Presocratic Blues

by Joel Bettridge

We now call them the Presocratics. Their writings come down to us in pieces: Heraclitus claimed, “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on”; we have Zeno arguing that motion does not exist, an arrow needing to go halfway to the target before striking it, but needing to go half way of that half way first, and so on. In how they were right in the wrongest ways, and wrong in the rightest we hear our better thoughts; their fragments call to mind the blues: in their graves perhaps, these philosophers hear themselves in its songs, for their singers, too, glimpsed instances, like heartbreak, exhaustion, being broke, or drunk, or trying to hold onto a faith; in these Hellenistic remnants we hear the echoes of Blind Willie Johnson’s apologetics and Bessie Smith’s epistemology of love. Anaxagoras also sang on steps advising passersby that all objects contain elements of all other objects: the much bigger, for instance, has the small in it, but it has mostly huge. They, like us, were between religion and science—between the mysticism of the everyday and the shifting ground of understanding. They too were smitten and baffled by what could be seen and touched, and by events.

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuse the macho roll of the blues to the elemental intensities of the Greeks before dialectics and you’re close to the playfully serious spirit of Presocratic Blues. There’s a risk that one might parody the other; but then, as Empedocles said to the cocktail waitress, “there is not death—there is only mingling of parts, so why not?”

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ancient Greek philosophers contend with modern concerns like crushing on the checkout girl and taxes. Wait a minute, perhaps these are ancient concerns. They also listen to Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Epistemologically delicious.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tight, smart writing. It might seem a bit awkward to merge jazz and blues with ancient philosophy and at times it's pretty eccentric, but that's definitely part of the pleasure. The range from funny and broad to delicate and introspective impressed me.