Clearly, not all of the facts have come to light in the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. However, what is clear from the 911 tapes is George Zimmerman's anger at what he perceived to be a "punk" whose suspicious behavior--at least according to Zimmerman--mandated not only a call to local police but also Zimmerman's decision to leave his vehicle to pursue and ultimately kill a teen who was simply walking back to his father's fiance's nearby residence after buying some snacks at a neighborhood convenience store.
Although a number of people throughout this country say that Martin's race was not a factor in Zimmerman's decision-making process, anyone who labels a total stranger as a "punk" certainly illustrates his preconceived hostility. And in doing so, he rationalizes his fear of difference.
Some speculate that the "hoodie" Martin was wearing was one initiating factor. For example, Geraldo Rivera argued on national television that parents should not let their children wear such apparel (and, thus, he unknowingly implied that Zimmerman's suspicion was somehow justified because of Martin's attire). Such profiling based on one's clothing is most commonly applied to children and adults of color. If one asks a roomful of Latinos, African Americans, Asians, and others of color if they've been profiled and/or actually stopped and questioned by police or private security personnel because of their clothing or supposed gang attire (the coded language that police and others use to justify such harassment), one will hear a variety of anecdotes that paint a xenophobic tableau of contemporary America.
Others argue that Zimmerman's actions were justified because of the history of burglaries in his neighborhood. Regardless of the number of crimes in any neighborhood, one is not allowed to pursue or confront strangers as if one is a police officer. Zimmerman and others like him have the right to watch others in public and even report suspicious individuals and activities to their local police, but no one should associate past crimes in a specific neighborhood to strangers who, like Trayvon Martin, aren't acting in a suspicious manner.
And then there's the matter of Zimmerman's ability to legally carry a concealed weapon.
Florida was among one of the first states to become a "shall issue" state with respect to concealed carry permits: If one pays the fees, takes and passes the required CCW classes, passes the background checks, isn't a convicted felon, and doesn't have a history of mental illness, one will be able to obtain a permit like the one Zimmerman possesses to legally carry a concealed weapon in public. In contrast, California is still a "discretionary" state where one must give a justifiable reason for wanting a concealed carry permit (in addition to the required training classes and background checks) that must be approved by the applicant's county sheriff's office (the most common CCW permit-issuing authority in most discretionary states) or local police department.
Specifically, those who've taken any CCW course should know that they should never put themselves in the position of a pursuer: CCW holders throughout the United States know that they can only use their weapons in situations where flight is impossible and where an attacker has the means to cause a life-threatening injury. By physically pursuing Martin, Zimmerman violated that primary tenet since he's not a police officer, just a CCW holder; consequently, Zimmerman created a situation by becoming a pursuer and not just an observer. Moreover, a fist fight between two men in most jurisdictions would not constitute a life-threatening situation; otherwise, countless police officers would be shooting people who physically challenge them to the point of fisticuffs on a daily basis. Consequently, Zimmerman's use of a firearm against an unarmed Trayvon Martin certainly would be viewed by the vast majority of CCW instructors--and most police officers--as inappropriate use of a concealed weapon.
If George Zimmerman somehow avoids conviction of second degree murder or a lesser charge of manslaughter, his actions will set a dangerous precedent that CCW holders can not only pursue people they deem to be suspicious but also utilize deadly force against people who don't wield lethal weapons.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
William Carlos Williams' Legacy: Poetry as Poetry
I.
William Carlos Williams' poetry has never generated a critical canon (unlike texts about Eliot's or Pound's poetry) that's truly appreciative of Williams' primary goal: Poetry should first and foremost be poetry. In contrast, Eliot and Pound seemed forever intent on using poetry as a vehicle to promote culture, history, religion--in short, anything other than simply poetry. And, true to their nature, the critics took to Eliot and Pound in the same manner that sharks feed in a frenzy: They couldn't get enough. Sadly, those same critics largely ignored Williams as if his works exuded a kind of critic repellent.
No wonder most critics often don't know what to say about Williams' work (just as they often don't have anything interesting to say about Whitman's work as well); and, unlike Eliot and Pound, Williams didn't spur critics with metaphors or terms that required exegesis or Greek or Latin or Chinese translations. Williams utilized the vernacular he spoke and heard in his daily life. No reader will ever be impressed by literary allusions or extended conceits and metaphors in Williams' poetry, for he rarely relied on or was drawn to such conventions which are often the main reasons critics have written about poetry. True, the Paterson volumes are Williams' answer to Eliot's The Waste Land and Pound's The Pisan Cantos, but one can assume that Williams was human: He had to prove to the critics that he too could write an epic poem (though, and this is of course highly arguable, epic poems tend to be rather boring no matter the author).
Critics, on the whole, have been blind to the fact that Williams' chief influences were what appear to be two dichotomies: His interest in the plastic arts, especially Cubism and other Modernist movements, and his outright love for his daily work as a physician.
Cubism nurtured Williams' appreciation for what many avant-garde artists strove for, that paintings (and, analogously, poems) didn't have to be informed by the historical and critical baggage of previous artistic movements. Specifically, Picasso no longer felt a need to promote verisimilitude and one-point perspective once he gave the finger to the past with what some consider the first Cubist painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. One could even argue that he left the painting supposedly unfinished (the areas around the canvas' borders are empty and unpainted) because, if he had finished it, such overall completion would have signaled to Picasso himself that he was finished in changing as an artist; on the contrary, Picasso had just begun to enter a new artistic world that's still evolving.
Not surprisingly, literature students often find Williams' refusal to let literary conventions like metaphors control or even appear in many of his poems discombobulating: "Mr. Vasquez, what does he mean by 'red wheelbarrow' and 'white chickens'?" If one responds with the following, "He means exactly what he's referring to--the poem's speaker focuses on the ordinary things of the world, for these things matter in and of themselves and should matter to us all as well," one will find that some students will think less of Williams' work because he often eschewed literary conventions. However, if one were to note that Williams wrote that poem after visiting a family who had just suffered the loss of a child, the students would be quick to reevaluate and possibly even like the wheelbarrow and the chickens: "Oh, I see. These were the things that must have mattered to the child who died." But Williams chose not to include those tidbits of information in his poem and for good reason: The poem would have been about death ("Class, what is this poem about?" "It's about death, Mrs. Marley."), and Williams was not interested in writing poems that could be easily summarized or categorized. For the world of poetry to change, Williams realized that his appreciation of the world around him had to change if he was to free himself from the literary conventions that all too often dictate a poem's creation even before one stroke of a pen or a typewriter key hits paper.
II.
William Carlos Williams' poetry has never generated a critical canon (unlike texts about Eliot's or Pound's poetry) that's truly appreciative of Williams' primary goal: Poetry should first and foremost be poetry. In contrast, Eliot and Pound seemed forever intent on using poetry as a vehicle to promote culture, history, religion--in short, anything other than simply poetry. And, true to their nature, the critics took to Eliot and Pound in the same manner that sharks feed in a frenzy: They couldn't get enough. Sadly, those same critics largely ignored Williams as if his works exuded a kind of critic repellent.
No wonder most critics often don't know what to say about Williams' work (just as they often don't have anything interesting to say about Whitman's work as well); and, unlike Eliot and Pound, Williams didn't spur critics with metaphors or terms that required exegesis or Greek or Latin or Chinese translations. Williams utilized the vernacular he spoke and heard in his daily life. No reader will ever be impressed by literary allusions or extended conceits and metaphors in Williams' poetry, for he rarely relied on or was drawn to such conventions which are often the main reasons critics have written about poetry. True, the Paterson volumes are Williams' answer to Eliot's The Waste Land and Pound's The Pisan Cantos, but one can assume that Williams was human: He had to prove to the critics that he too could write an epic poem (though, and this is of course highly arguable, epic poems tend to be rather boring no matter the author).
Critics, on the whole, have been blind to the fact that Williams' chief influences were what appear to be two dichotomies: His interest in the plastic arts, especially Cubism and other Modernist movements, and his outright love for his daily work as a physician.
Cubism nurtured Williams' appreciation for what many avant-garde artists strove for, that paintings (and, analogously, poems) didn't have to be informed by the historical and critical baggage of previous artistic movements. Specifically, Picasso no longer felt a need to promote verisimilitude and one-point perspective once he gave the finger to the past with what some consider the first Cubist painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. One could even argue that he left the painting supposedly unfinished (the areas around the canvas' borders are empty and unpainted) because, if he had finished it, such overall completion would have signaled to Picasso himself that he was finished in changing as an artist; on the contrary, Picasso had just begun to enter a new artistic world that's still evolving.
Not surprisingly, literature students often find Williams' refusal to let literary conventions like metaphors control or even appear in many of his poems discombobulating: "Mr. Vasquez, what does he mean by 'red wheelbarrow' and 'white chickens'?" If one responds with the following, "He means exactly what he's referring to--the poem's speaker focuses on the ordinary things of the world, for these things matter in and of themselves and should matter to us all as well," one will find that some students will think less of Williams' work because he often eschewed literary conventions. However, if one were to note that Williams wrote that poem after visiting a family who had just suffered the loss of a child, the students would be quick to reevaluate and possibly even like the wheelbarrow and the chickens: "Oh, I see. These were the things that must have mattered to the child who died." But Williams chose not to include those tidbits of information in his poem and for good reason: The poem would have been about death ("Class, what is this poem about?" "It's about death, Mrs. Marley."), and Williams was not interested in writing poems that could be easily summarized or categorized. For the world of poetry to change, Williams realized that his appreciation of the world around him had to change if he was to free himself from the literary conventions that all too often dictate a poem's creation even before one stroke of a pen or a typewriter key hits paper.
II.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tomas Transtromer Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature
This year is certainly a good one: Tomas Transtromer has won the Nobel Prize.
I first became aware of his work during the late 1970s/early 1980s when I studied with Phil Levine and Peter Everwine at FSU; both are admirers of Transtromer's poetry and promoted his work to their students.
Now all that's left is for Bharati Mukherjee to win a Pulitzer or the Nobel as well (J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel in 2006--I think it was 2006, another writer I have admired for decades).
I first became aware of his work during the late 1970s/early 1980s when I studied with Phil Levine and Peter Everwine at FSU; both are admirers of Transtromer's poetry and promoted his work to their students.
Now all that's left is for Bharati Mukherjee to win a Pulitzer or the Nobel as well (J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel in 2006--I think it was 2006, another writer I have admired for decades).
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Congratulations to Philip Levine, Our New United States Poet Laureate!
This year is turning out to be a fine one for poets I value. For example, I was happy to hear that Eduardo Corral had won the Yale Younger Poets Series Award, and now Philip Levine has been named Poet Laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress. Congratulations to Phil!
Please visit Letras Latinas Blog at the following URL for more information about Philip Levine's latest honor:
http://latinopoetryreview.blogspot.com/
Please visit Letras Latinas Blog at the following URL for more information about Philip Levine's latest honor:
http://latinopoetryreview.blogspot.com/
Monday, August 1, 2011
Politics, Poetry, and The Dulled Public Soul
I watch with dismay as mostly Republican/Tea Party politicians refuse to tax the wealthy who, of course, are the main people they care about: they stand up for them when they don't want to close tax loopholes for jet setters and corporate bigwigs, those moneyed organisms (to call them humans would be too kind at the moment) who have no concept of what it means to worry about having enough money to buy a month's worth of groceries for their families or having difficulty paying an electric bill. I watch and shake my head at those who believe the working people who paid into Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid should sacrifice because politicians controlled by the wealthy promote the notion that "entitlements" are the main culprits for America's financial woes. Too bad the "lock box" Al Gore spoke of never came to fruition to prevent politicians from siphoning off those "entitled" funds to pay for wars and corporate welfare.
And I wonder out loud, "What the hell happened in the cosmos that created such dulled souls?" If I'm a good critical reader of Christian doctrines and teachings, I must assume such politicians and those wealthy organisms they represent would have a difficult time entering anything remotely considered a heaven when they die since they don't use their unique power on earth to help the poor--a damning sin if ever there were such sins.
And what does this have to do with poetry? It has everything to do with poetry, for poetry above all else that it aspires to be connects our souls to each other; we become kindred spirits who yearn for what all art universally yearns for: the eternal and the human.
If my training as a poet has taught me one thing, it has taught be me to be fully human, to care about those all around me who struggle each day to be blessed rather than cursed, who walk into the light of day and the dark of night knowing they will leave this world alone, naked, and wishing--no, praying--that they lived their lives on earth dedicated to nurturing souls, their own and others, instead of destroying them.
That is what poetry does for all of us; we commune with a universal soul--each of us readily wades into a pond: We sense the coolness of the nearby waterlilies, anchored yet seeming adrift; we experience the soft mud oozing between our toes, the sweet sinking with each step; we take in the sun's water-borne glinting, and we shimmer in response.
But no such shimmering takes place when politicians and their corporate sponsors decide that compromise means no taxes for the wealthy, no end to wars across the globe, and no end to the hatred for the ordinary man, woman, and child who don't have lobbyists or political action committees or "conservative" talk show hosts who care about them.
When I hear politicians claim to have religious beliefs and convictions, I understand why mental illness is a commonplace phenomenon, for the ability of people to be self-delusional is always astounding--and always harmful to those in their wake.
And I wonder out loud, "What the hell happened in the cosmos that created such dulled souls?" If I'm a good critical reader of Christian doctrines and teachings, I must assume such politicians and those wealthy organisms they represent would have a difficult time entering anything remotely considered a heaven when they die since they don't use their unique power on earth to help the poor--a damning sin if ever there were such sins.
And what does this have to do with poetry? It has everything to do with poetry, for poetry above all else that it aspires to be connects our souls to each other; we become kindred spirits who yearn for what all art universally yearns for: the eternal and the human.
If my training as a poet has taught me one thing, it has taught be me to be fully human, to care about those all around me who struggle each day to be blessed rather than cursed, who walk into the light of day and the dark of night knowing they will leave this world alone, naked, and wishing--no, praying--that they lived their lives on earth dedicated to nurturing souls, their own and others, instead of destroying them.
That is what poetry does for all of us; we commune with a universal soul--each of us readily wades into a pond: We sense the coolness of the nearby waterlilies, anchored yet seeming adrift; we experience the soft mud oozing between our toes, the sweet sinking with each step; we take in the sun's water-borne glinting, and we shimmer in response.
But no such shimmering takes place when politicians and their corporate sponsors decide that compromise means no taxes for the wealthy, no end to wars across the globe, and no end to the hatred for the ordinary man, woman, and child who don't have lobbyists or political action committees or "conservative" talk show hosts who care about them.
When I hear politicians claim to have religious beliefs and convictions, I understand why mental illness is a commonplace phenomenon, for the ability of people to be self-delusional is always astounding--and always harmful to those in their wake.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
My Brando Died
My dog Brando, born in April 1996, died today, May 19, in the early morning hours as I slept next to him.
He was Mary's dog ("Our little boy," she would say), but I inherited him when she passed away in 2001. When I woke up, his snout was turned toward me, touching one of my thighs, as was usual for him: I think he felt reassured that he could feel my body next to his as we slept. Mary got him used to sleeping with us, though I think he preferred to sleep next to me: Mary's chronic respiratory condition would cause her to toss while she slept--Brando knew if I moved it was rare and, for some reason, I was always aware of his position in bed as I slept (though I didn't realize he had died until I woke up this morning).
The late poet William Matthews wrote about the death of a dog in the poem "Loyal": At one point, the speaker notes that he wants to weep "steadily, like an adult, according to the fiction that there is work to be done, and almost inconsolably."
I too want to weep, and not so much for Brando but for myself, for he--and his kin--gave the kind of love few humans can come close to equaling: total love despite the flaws of the loved one.
In my chapbook Braille for the Heart, one of the poems is about Brando. I post it here for the twelve-pound wonder who championed love above all else, who now plays with Mary for eternity--and I feel happy for him and for her.
The Myth of the Happy Family: Canine
If my sick self mumbles a prayer,
a faint adagio of
faith might twitch Brando's
donkey-like ears: If dogs tune in earth-
quakes and Spielberg's alien
Edsels, they can sniff
out God's pizza-bearing messengers
who trod the piss-claimed pathways
of the Village Green
Apartments. No tenant knows what sin
might doom him, but Brando's safe;
he'll respond to that
overdue horn blast with a scrolled turd,
mount the blond neighbor's bitch, and
nose into a bowl
of sleep. For no other beast offers
his broad, out of kilter ribs
to me like Brando;
he'll sidle up like a movie star
and shimmy and pant for that
stark bone of love some
people pocket or misplace or lose
altogether. If grace knocks
like rain, if the first
twister of judgment careens like a
Kearney Bowl modified hard-
top in mud, Brando
will likely yawn, yelp, or pass his own
impolite wind as roofs bloom
and human ledgers
vermilion the flesh-spent vale--it's all
explained with a biblical
blink. And in the Book
of Canine, the sequel stars an in-
ept burglar, his jimmied doors
(as foretold) paw-marked.
--Robert Vasquez
He was Mary's dog ("Our little boy," she would say), but I inherited him when she passed away in 2001. When I woke up, his snout was turned toward me, touching one of my thighs, as was usual for him: I think he felt reassured that he could feel my body next to his as we slept. Mary got him used to sleeping with us, though I think he preferred to sleep next to me: Mary's chronic respiratory condition would cause her to toss while she slept--Brando knew if I moved it was rare and, for some reason, I was always aware of his position in bed as I slept (though I didn't realize he had died until I woke up this morning).
The late poet William Matthews wrote about the death of a dog in the poem "Loyal": At one point, the speaker notes that he wants to weep "steadily, like an adult, according to the fiction that there is work to be done, and almost inconsolably."
I too want to weep, and not so much for Brando but for myself, for he--and his kin--gave the kind of love few humans can come close to equaling: total love despite the flaws of the loved one.
In my chapbook Braille for the Heart, one of the poems is about Brando. I post it here for the twelve-pound wonder who championed love above all else, who now plays with Mary for eternity--and I feel happy for him and for her.
The Myth of the Happy Family: Canine
If my sick self mumbles a prayer,
a faint adagio of
faith might twitch Brando's
donkey-like ears: If dogs tune in earth-
quakes and Spielberg's alien
Edsels, they can sniff
out God's pizza-bearing messengers
who trod the piss-claimed pathways
of the Village Green
Apartments. No tenant knows what sin
might doom him, but Brando's safe;
he'll respond to that
overdue horn blast with a scrolled turd,
mount the blond neighbor's bitch, and
nose into a bowl
of sleep. For no other beast offers
his broad, out of kilter ribs
to me like Brando;
he'll sidle up like a movie star
and shimmy and pant for that
stark bone of love some
people pocket or misplace or lose
altogether. If grace knocks
like rain, if the first
twister of judgment careens like a
Kearney Bowl modified hard-
top in mud, Brando
will likely yawn, yelp, or pass his own
impolite wind as roofs bloom
and human ledgers
vermilion the flesh-spent vale--it's all
explained with a biblical
blink. And in the Book
of Canine, the sequel stars an in-
ept burglar, his jimmied doors
(as foretold) paw-marked.
--Robert Vasquez
Monday, April 11, 2011
Notes on Writers and the Teaching of Writing, II.
II.
In Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Joan Didion notes that she learned how to write sentences by reading and analyzing Ernest Hemingway's sentences: "When I was fifteen or sixteen I would type out his stories to learn how the sentences worked" (323). Not surprisingly, Didion, like many others writers, finds Hemingway's direct manner of utterance attractive: "I mean they're perfect sentences. Very direct sentences, smooth rivers, clear water over granite, no sinkholes" (323).
Didion contrasts Hemingway's "clear water over granite" with Henry James' "perfect sentences too, but very indirect, very complicated. Sentences with sinkholes. You could drown in them" (323). For anyone remotely familiar with both authors' works, Didion's use of "smooth rivers" and "sinkholes" seems appropriate: Hemingway's audience awareness is in many ways quite different than James' intended audience--and the authors' mannerisms declare what they value.
Their stylistic mannerisms could be analogous to the two main camps in contemporary poetry and writing in general: The Hemingway camp favors austere language and direct syntax, whereas the James' camp loves lush language and syntactic complexity.
For example, when I consider the poets Philip Levine and Rita Dove, I would have to place them in the Hemingway camp; both create poetry that utilizes the language of everyday discourse and syntax. As for Charles Wright and C. K. Williams, their poetry would definitely fit within the James' camp with its "sinkholes."
Does either camp have an advantage over the other? I would posit that the tribe of Hemingway certainly has a greater degree of what's known as relative readability: Their manner of phrasing, their syntactical constructions, would be less stressful to the average reader when it comes to comprehension. This isn't to say that their poetry is simplistic, though the danger does exist; nevertheless, poetry in the Hemingway camp, at its best, can be compared to the best of Shakespeare and Donne.
But the tribe of James also has an advantage: those "sinkholes" permit stylistic leeway and, quite possibly, greater non-linear introspection; the reader can dive into those sinkholes for brief periods, but the danger involves losing track of the writer's initial linguistic leap or arc, so to speak.
When I consider two poets--among many of my influences--whose works I consciously chose to emulate in terms of stylistic mannerisms, I think I was attracted to both partly because they were good examples of those two camps: Robert Bly and James Dickey.
Bly's poetry has tremendous appeal for me precisely because of his austerity; of course, this could have something to do with his and James Wright's adherence to the "deep image" ethos that somewhat echoes Haiku's emphasis on precision to the point of laser-like rendering at a localized level.
Dickey's work also utilizes imagery, but the welter of imagery and the complex syntactical constructions (the clauses can be overwhelming at times) Dickey infuses and wrings out of each poem has great appeal too: The challenge in Dickey's work is to allow the imagination to roam the cosmos but always come back to the journey's center or "purpose" (a word and concept I'm uncomfortable with when it comes to creative writing) which is often simply to enjoy the linguistic excursion itself: the poet as cartographer mapping out a route to some unknown destination.
For me, both camps have their advantages and their potential pitfalls. For poets and writers, the challenge is to work within those camps--or attempt to intertwine them--and avoid the pitfalls.
In Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Joan Didion notes that she learned how to write sentences by reading and analyzing Ernest Hemingway's sentences: "When I was fifteen or sixteen I would type out his stories to learn how the sentences worked" (323). Not surprisingly, Didion, like many others writers, finds Hemingway's direct manner of utterance attractive: "I mean they're perfect sentences. Very direct sentences, smooth rivers, clear water over granite, no sinkholes" (323).
Didion contrasts Hemingway's "clear water over granite" with Henry James' "perfect sentences too, but very indirect, very complicated. Sentences with sinkholes. You could drown in them" (323). For anyone remotely familiar with both authors' works, Didion's use of "smooth rivers" and "sinkholes" seems appropriate: Hemingway's audience awareness is in many ways quite different than James' intended audience--and the authors' mannerisms declare what they value.
Their stylistic mannerisms could be analogous to the two main camps in contemporary poetry and writing in general: The Hemingway camp favors austere language and direct syntax, whereas the James' camp loves lush language and syntactic complexity.
For example, when I consider the poets Philip Levine and Rita Dove, I would have to place them in the Hemingway camp; both create poetry that utilizes the language of everyday discourse and syntax. As for Charles Wright and C. K. Williams, their poetry would definitely fit within the James' camp with its "sinkholes."
Does either camp have an advantage over the other? I would posit that the tribe of Hemingway certainly has a greater degree of what's known as relative readability: Their manner of phrasing, their syntactical constructions, would be less stressful to the average reader when it comes to comprehension. This isn't to say that their poetry is simplistic, though the danger does exist; nevertheless, poetry in the Hemingway camp, at its best, can be compared to the best of Shakespeare and Donne.
But the tribe of James also has an advantage: those "sinkholes" permit stylistic leeway and, quite possibly, greater non-linear introspection; the reader can dive into those sinkholes for brief periods, but the danger involves losing track of the writer's initial linguistic leap or arc, so to speak.
When I consider two poets--among many of my influences--whose works I consciously chose to emulate in terms of stylistic mannerisms, I think I was attracted to both partly because they were good examples of those two camps: Robert Bly and James Dickey.
Bly's poetry has tremendous appeal for me precisely because of his austerity; of course, this could have something to do with his and James Wright's adherence to the "deep image" ethos that somewhat echoes Haiku's emphasis on precision to the point of laser-like rendering at a localized level.
Dickey's work also utilizes imagery, but the welter of imagery and the complex syntactical constructions (the clauses can be overwhelming at times) Dickey infuses and wrings out of each poem has great appeal too: The challenge in Dickey's work is to allow the imagination to roam the cosmos but always come back to the journey's center or "purpose" (a word and concept I'm uncomfortable with when it comes to creative writing) which is often simply to enjoy the linguistic excursion itself: the poet as cartographer mapping out a route to some unknown destination.
For me, both camps have their advantages and their potential pitfalls. For poets and writers, the challenge is to work within those camps--or attempt to intertwine them--and avoid the pitfalls.
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