Radical Verses

I had a conversation with Melanie last night about activist methodology. For this project I'm working on, format and tone is important - I'm working on it for selfish reasons, but I'm also hoping to contribute to the already bubbling discourse on aesthetics and life - so I'd like to find a way to present my ideas that won't come off abrasively.

This morning, reading through the Dhammapada, I realized that it was a wonderful model of a radical activist work. Here's a bit from it:

Those who take the non-real for the real and the real for the non-real and thus fall victims to erroneous notions, never reach the essence of reality.

Having realized the essential as the essential and the nonessential as the nonessential, they by thus following correct thinking attain the essential.

So, for now, I'm working with the idea of writing an essay, and then boiling it down into verses, and repeating for every section of this project. I haven't been able to let go of that traditional essay format entirely - I'm a parenthetical statement, constant footnote kind of guy, I need to work with a rhizome of interconnecting statements - but the idea of pairing essays with clean (at least on the surface) verses seems like just the right thing. Douglas Hofstadter did it in his own radical activist work, Godel, Escher, Bach, with his pairing of essays and fantasy dialogs.

And Cole Swenson seems to be doing it in her poetry. Radical verses seem to have just the right amount of ambiguity and room for free play - though, I'm still a fan of the complementary essay. (Swenson scholars seem to be too ;) )