Silliman's Blog: 9/23/12

Saturday, September 29, 2012

100,000 Poets for Change, now in its second year, is an idea that appears to be catching hold. With at least 20,000 thousand poets publishing in English – a figure unimaginable in my youth – and so many more writing in all the other languages of the world, the actual figure doesn’t even seem so fanciful. If not this year, then someday soon Michael Rothenberg will be able to report an actual 100,000 people participating in events under the broad umbrella of this concept. It’s only a matter of time – and continuity – until the day occurs when perhaps that many, maybe more, actually read on a single day.

I have always found this idea both intriguing and a little troubling, and the success of the endeavor does not seem to be revising this all that much. As a project, 100,000 Poets is notably silent on which change people might be talking about. The presumption – simple, straight-forward – is that change itself must be good, which has the obvious corollary that whatever the present might be is unacceptable. Fair enough – I think we can all agree that these are not the best of times, even if we might not agree on what those imaginary Bests might look like.

Labels: 100 Thousand Poets for Change