Mushrooms and the Poet's Paradise
Songs of Insurrection and Madness #2
Skipping a vignette or two, just a couple of Beats, we continue our journey into the poetry of psychedelics, and delve into the world of the mushroom (Part #1 is here).
VI
When Georgian poetry emerged in Britain during the years prior to the Great War, it ‘engaged and manifested a central modern problem: how to express and assert value for the inner life and the life of the senses in a world experienced as impersonal and dehumanized, lacking palpable warmth and vitality.’1 One of its finest exponents, a poet whose life stretched from Queen Victoria to Margaret Thatcher, transcending the anthologies through which Georgian poetry coalesced, was Robert Graves. A mythologist and classicist, Graves would also have occasion to trip in 1960.
Our five senses, Graves thought, have been dulled by our reliance on reason; our minds narrowed in comparison to ancient forbears and children alike. Our spirit, ‘has lost touch with the idea…