Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Kent Johnson
After sending me the note I posted yesterday, Kent Johnson went on in a later email to muse the following:
What seems funny to me, frankly, is that the "non-mainstream" poetry world has produced exactly two books so far that stand as full and open responses to the war – Weinberger's and my own Lyric Poetry after Auschwitz.
To which he appended, in a later email, “That I've heard of, at least.”
All of which made me think about the nature of anti-war poetry itself. When I wrote directly of Weinberger’s dystopian epic, Eliot wrote to say that he’d never claimed to be a poet, and doesn’t claim What I Heard in Iraq to be a poem. But if it’s not a poem, it certainly is poem-like in many of its strategies, and many of its effects.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the composition of “Wichita Vortex Sutra II,” for my money the greatest anti-war poem of the
When “Wichita Vortex Sutra II” was created, the war – dating it from the
When I think of anti-war poems &
Let me ask that question in a more difficult way: are The Pisan Cantos anti-war poems? They certainly do not appear to be pro-war poems as such. But it’s hard to imagine them as any other than as war poems – that is their field of engagement. They are, to borrow Johnson’s terms, “responses to the war.” Yet to concede even that is to suggest that some of the greatest poetry of the Second World War was penned by an enemy in a prisoner-of-war camp. If you exclude The Pisan Cantos as war poems, then it would seem to me you would have to exclude H.D.’s Trilogy, especially her work on the bombing of London The Walls Do Not Fall. Yet to include these works seems to me to move along a path that ineluctably leads to the idea that every poem by Paul Celan, for example, must be read/understood as a war poem.
This question really concerns the epistemological dimension of the poem, the degree to which any text can be said to be (or not be) about. That is an issue that has been fodder for a generation of theory now, and one can track writing’s bad conscience toward this relationship back even before Joyce demonstrated the slippery slope that leads more or less directly from ”The Dead” through Ulysses to Finnegans Wake. Poets approach this from more than a few different angles along that path – Duncan’s strategy in Passages, for example, of addressing the issue directly (albeit through a discussion of a painting, Piero di Cosimo’s painting “The Forest Fire”), as part of a far larger sweep of issues in the poem is not so dissimilar, frankly, from Pound’s own solution.
It’s interesting to think of who didn’t write a Vietnam War poem – virtually all of the New York School, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson – as it is to think of the degree to which this epistemological question lay at or near the heart of the breakup between Duncan & Denise Levertov – Duncan, the antiwar poet, taking a different position when confronted with the collapse of Levertov’s work from 1970 onward into so much reified politically correct scolding. A parallel discussion was going on, it should be noted, with regards to the poetry of Amiri Baraka, as many of his old pals among the New Americans were not so enchanted with his turn toward Maoism. Here, tho, the war was a more peripheral issue, tho I’m sure Baraka would have noted that it was hardly peripheral to black men, who were being wounded & killed in disproportionate numbers. And there was a third debate during that same period, involving Edward Dorn & the rejection of
It’s worth noting further, just because it’s the way Johnson posed the question, that neither “Sutra” nor Passages 13 were themselves books, tho “Sutra” was reprinted as a poster more than once and “The Fire” if I am not mistaken was first published by Poetry magazine (something that could not happen today with its current anti-modern regime). The closest thing I can come to as a book-length response poetically to the Vietnam war by a major poet of that period is Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters, just possibly the most embarrassing book ever penned by any of the New Americans, filled with romantic fantasies of what it would be like to be a “real” revolutionary. Dedicated, no less, to Bob Dylan, self-admitted fan of Barry Goldwater that he was.
So I’m not so surprised that more such works don’t now exist – nor for that matter do I think that it means that the current generation of post-avant poets are politically quietist any more than I think the absence of similar writing by Robert Creeley, say, ever meant that he wasn’t utterly appalled and sickened by the brutality & stupidity that was our imperial adventure in Southeast Asia. The issue is much more complicated than this. What is really sad & sick is that, 40 years after “Wichita Vortex Sutra II,” this whole question comes back to haunt us:
Three five zero zero is numerals
Headline language poetry, nine decades after Democratic Vistas
and the Prophecy of the Good Gray Poet
Our nation “of the fabled damned”
or else . . .
Language, language
Ezra Pound the Chinese Written Character for truth
defined as man standing by his word
Word picture: forked creature
Man
However, we’re now in the unique position of witnessing what may very well be the complete destruction of our earth because of human mismanagement and neglect.
Poetry is many things, but why are so many poets seemingly so fearful of speaking out against the cabal of wingnut cowboys who have appropriated America? Having no political stance is obviously a political stance in itself—whoops.
Especially after the reelection of Bush the Lesser it seemed like many people were of the opinion, “well, we’re stuck with this, no use talking about it anymore.” At the same time, I can totally respect that because I remember feeling so agitated about it all that I felt physically exhausted. I wanted to take a 4-year nap.
xxxjimmy
For example, during a war we are often told we are indestructable, and that if we are killed we somehow survive in the patriotic matrix. A poem that addresses that, that speaks to the ephemerality of life, the ways in which an early death can't be considered anything but the ultimate tragedy --
Or, to take another example, we are told (in our democratic countries) that war is a necessary evil, that we cannot rejoice in it. A poem that rejoices, then, in war, that lovingly portrays it, can today also be considered an anti-war poem.
I've noted this before, but Spahr's "...connection..." book (long title) is I think a direct response to the contemporary war.
xxxjimmy
Assclown.
xxxjimmy
xxxjimmy
xxxjimmy
xxxjimmy
The Leslie Scalapino edited anthologies enough and war and peace (2 volumes), while not single author works, represent clear and full anti-war volumes and contain work by poets young and un-young.
And anyone who scrolls the Poems Against the War site set up by Sam Hamill and co. will find a looooooong list of poets along the whole spectrum.
Quality is another issue, sure, but there's plenty of work out there, and plenty of full books (more than I've mentioned, and more coming).
I saw that POETS AGAINST THE WAR anthology in a used bookstore for $1.50. All those responses are now culturally cheaper than a hot hot Starbucks.
xxxjimmy
http://lyricpoetryafterkentjohnson.blogspot.com/
xxxjimmy
There are lots of poems written by veterans out there -- even anthologies of poems by veterans from all sides and by victims from all sides but none of it ever seemed to have any effect whatsoever on the "larger" poetry world.
Instead we have the usual suspects and the usual literary musings. I love the Ginsberg poem but the large forms looming it evokes are not all the there there and in fact there is a sort of sentimentality to the poem not perhaps avaliable to those who experienced another reality from the point of view of victim or victimizer or both. Of course it's perfectly possible to write something worthy about something never experienced but what is telling is the marginilization of those who had direct experience. Insufficiently artful? Or just something there that is forgotten and repressed almost instantly so that certain questions don't get asked? Yeats justified excluding Wilfred Owen from the Oxford Anthology by claiming that he was "stuck in the blacking of the mirror." So what explains the exclusion here?
xxxjimmy
"I remember (pretty young at the time) trying to figure out--along with a roomful of others) just what was going on with Duncan's anti-war Passages. I wanted a streetfigher up there on the podium, not an aesthete."
Doesn't opposition to the war in such a way that Levertov and others did it (streetfighters) keep them trapped in a mode of consciousness that only reflects that of the war-mongers? Duncan believed it was a poet's job to "imagine evil, not oppose it."
We don't get beyond war consciousness by replicating it, only by going beyond. Weinberger's book is effective when it cleanly reflects the actual words of the Bush Administration officials, but when he gets into name-calling, it loses its power. (I wrote a short review on the book and posted it here: http://www.globalvoicesradio.org/What_Happened_Here.htm )
The difference between anti-war poet and poet of peace are subtle yet huge in their implications for individuals AND the culture. Gandhi and King's stance toward these things seems more effective to me and that's why, in the long run, I seek to go the way Duncan did rather than the way of Levertov.
Leonard Schwartz at the Evergreen State College asks: "When does Poets Against War turn into the War Against Poets?"
Paul Nelson
Efforts of anybody who cares would, at this point, be better spent on attempting to impeach Bush, rather than gather war-themed poems for a book.
This is not to say that I do not believe that poetry is incapable of changing the world -- I completely believe that it can...And does, all the time.
I agree with Jimmy, minus the namecalling.
Paul -- I like what you said about 'poet of peace.'
xxxjimmy
xxxjimmy
What a distinguished looking gentleman!
Perhaps this picture is taken somewhere in Asia or even in South America, but it's so multicultural, and that's just wonderful!
Most of Michael Davidson's work since the '90's Iraq invasion.
Fanny Howe.
Lots and lots of interesting anti-war poets.
Ahem... me, though of the handful of poems people are publishing, nobody's picking the antiwar ones...
and most of my friends who are writing.
There's also the question of activity of poetic communities, as opposed to that of individual poets: though the Hamill anthology is pretty lame, it sparked loads of readings all over the country. And Eileen Myles, in San Diego, immediately started a series of anti-war readings, at which some very good writers of both her and my generations read. I'm sure many things like this happened.
xxxjimmy
In response to the paralyzing doubts about the political efficacy of poetry expressed in some comments here, and often elsewhere:
Of course poetry isn't enough.
The question for poets, "qua" poets, is "what can poetry do?"
Obviously.
And the more poets there are trying different things, the better.
Declaring your work to be against the war gives it a social value even if the work is crappy. Which is why it's good that most of the stuff in Sam Hamill's anthology was written. Or if Andy Gricevich just doesn't like it (it's still good that Bly and Merwin wrote what they wrote, and beefed it up with a declared stance).
Theorizing radicalism is a good thing to do, but I don't think it should lead us into a political quietism, where we sit around wondering if we're radical enough. I do agree with Patrick, though, that it's essential (as activists, and probably as poets) to think about the ways resistance can be easily absorbed (or ignored or caricatured by the slavering barbarian idiots who rule the news media with the blood of their millions of victims oozing from their grinning jowls).
If not, why not?
And, finally:
It is indeed still the case that, in most universities, "putting politics into your art" is still considered a problem--as if it can harm the integrity of your precious aesthetics. When the truth is that it's just damn hard to write good political poetry, or political chamber music, or whatever.
I think it is a critical distinction. I don't think impeachment is likely as R's have control of Congress. ARGH!
Paul
cf. the aforementioned Enough & two volumes of War & Peace, both from O Books. Though I'd argue that innovative oppositional poetries are more than ever just "antiwar" ...
DB
Yes Andy. So true.
Otherwise, I've nothing to say about this inane and mostly masturbatory conversation.
xxxjimmy
PS: Crappy poems have no social value, because nobody reads them. Although I'll play along...Yes! And fairies come for your teeth and we all go to heaven! Yes!
In underwear,
Scott
Effng Press
"And they all climb the same roads and the same stairs others go down; for never, since man began to think how to overcome and overpass man, have other roads and other stairs been found."
--Arturo Giovannitti, 1912
Nobody reads crappy poems? That's very generous of you.
Kevin:
Not to be rude, but: who the hell are you to assume that America is "the whole world" ("let's face it") for everyone here? Besides being incorrect and presumptuous,that statement makes you sound pretty high and mighty.
Also, your comment about political poems would be the same reactionary cliche one always hears (especially in universities), were it not for your "I suppose that's the case for all poetry." Yeah, I'd rather have only good poetry, but I'll take a bad political poem any day over a bad poem about, say, an epiphanic experience that gave meaning to one's family life. At least, in the former case, it could be read at a rally, where it would take up the time otherwise swallowed by a bad speech. People are much harder on art with socially critical aspirations than they are on art with safer aspirations, and that's the gloating sneer of the winner shining through in all its glory.
People need to be comfortable (or "uncomfortable") with the separate spheres of their lives.
Poetry isn't a useful way to "practice" political action in the world. Poetry will not get Bush impeached. And it will not get the right people elected. Poetry is not taken seriously as a political act in America. That's partly because the level of indignation, of an awareness of what's happening, is muted here. When enough people are uncomfortable enough, they become intractible, and ultimately, take to the streets and barricades.
Poetry is an adjunct to the political process, an accompaniment to political consciousness and awareness. Ultimately, we need to devote some effort in our lives to clarifying the debate, so that the lies and falsehoods that are passed off as "comfort" in the media are exposed, and those who perpetrate them forced to face the truth, are brought to answer.
Anti-war poetry is fine. But we can't expect or demand that people who do not view poetry as a politically effective tool participate in protestation as an act of faith or commitment. Most great poetry is political only by indirect implication. Shakespeare is a political writer in a very deep sense; you could say few have written as vividly and meaningfully as he did about power, evil, courage, cunning, treason, and all the conditions of heroism and duty.
I lived through the Vietnam years, and read reams and reams of anti-war poetry and rhetorical hand-wringing, and that had some effect, but only in the context of action and life commitment. Writing a poem is a fairly tame form of commitment. Putting your body and your reputation and/or your signature on the line takes more guts. I know because my FBI file is six inches thick (at least that was in 1974 when I last saw it).
It's okay to be a politically active poet and not write anti-war poems. It's okay to write them, too. Great (or small) poets don't need to prove their concern by writing anti-war poems. Pablo Neruda was a Communist; his writings address political issues in a very straightforward way. That's fine. But that doesn't, on its face, signify that he's a better writer than Borges.
I feel uncomfortable when a writer lets politics "take over" their work to such a degree that the "subject" of the work is subordinated to dogma. That's a problem we have with most "Soviet" art and literature. I personally find these bookstore readings like those Isabel Allende gives to be boring, predictable, preachy, complacent, PC excercises in "right thinking."
The best forum for debate is debate itself. Poetry is not in itself a medium that efficiently fosters debate.
The best political poems are those which awaken in us the responsibilities we have towards the other spheres of our lives: Regard for lovers, children, family, neighborhood, community, the environment, and our elected officials. Gary Snyder is a good political poet not because he rants about renegade fascistic tyrants, but because he reminds us of the value of intimate attention to the details of what IS happening, and how we are a part of that.
We are the stewards of our collective conscience, and how well we manage that duty is a measure of our success as citizens of the world. Poetry is one way, but only part of the process.
That's something. And it's a tribute to his intelligence. No one else could bring it off.
agreed, and guilty as charged.
"we have here the writhings of conscience."
agreed, and guilty as charged.
The example of Francis Ponge came into my head last night just before sleep. I wonder what he would have to say about all of this?
Well, that's my opinion, which i stand by, regardless of who i am or am not. America likes to think it's the centre of the world, which it is, in some ways. Everything is always about America, though, to America: if some guy takes a shit in China, America have something to say about it. I mean, it's the way you have to think if you want to be the dominant world power, and reach a goal of 'the United Countries of America'.
I avoided Ron's blog for a while, 'cause a site that may or may not have been 42opus, said it was the best commentary of American poetry around. But, i tip my hat to Ron for his non-American-centred approach.
I like your poetry, btw, Andy. I didn't recognise your name, and i check-out Moria once a while...
Sorry to be rude (with my silly "not to be rude," too!).
Yes, America does think it's the center of the world, and that becomes even more glaringly obvious if I'm in, say, Germany, and run into some American tourists. It must be even more embarrassing to meet Americans in, say, India. The content of my objection was just that some of us, at least, are mortified by this parochial stance toward the rest of the world, and would frankly like to see its economic and cultural empire collapse, for the sake of almost everybody.
In any case, glad you like the poems. Thanks!
So, I should say that as far as I know the recording of WVS exists in two places: in the Stanford archives and on an audio cassette in my closet.
I have a whole theory about why the recording actually "works" in a way that the printed version doesn't--espcially at the climactic moment where Ginsberg "declares an end to the War"--but that's another story.
Ah yes, epiphanic moments are passe now, old hat, gone with the cleansing, advant wind. God/Gaia/Nada forbid that one should write about one's family life. Strictly off-limits (though aren't such artificial strictures rather old hat themselves now? No?).
" At least, in the former case, it could be read at a rally, where it would take up the time otherwise swallowed by a bad speech."
Do you know how FUNNY that sounds? Perfect for a comedy sketch: Okay brethren. I'm not going to bore you with some long-winded political speech. Instead I'm going to read one of my non-epipiphanic, political epics, so that we don't waste so much time. The poem is fully annotated, with 12 pages of headnotes and footnotes, so I'll read those too. When this meeting breaks up, 18 hours from now, you'll know you've learnt something useful AND experienced a real work of art! Okay, I want you to concentrate now...
tend to make me bristle
"America thinks it's..."
last time I checked
America the concept
not the land itself
was composed of individuals
and while many of them
think
America the finncial/political/media feted body
is the creme de la creme
or the ALL there is to that____
many of the individuals
therein
do not
think that way
"America" doesn't think
and at least
it does appear
that many of its previously non-thinking citizens
have started to have
a thought or two
so that's at least
encouraging
now if they'd just start to do a little reading
Swerve Left: Intellectwals are Us
My comment, which you quote (about the rallies) was meant to be kind of ridiculous. At the same time, if you go to many anti-war rallies, you must know what I mean: I'm relieved when somebody gets up and reads some (not footnoted epic but) four-minute rant with a bunch of very bad rhymes in it, because I don't have to listen to another person trying (and failing) to talk like Martin Luther King, with those cadences he was so good at. Activism needs art, and even bad art helps.
I never said family was "off-limits." I'm no authority on what you "can" write about, wouldn't want to be, and the very idea is totally ridicuous to me. I just made the not-particularly-strong statment that I prefer a cliche spouted for the sake of changing the world than a cliche meant to "express" how full the poet's life is.
xxxjimmy
PS: I also think Ron's Comment Fields would make a great Central American Soap Opera! Dios Mio!
Andy, my apologies if I understood you too quickly (I did wonder if you were deliberately being 'kind of ridiculous'). On the other hand, I don't go to rallies of any description, nor know anyone who does, which perhaps explains my response. I DID go on the big anti-war march, part of a co-ordinated protest in various countries, and am glad I did. I generally agree with Les Murray's 'Demo' ("Nothing a mob does is clean"). But not in that instance. I simply had to register my disgust at all the lies.
"I prefer a cliche spouted for the sake of changing the world than a cliche meant to "express" how full the poet's life is."
Ah well, I just can't stomach cliches, especially not those of the poetically political variety. As I think Brodsky said, poetry and politics have 3 things in common, the p the o and the t. Though of course it rather depends on what one means by 'politics', or, for that matter, 'poetry'.
Anyway, cheers, Mark ; )
Yeah--why waste time, as I've done, preferring one cliche to another? Hindsight is my major mode of internet communication...
Andy
Ah, don't worry, man, spouting off about America wasn't even relevant to the post (though i saw it would've been in another recent post . . .).
Anyway, i didn't feel your blog was getting enough attention, so i put-up a link on my own. Hope it helps.
K.
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