morrisons idea of the lords can be related to Nietzsches view in The Will to Power (1967), of the Lords of the Earth that higher species which would come up aloft to new and impossible things, to a broader vision, and to its task on earth. The lords are th e poets and artists the people who are revolutionaries, who seek to change the conformist culture in which they exist and lead society forward The Lords. Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to subjugate others. But gradually, special perceptions are being developed. The idea of the Lords is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the snarl during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The Lords have secret entrances, and they know disguises. But they ready themselves away in minor ways.Too much glint of light in the eye. A faulty gesture. Too long and curious a glance. The Lords appease us with images. They give us books, concerts, galleries, shows, cinemas. Especially the cinemas. Through art they confuse us and unsighted us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent. Door of loss to the other side, the soul frees itsel f in stride. In contrast to The Lords, Morrisons companion text The New Creatures, emphasises the nightmarish existence of other creatures who are submissive and al virtually sub-species in their herd mentality and hellish existence.The uncivilised imagery and surreal nature of the verse in The New Creatures, creates a disorganised and chaotic collection of poetry that seems to have no patent motive or logic. The content is highly subjective and remote to virtually readers some allusions and imagery are familiar in their generality, yet pointless in the apparent obscurity and juxtaposition. The poems personal content unfortunately makes most of The New Creatures inaccessible in their metaphorical and symbolic rendition of Morrisons psyche.In parts, Morrison evokes a tone and a cadence with the structure of word and image interplay similar in effectiveness to the lyrics he wrote for The Doors, some of which he rattling performed Ensenada the dead seal the dog crucifix Ghosts of the dead car sun. get the car. Rain. Night. Feel. Most of the poems in The New Creatures seem strange and unrelated. Morrison gives the reader a clue to his method of poetry, by his comments on art forms like film, specially when his poetry is so obviously cinematic in its style and effect.He situates, with a reference to the modernist idea of art replicating stream of consciousness, that he was interested in film because, to me, its the closest approximation in art that we have to the actual flow of consciousness. Many of Morrisons poems throughout his work are like film-clips in an avant-garde surrealist cinema. There is an intellectual, yet dreamy part to his juxtaposition of ideas and insights about the world. Like the main technique of crowd manipulation he used on stage, Morrison uses the pause for great effect, yet not in the conventional grammatical or formal sense.Instead of a caesura, an ellipse, or a new line (all of which he also uses to effect), he uses an image as a barrier to overcome, to be broken through boom destiny Naked girl, seen from behind, on a natural road Friends seek the labyrinth Movie young woman left on the desert A city gone mad w/ fever This pause, this lay attain in flow or subject (in this case the metaphorical labyrinth) renders the verse as a staccato series of images rather than a progressive stream of ideas and words. In other words, the structure of the poem does try to replicate the irrational logic of stream of consciousness.Often these poems differentiate themselves from Morrisons more coherent pieces characteristically, they are like abstract paintings of violent and bizarre scenes, fine-looking the reader a sense of the intoxicated state prevalent throughout much of Morrisons notorious, alcoholic and drug-abused, life. Reading some of Morrisons less adept poetry is like reading notes someone took while experiencing an lysergic acid diethylamide trip. This is what a vast percentage of them actually are acc ording to legends of Morrisons excesses.The same elements combine in his more proficient poetry in intonation, profound visions, states of consciousness, and hallucinatory images, all culminating in a unique thoughtfulness of the world. His cinematic technique of image juxtaposition also emulates the effects of a psychedelic experience, which could also be interpreted as no less than an experience of Morrisons world and the 60s itself. Poetry, and his idea of the Poet, was the genesis for most of Morrisons experience. Poetry inspired and vocalised his love of the cinematic visual, performance art, and musical lyricism.It also expressed his most profound thoughts, philosophies, and beliefs it was a means to relay his world, which was progressively close to destruction. In The American Night, his poem An American Prayer echoes Frazers Golden Bough along with the philosophies of Artaud and Nietzsche. Morrison appeals in his lament for understanding, for a consensus that technology an d alleged(prenominal) progress is not necessarily better or more kindle than the mythically imbued past Lets reinvent the gods, all the myths of the agesCelebrate symbols from deep senior forests . . . We have assembled inside this ancient and insane theatre To propagate our longing for life and flee the swarming wisdom of the streets . . . Im sick of stubborn faces Staring at me from the T. V. Tower. I want roses in My garden shut in dig? In this sense, his attitude toward modernity is one of disdain, similar to Eliots perception of a defunct Western civilisation in The Waste Land. Consistently, throughout his poems, Morrison is anti-TV, almost as if he sees it as responsible for contemporary societys decline.It is paradoxical in that he vehemently supports a view of the world through the camera lens of the filmmakers eye. Apart from this cinematic aspect that carries through from his earliest work, the consistent use of dark and violent imagery, and the allusion to sublime phi losophy and art, there is no one unifying aspect to his poetry. There is, however, an element of autobiography in the poems, subtly placed in the symbols and motifs associated with the lead singer of the Doors Snakeskin jacket Indian eye Brilliant hair He moves in disturbedNile Insect Air In The New Creatures, references abound to his clothes, Indian visions, Alexandrine hair, and shamanic dance moves it is a story about himself. We then are introduced to the poets perception of his reader You parade thru the blue summer We watch your eager rifle decay Your wilderness Your seethe emptiness Pale forests on verge of light decline. more(prenominal) of your miracles More of your magic arms You, are the reader along for the journey we are the lords, the poet speaksenlightened ones, the ones who can see your wilderness . . America? He continues You are lost now, we are still the ones who can see what the reader cannot. Morrison invites us into his world, but the reader is always kept at arms length. In the next section of the poem, we are introduced to the state of the world and its inhabitants disease, despair, images of torture, and the ominous presence of death always lurking in the background. A strange exotic world is revealed, with rites and customs straight out of Sir James Frazers The Golden Bough Bitter grazing in sick pasturesAnimal somberness and the daybed Whipping. Iron curtains pried open. The elaborate sun implies dust, knives, voices. Call out of the wilderness Call out of fever, receiving the wet dreams of an Aztec King. The elaborate sun is elaborate in its context the iron curtain forcibly opened reveals war, communism, Stalinist dictatorship etc. The sun could be a reference to the east, the land of the move up sun (also the name of a city in Ohio) its place in the wilderness implies its ancient and customary qualities of meaning.The Aztec King brings a whole new dimension and significance to the sun as the ancient Mayans used the linage of charitable sacrifices to strengthen the daily journey of the sun across the sky. The characters of the poems are creatures of a nightmarish world. It is only upon realising that the creatures are meant to be uswe modern humansthat the fragments of society, held up to us as a mirror of ourselves through the experience of the author, become familiar.Robert Duncan, a poet from Morrisons era, in a passage reminiscent of Morrisons credo of wake up and the paradoxical take of his (Morrisons) beliefs, perhaps best sums up the poets meaning and reason for creating such a world It is in the dream itself that we seem entirely creatures, without imagination, as if moved by a plot or myth told by a story-teller who is not ourselves. Wandering and wondering in a foreign land or struggling in the meshes of a nightmare, we cannot escape the compelling terms of the dream unless we wake, anymore than we can escape the terms of our aliveness reality unless we die.Later in his life, as a more m ature and serious writer, Morrison attempted to awaken from his own living reality, he had become very aware of the naivete of his early work. He reflects on the significance of some of his early ideas and acknowledges the limits of his experience and youthful literary talents in terms of an materialization of his life, art, and as a prophetic poet I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existence. Somehow things seem more real if they an be photographed and you can create a semblance of life on the screen. But those little aphorisms that make up most of The Lords if I could have said it any other way, I would have. They tend to be mulled over. I take a fewer seriously. I did most of that book when I was at the film shoal at UCLA. It was really a thesis on film esthetics. I wasnt able to make films then, so all I was able to do was think about them and write about them, and it probably reflects a lot of that.A lot of passages in it for e xample about shamanism turned out to be very prophetic several years later because I had no idea when I was writing that, that Id be doing just that. The motif of the city in Morrisons poetry is as surrealistic as it is symbolic in the strange juxtapositions of vivid imagery, symbol, and metaphors of human consciousness. The truth is, one can never truly understand the mind of the American Poet. We are here, low-spiritedd by grandeur of his work, basking in the fundament of a creative mind we cannot comprehend.I have based my lifes work off the poetry this one man has sent left behind, and here is my humble attempt to make a third person understand, not the poetry, but what I took away from it. I have reached a point in life where I feel the need to broaden my horizons, to move on from my never ending obsession with Morrison and his words, so I write these words not to have them read or heard, but as a rite of passage. Goodbye Jim Morrison, and thank you for every thing. I shall forever be waiting at the harbor for the one day when the Crystal carry comes in. Forever waiting for one last word to the world, from Mister Mojo Rising.