In Defense of Hubris and The Dark Ways Mysterious

Available today for Substack friends and subscribers: My new chapbook about the energies--dangerous, forbidden, creative--that make us human

Our favorite villains are the ones who deal in forbidden knowledge.

Prometheus. Milton’s Satan. Eve.

They're the ones who are warned that knowledge is reserved for the divine, and steal it anyway.

We have learned to label their acts as “hubris,” the overreach of lesser beings, the pridefulness of mere mortals. But hubris is a difficult concept to accept when mere mortals prove they’re able to do wonderful things with the information they’ve stolen, when God-like achievements are scattered among the wreckage.

Sin is easier to swallow somehow.

We’re broken, flawed, and often do the wrong thing…even when we know it’s the wrong thing.

That’s sin, and it’s everywhere you look.

The language of “sin” is insidious. It’s the language of a subtle power.

Sin is an inside job, a judgment about our intentions and our hidden, secret hearts. And there has always been a lot of darkness hidden in there. No question about it.

But the language of “hubris” is blunt. It’s the language of worldly power. It’s about knowing our place within the existing power structure, and keeping our mouths shut.

Insofar as knowledge is power, hubris is about holding the powerless in a state of ignorance. It’s about protecting the reign of the powerful—whether it’s the reign of God, Zeus, or the corporation.

Because knowledge, emancipated from power, cannot be controlled.

It can lead to violence, mayhem, chaos.

Or it can lead to scientific discovery. (Arrest Galileo!) Or a creative burst. (Ban Whitman!) Or an erotic awakening. (Imprison Wilde!) Or some other unpredictable turn of events.

Ultimately, it’s a revolt against the artificial limits that power imposes upon us.

Which is why the revolutionaries are our favorite devils. They help us separate the real from the artificial, the human from the machine of power.

The Dark Ways Mysterious is a pastiche of a poem about knowledge, sin, creativity, sex, revolution, and damnation. It’s a depiction of the many devils who make us human.

Each section is a different voice, a different literary style, and a glimpse into a different demonic moment…a fragment, a tessera in the mosaic of good and evil. 

Like the beautiful cover image by Bill Travis (thank you Bill!), the fragments in this chapbook are dark and luminous, strong and vulnerable, naked and yearning.

And the poem…the poem itself is “another dark assault, foredoomed, upon/ the arbitrary glimmer of His light.”

You can find The Dark Ways Mysterious at johntessitore.com.

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Excerpt

Tether the wild ones to a post
in the yard, the athletes
with muscles coiled, mouths frothing, 
fuses already lit and sizzling
toward ignition—the release
of energies untamable.

Stick a bit between their teeth
and make them pull, exhaust them 
with fetters, fieldwork, hard labor, 
confine them in tight spaces
and force them to imagine
the finish line in their minds.

Convince them that everything 
is moving, all free together, 
that the trees are blowing by 
and the wind is in their hair, 
and the taste on their tongues 
is not blood but water.

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And don’t forget to check out my podcast, Be True, here on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts!

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Luna speaks…

“Is this new book any good? Tell the truth.”