Contemporary Poetry

A good deal of modern thought and, therefore, modern art has been based in the idea that our experience is fragmented.  Apparently, we know only Eliot’s famous heap of broken images.  The idea of fragmentation was adopted by Eliot’s successors who, instead of regretting the condition, revelled in it.  I’m not sure they examined the idea as thoroughly as they might have.

To say that our experience is fragmented is to begin a conversation about something, we’re not sure what, that is unfragmented, presumably “whole”. Something has unfragmented experience.  Eliot had the Judeo-Christian god in mind as the something that could have unbroken experience.  It’s a fetching twist that those who celebrate fragmented experience might find, should they look, a god hiding at the bottom of their philosophies.  

Eliot’s sort of god idea was kicked to the curb a long time ago. Now, with god having turned up missing, there’s no being to have a “whole” experience ... except, perhaps, humans.  The idea of fragmentation falls apart.  Our manner of experiencing the world is the only one available to us.  And I’m OK with that.