Myth of Arrival

A friend of mine recently posted this question on her Poetrywithmeaning blog and it got me thinking about the age old debate of the poet in society:

There was a time when poets used to be sought after, to be a poet was a great thing and many admired this in you. But I fear those days are now gone for we whom strive to keep what is near and dear to us alive, poetry, is now little fame or even acknowledgment. Why, has the world turned into such a evil place that we no longer hold a worth unless it is of death and destruction?

The manifesto from their website that gave me pause, however, was: all poetry means something … true enough, but is simply "meaning something" enough? I do not wish to get bogged down into pointless argument over which school of poetry "is more real" than another or whether you can call yourself a "poet" if you don't rhyme or any of the other time-wasting debates I have read in so many blogs of late. I think it is symbolic that we, a nation of poets, spend more time back-stabbing and fighting over who is "real" than doing any serious writing; we are a nation giving away our voices.

To me poetry, all poetry, is all praise and it's all right¹ and that's the end of the argument. Or, to put it slightly differently, I don't care how you say it, it's what you say I care about.

I attempted to answer the question. Here is a snippet of the letter:

[It is] a good question however it is not an easily answered one. First you must ask "what is the purpose of poetry?" If it is to tell a "truth" (whatever that means; truth is a definition filled with so many gray areas as to render it meaningless) then you must ask if it is really poetry that does not earn any respect or is it us, the poets?

Once you get outside academic, middle-class America I would argue that poetry is just as honored as it always was; it all just depends where you come from. Take Europe, for example. Ginsberg talks about being treated like a god when he went there in the 1960s. Poland's Czeslaw Miłosz and Wislawa Szymborska were royalty. Or even closer to home, Pablo Neruda's universal love in the Americas. Or William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens holding court as Modernists.

What is the difference? These were not "professional" poets, these were people who wrote poems but also did other things as well. Neruda held public office, was an ambassador, worked "with the people" who in turn read and loved his words. Williams was a doctor. Stevens sold insurance. The difference is that they were engaged in the world in a way most poets I read today are not.

Neruda’s writes about this in his mind-blowing poem, "El hombre invisible," when he condemns (gently) "mi antiguo hermano," my old graybeard brothers, who only write about themselves. He says:

siempre dicen "yo,"
a cada paso
les sucede algo,
es siempre "yo,"
por las calles
sólo ellos andan
o la dulce que aman,
nadie más,
no pasan pescadores,
ni libreros,
no pasan albañiles,
nadie se cae
de un andamio,
nadie sufre,
nadie ama,
sólo mi pobre hermano,
el poeta,
a él le pasan
todas las cosas
y a su dulce querida,
nadie vive
sino él solo,
nadie llora de hambre
o de ira,
nadie sufre em sus versos
porque no puede
pagar el alquiler,
a nadie en poesía
echan a la calle
con camas y con sillas

…

hay huelgas,
vienen soldados,
disparan,
disparan contra el pueblo,
es decir,
contra la poesía,
y mi hermano …

for they always say "I,"
every where they go
something occurs
and it is always "I,"
down these streets,
only they
or their beloved,
walk down these streets,
no one else,
there are no fishermen about,
no bookstore merchants,
no bricklayers walking about,
no one stumbles and falls
from their scaffolding,
not one person suffers,
not one person loves,
only my poor brother,
the poet,
everything is happen
to him
and to his beloved,
no one lives
but him, the solitary poet,
no one weeps from hunger
or anger,
not one person suffers
in all his poetry
because he was unable
to pay the rent,
not one person
in all his poetry
is evicted from his house
with everything he owns,

…

there is a worker's strike,
military police arrive
and open fire,
they fire upon the people,
which is also to say,
against poetry …

(the translation is mine, I am sorry for my poor Spanish skills) However, if there is blame that no one is listening to us then it falls completely on the shoulders of the poet and not the audience. Who is saying the important things right now? We have a genocide going on and where are our poets condemning that? Why is it when I open Poetry Magazine or APR I think our pretty poets are living on the moon for all the worldly events they deal with. I do not mean we aren't writing poetry. Everyone, it seems, is writing. What I am looking for are poets who still remember they are citizens; poets who go out, roll up their sleeves, fight and die for what what they believe in instead of giving lip service to vague ideas they have never experienced first hand.

"Oh, wait," you say, "fighting and dying? Oh no, I won't die for poetry, which is to say, the people … that's not what poetry is about" — and there you have it, my friend, that is why today's poetry can be, but doesn't necessarily need to be, seen as so utterly irrelevant by so many of us.

I usually do not comment on my own images I make and post here. But today I will. These men are at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. They are about to be executed as men and women and children right now, as you read this, are about to be executed. And the glorious poet in the foreground, Apollo or Diana or some other radiating figure we blow to mythic proportions and think they will save the world from evil, does what? Sing about failed love? about their iPod? about their mean-spirited parents? Where were the safe American poets writing their safe American outrage about the fate of these men and women and children in 1938 Europe? about all the genocide that has just happened in the last 100 years in Australia? in Congo? the Philippines? in Poland-Lithuania? All across Soviet Russia? in Croatia? under Nazi controlled Europe? in South-West Africa? in China? Japan's treatment of Korea? Ottoman control over Armenia? in Bangladesh? in Burundi? in Cambodia? in East Timor? now Afghanistan? now Iraq? in Rwanda? in Bosnia? in Sudan?

Our poets were, then and now, safe and at home and not getting their pretty hands dirty.

And now we have Darfur. And every day it continues: they fire upon the people,/ which is also to say,/ against poetry … and so my fine poets, what are we going to do about it? Shall I make another picture in one year and title it: "prisoners at darfur awaiting execution: and where were you my fine poet?" … and where will we all be in a year? and what were we all doing?

1. I take that line from Rumi when Moses learns: "You have separated Me from one of My own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever? I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone else. Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to Me. I am apart from all that. Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another. Hindus do Hindu things. The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do. It's all praise, it's all right. It's not Me that's glorified in acts of worship. It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words they say. I look inside at the humility. The broken-open lowliness is the Reality, not the language! Forget phraseology, I want burning, burning . . . . burn up your thinking and forms of expression! Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving and speaking are one sort. Lovers who burn are another."

   … Yes, I want a nation of burning … [back]

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Scantily Clad Info Dump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.