Chapter 3

HARBINGER OF TRUTH

Theoretically, the poetry of thought should be the supreme poetry ... A poem in which the poet has chosen for his subject a philosophic theme should result in the poem of poems. That the wing of poetry should also be the rushing wing of meaning seems to be an extreme aesthetic good; and so in time and perhaps, in other politics, it may come to be.

                Wallace Stevens

In contrast to Sri Chinmoy's lyrical poems, which are born in the immediacy of moment-to-moment feeling and which express an emotional or psychological state, are his poems of statement: poems that are the fruit of contemplation and realisation. These summit poems conform to what we might call the literature of knowledge, for they issue from that realm of wisdom where a man of vision is able to see at last the true stature of things and can reveal a truth that has far outgrown the particularity of personal experience.

In the case of Sri Chinmoy, the aesthetic challenge of this literature of knowledge lies in the integration of ideas, concepts, propositions and abstractions-that is, the tools of philosophical expression-into an imaginative mode. Many critics actively hold that such material has a natural incapacity for poetry, that the poet and the philosopher must necessarily remain divorced, with the philosopher unable to fulfil the imaginative prerequisites of the poet.[1] Sri Chinmoy's stand on this matter is unapologetic and unqualified. "A poet," he says, "is he who envisions the ultimate, absolute Truth. "[2] His whole effort in these poems, therefore, is to make wisdom articulate.