SOULFOREST
Softly Open Unsurpassed Lines



Tarot Poetry

Recently I have been thinking about Tarot poetry. Usually this involves poems inspired by the cards (most often the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana). To my taste, and this really is a matter of taste, these sometimes fall short of really working as poems, and come across more as sermons, with the characters in the cards speaking advice to people on how to approach life and its challenges. A poem should be its own art form, with qualities of beauty and mystery and emotion.


I myself have written poems for all seventy-eight cards of the Shining Tribe Tarot. I decided from the beginning to keep them simple, just a few lines of images suggested by the pictures and symbolic ideas on the cards. They do not attempt to explain the cards, or give their messages or meanings; that's what the book is for. The style comes partly from shamanic poetry of indigenous peoples, African praise-poems, and similar forms that use very concrete images to ground their visionary experiences. Here is an example, chosen at random by shuffling the deck and pulling a card:






Nine of Stones

In the hum of the Earth,
she hears the voice of the stars.
She grows stones, she grows bones,
she sings love to her hawk.



As it happens, someone else has also written a cycle of seventy-eight poems based on the Shining Tribe (or more precisely, its earlier version, the Shining Woman deck). Poet and philosopher Charles Stein spent several years creating poems from the pictures, making sure not to read my text so he would work directly from the images. Now that he has completed his deck he is using it to inspire commentary, philosophical investigations, and oracular work. He too draws inspiration from shamanic roots poetry, especially the made up words and sounds that shamans often proclaim in their trance states. Here is Stein's version of the Nine of Stones:



Coca rackle lakquo
Sylayf vogo vlären
I
my
self
have
worn
the glove
and sent the red
bird's head
north
to warm the victims

(the little trees
unappeased
between the bean stones
Nine of Stones



Clearly the Tarot cards can inspire different kinds of poetry. But can we go further? Can we actually use the process of readings to create new work? One way is through combinations of cards. If we take the poems as elements then by mixing the cards we can get combinations of images and ideas. Instead of, say, three individual poems we will have a single poem of three stanzas. Here is an example, using three cards chosen at random after a shuffle. The cards are the Speaker of Rivers, the Seven of Stones, and the Seven of Rivers.







I am the one who knows where to look,
the dark wind,
the storyteller,
the child of my voice

They gather around her
to sing her way through
They dance, and shout, and clap their hands
calling her baby into the light

Wonder of wonders
mermaids and boats,
tell stories to sleepers,
travelers in hope



And we also can go beyond just stringing the poems together as stanzas. Why not combine parts, lines, from each poem into one new work? Here is a poem that combines the three above, using a line from the third as the title:


Wonder of Wonders
We gather around her to sing her way through
We are the ones who know where to look
Wonder of wonders
Mermaids and boats
We dance, and shout, and clap our hands
Calling her body into the light
the dark wind
the storyteller
The child of our voice
Telling stories to sleepers
Travelers in hope.



What is exciting and thrilling about this approach is that it's so open, so filled with possibilities. Once you've established a poem cycle you just have to mix the cards to see what will develop.


And what of doing readings, with poems as well as pictures to answer the questions? Here is a three card Wisdom Reading, remarkable, I think, for the clarity with which the poems answer the questions. The questions themselves were chosen to be what poetry asks in the world:



1. What is the voice of the mystery?
2. How does it speak to us?
3. How do we answer?
And here are the three cards, chosen at random, beginning with one we already have seen:
1. What is the voice of the mystery? Speaker of Rivers
2. How does it speak to us? Place of Birds
3. How do we answer? 7 of Birds







It probably would be an understatement to say that there is a lot we could say about these three cards as answers to these three questions. And perhaps in a future article that is in fact what we will look at. But right now, let us see how the poems for each card respond to the questions.



1. What is the voice of the mystery?
I am the one who knows where to look,
the dark wind,
the storyteller,
the child of my voice.


2. How does it speak to us?
Who knows what countries
we discover
when we follow directions
from the birds
in our dreams?


3. How do we answer?
They shout, they whisper,
they sing of their homes.
They tell every detail,
every flower and scar.
They listen in silence
and begin once again.


Dedicated to Chuck Stein
With gratitude to Albert Fox