Poet’s Elaboration

Gendlin often discusses the poet’s process of writing and erasing. I have examined how this process is discussed in “Thinking Beyond Patterns” (Gendlin, 1991) and “Experiencing and the Creating Meaning (ECM)” (Gendlin, 1962/1997) and how they correspond to each other.

The following is a well-known paragraph from “Thinking Beyond Patterns” (Gendlin, 1991):

The poet tries this line and that. Many lines come. Some seem good. The poet listens into what each of those lines can say. Poets constantly listen into an unexplored openness—what can this new phrasing say? A great many such lines come and are rejected. The poet reads to the end of the written lines again and again. Each time that ..... comes. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 48)

If I were to translate the process of elaboration into the terminology of his early ECM, I would say that the functional relationship is comprehension, not only when the poet gives his final answer but also in the middle of the process when “a great many such lines come and are rejected.”

First of all, if the poet could say what he meant, it would stand to reason that we could say that the symbols “comprehended” the felt meaning:

Let us say that our poet has ... many felt meanings, and wishes to symbolize them. ... When he succeeds, he cries out, "Yes, that's exactly what I mean!" (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 117)

But if felt meaning functions as an arbiter, Gendlin discusses, then the functional relationship is comprehension not only when we feel we finally said what we meant but also when we feel we did not say what we meant:

... we already have the felt meaning and seek to further symbolize it. Hence this given felt meaning acts as arbiter of the symbols we use. We listen to them and then feel either that we did, or that we did not, say what we meant. (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 113)

Since there are no exact symbols for it [the felt meaning] extant, we are likely to make many false starts and say many things that we don't quite mean. As we hear them, we say, "No, that isn't exactly what I mean," or "No, that's only part of it," or "No, it's sort of like that, but not quite." All through this process the felt meaning to be symbolized functions both as selector and as arbiter. ... The felt meaning also enables us to feel whether these words succeeded or failed to symbolize it (arbiter). (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 119)

The meaning of the symbols in comprehension depends utterly on the roles of felt meaning: selection and arbitration. (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 123)

Based on the above, my interpretation at this time is as follows: First, when a great many lines come as new phrasings, the felt meaning functions as a selector. Second, when such lines are rejected, the felt meaning functions as an arbiter. The primary functional relationship in the elaboration process is comprehension, assuming that the terminology in his early ECM was not abandoned in his later “Thinking Beyond Patterns.”

Of course, comprehension may not be the only thing that functions in such an elaboration process. In the “transition” (Gendlin, 1962/1997, pp. 171-2) between the rejection of an old line and the coming of a new one, information blanks (.....) often emerge (Tanaka, 2021, pp. 131–2). When the poet “leaves the specified meaning [of the older line] and turns to the felt meaning” (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 172), it is the deliberate direct reference that we can call creative regress. If the poet has left the specified meaning, the functional relationship should not be called comprehension because the felt meaning cannot function as an arbiter.

P.S.

I think that the process of “a great many motifs come and are rejected” occurs not only in poets but also in composers, as the renowned conductor John Eliot Gardiner says in the video below:

“Beethoven reviews fragments of the three earlier movements and rejects them one by one.” (Gardiner, 2020; cf. Tanaka, 2023, September)

When Beethoven rejected the fragments of the three earlier movements, it could also be said that the primary functional relationship is comprehension.

References

Gardiner, J. E. (2020). Symphony No. 9: ‘Up above the stars he must dwell,’ Retrieved from the official YouTube channel of Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras.

Gendlin, E. T. (1962/1997). Experiencing and the creation of meaning: a philosophical and psychological approach to the subjective (Paper ed.). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: Body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden, & M. Moen (Eds.), The Presence of Feeling in Thought (pp. 21–151). Peter Lang.

Hideo Tanaka (2021). Tapping ‘it’ lightly and the short silence: applying the concept of ‘direct reference’ to the discussion of verbatim records of Focusing sessions (with the English language supervision of Akira Ikemi) [Abstract]. In Nikolaos Kypriotakis & Judy Moore (Eds.), Senses of Focusing, Vol. 1 (pp. 125-38). Eurasia Publications.

Tanaka, H. (2023, September). Listening to “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in a Focusing-Oriented Way: Commentary Using an Official Video