“A system of punctuation.” — T.S. Eliot
“The clear expression of mixed feelings.” — W.H. Auden
“The shorthand of beauty.” — Mel Brooks
Early next week, Mercury will conclude its brief tenure in Aquarius with aspects to the Galactic Core in Sagittarius and retrograde Saturn in Libra, before entering Pisces in hot pursuit of an ideal. Taken in order, Mercury’s final two aspects from Aquarius followed by an ingress to Pisces will serendipitously correspond to the three definitions of poetry quoted at the top of this piece. In your life, it means that sometimes you have to let go of what it means and enjoy what your beautiful mind can do for its own sake.
Planets in astrology function as archetypes for things in your life. Among the things that the multi-tasking Mercury represents is what Arthur C. Clarke once referred to as the rarest thing in the universe — mind. Poetry, like higher mathematics, is something the mind produces for its own sake, leaving any determination of usefulness to pragmatic posterity. The challenge of poetry and higher mathematics is alike, to do something original using ancient tools. When it comes to language, one of those tools is punctuation, or the lack of it.
Punctuation is often crucial to meaning, which is undoubtedly part of what T.S. Eliot had in mind. Yet, a pan-cultural scholar of Mr. Eliot’s erudition was surely aware of that some languages, especially ancient ones, have prolifically produced great poems devoid of discernible punctuation, relying on the proficiency of the practitioner to arrive at a precise understanding. So it is that Eliot’s definition of poetry is not as clear-cut as it would appear on first reading, very much like Mercury’s current placement in Aquarius.