Mike "Pops" Klumpp

So, I am a poet.

I am also a person of faith. I have not always been a person of faith. Like Yusuf, Cat Stevens, I have journeyed to come to a place of believing in something. An awareness or belief in something mystic is often called “faith” , but I don’t know if that is accurate. By claiming “faith” we are declaring covertly that there is no empirical evidence. “Faith” implies some blind trust in something which lacks concrete objective evidence. I disagree. Besides, how can we base a person’s identity upon their subjective notion of who they are and yet claim that someone who believes in the mystic is misled by their subjective desire to find meaning in the universe. Therefore, at the least, we should join the phenomenologists in acknowledging the subjective as verifiable. Yet, for me, “faith” is based on evidence both subjective and objective.

I read academic treatises on theology, and I engage in discussions of an apologetic nature. However, I have decided that there is a perspective among those who read the bible that is lacking. What about the poet’s view?

I am not declaring that the poet’s view cannot also embrace academics and sound understanding. Yet, poets are synthesizers. Is there room for a synthesis of biblical perspectives to create an artist’s view?

Many people who think in terms of academics believe artists to be merely emotional thinkers. Many are. Not all are. Emotion may or may not be part of the synthesis that goes into the artist’s intuitive understanding. However, the true artist’s view is not merely emotion but is based upon a synthetic evaluation of the observable phenomenon of life. Academic thinkers may condescend that artists are emotional thinkers, but they are wrong in their calculations. Art is often a philosophical medium that engages subjective and objective evidence in a synthesis producing a third vision of reality aimed, not at an explanation, but an impact. I recall a student in the museum of modern art in Dallas, Texas, standing in front of a large 6×6 red canvas titled “Red Canvas” and screaming “This is stupid! I just makes me angry!”

Oh.

Anyway, this rant has gone far enough. My point is that I am a mystic. I am a “person of faith” (to use the modern vernacular). I can only hope that doesn’t disqualify me from my audience. When I was new to “faith”, the church had no use for me because I was one of “those artist types” and the artist had no use for me because I was one of “those believers”.

Here is a poem from a grouping I began some time ago and abandoned (for no apparent reason).

#1 in the “I tell you…there is a God” collection

#1

there is a shadow
cast on a table

the table

a bunny with a basket is on 
the table
the light is positioned at such an angle
that the daisy
in the basket
is all that casts a shadow

immense bunny
little daisy shadow

this is what i know of God
whose daisy shadow is cast on me.