politics in poetry

[twelveoone]

Re: Re: politics in poetry

...is always a dangerous thing, this however, is a wonderful thing. I question the use of the word "smoothly"

Boo answers"If you were an invader and you just annihilated a tribe like you were supposed to do, don't you think you'd be kinda smug or 'smooth' as you left the ruins behind?"
Perhaps ?
and the Thunderstorm smugly rolls away.

Lauren asks, answers herself
Why?
Mixing politics in poetry is dangerous? Hell, yes! Writing is dangerous.

1201 further sticks foot in mouth
"What I saw above was not Politics it was Humanity"

Boo answers
"Yes- my poem is about more inhumanity"
Maria says
"we can communicate to everyone involved about our human situation"

1201 kinda of remembers saying
"this however, is a wonderful thing."

Granted, all of this taken out of context, but do you see how much agreement is going on?

Let me use an analogy,
Air is a good thing, most of use don't think about it much
Air must have some velocity, otherwise we die in our own sweat and staleness, only at that point we give it another name "breeze", "wind"
Air above 40 mph starts to bother me, above 70 mph it starts to get dangerous and cluttered with debris

The disagreement if there is one, hinges upon what one perceives "politics" are.

 

[twelveoone]

By the way. This thread is not about my poem or it's content. Thats already been done. It's about Dharfur. It's about Big Brother American Gov't. and it's choices of when to get involved and when not. And why...

And it's not just for Americans. American politics are more and more spilling over onto the rest of the world, thereby giving the rest of the world the right to speak their own minds.

I guess the thread topic is misleading. I'm sorry.

and for this, and the post right above it, I am in agreement, except for this: "I'm sorry."
Why should you be? "politics" is (pardon the expression) a red flag for me.

 

[BooMerengue]

I meant

I'm sorry my thread topic is misleading! lol

Good point, twelveoone. I also thought "The disagreement if there is one, hinges upon what one perceives "politics" are."

It's my opinion that politics are just like air- we live them breathe them eat them wake up to them each and every day.

 

[twelveoone]

twelveoone said "Let me ask both of you, what are the most important things in your life?
Another person? Who wins the elections? Or god (whoever it is? - heh, heh) forbid some idea of what the world should be."

The most important thing in my life varies throughout my day. When I first wake up it's my cigarette. And so on throught the day.

When I'm writing a poem, or a letter or an essay, tho, I want my prayers to come thru. And I pray always that my Grandsons get to live in a world without strife, lies, hunger etc.

In order for that to happen I have to understand the political world around me. In America we have some control over that. Not a lot. But more than most other countries. And so I try to pay attention to what's going on in the world.

If my poem alerts people to a sad thing going on in North Africa thats good. But... if my poem makes people go look to see whats going on in North Africa and then call their representatives to task on it, than that is waaay better. So...

Yes- my poem is about more inhumanity. But my poem is really about "wake the fuck up someone and STOP this!" And thats why it's political, and thats good.

I'm not well read as far as Pound and Neruda. But Dickens. Man he can sure write a great story, right? And his stories are a scathing indictment of the politics of his day.

Certainly I write poems about nonsense. But I think anyone who has a chance to be heard on any level owes it to himself to try to better his own environment.

Peace. y'all!

1201 shuts the fuck up, goes has a cigarette, leaves a couple more of these things, for you and whoever else thinks, I'm disagreein' with

 

[BooMerengue]

*runs over and grabs your shoulders gently shaking you screaming and laughing... "Babeee!! Don't you know?? Disagreement is a GOOD thing!!"

 

[twelveoone]

*runs over and grabs your shoulders gently shaking you screaming and laughing... "Babeee!! Don't you know?? Disagreement is a GOOD thing!!"

well if you are going to run over, and laugh, I'll agree to disagree

 

[Lauren Hynde]

What do you want to put first, a person, the state, or even worse some great idea. At worst, some person may run amuck kill a couple dozen people, the state a couple of million, its the great ideas that bring it up into the 10's of millions. At best, another person will bring out the best of humanity in you.

So, you're trying to suggest that mixing politics and poetry is dangerous because it might actually reach into the audience and drive them to action? Isn't that the point of poetry in the first place? I will repeat what I said before: yes, it's dangerous. But what is the alternative? The sterility of dead verse about poppy flowers in the country when you were 3? No, sorry, that can have a political spin as well.

State may toss you a check, that it stole from somebody else. Now what has any great idea done for me? You?

Well, there was that one idea about living as a community and each member specialising on an activity, so that we could protect each other, help each other, benefit from each other's abilities, and thus climb down from the trees and start walking on two feet. You know, civilisation?

Now as far as Ezra goes, he was full of great ideas, looks like pretty much 800 pages of bullshit to me, not that there is anything wrong with bullshit, I've generated quite a bit, it makes great fertilizer...sometimes for the mind.

What exactly do you mean? Ezra Pound wasn't a poet?

The problem with politics is that nobody is right, and the tendency to focus on a grand scale either compounds the problem or creates a different set of problems.

The problem with politics is that nobody is right because nobody has the so-called total perspective, and so it only ends up creating a new set problems. Is this what you are trying to say? You political stance is that there should be no politics? That's a contradiction, isn't it? There is only one way of ending politics: death. Either by exterminating the human body, or by not talking about it, i.e.: exterminating the human mind.

Let me ask both of you, what are the most important things in your life?
Another person? Who wins the elections? Or god (whoever it is? - heh, heh) forbid some idea of what the world should be.

All of the above and much more. The people around me, certainly, but poetry isn't written for audiences of one. My dreams and aspirations, all that surrounds me and all I see, hear and feel. All is political.

Pablo Neruda was a poet
Pablo Neruda was Stalinist
Pablo Neruda wrote "political" poems the focused on the suffering in Spain, or humanity.
I'm not sure if Pablo Neruda wrote any "I love communism" poems, I haven't come across any.
And Neruda is noted for what kind of poetry?
The things that matters most to you are?
What are your solutions?

Pablo Neruda, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, said: "In the midst of the arena of America's struggles, I saw that my human task was none other than to join the extensive forces of the organized masses of the people, to join with life and soul, with suffering and hope, for it is only from this great popular stream that the necessary changes can arise for writers and for nations. [...] Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: 'Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City, which will give light, justice, and dignity to all mankind.'"

The question should be for what kind of poetry do you choose to note Neruda?

I am rather flattered that you think I made a dangerous political statement. Which one was it?

You said that [one of] the danger of mixing politics in poetry is that you lose half your audience. When you classify a poem with a political undertone as being about humanity and not politics, you're not only losing that half of your audience that doesn't agree with the politics behind it, but you're accusing them of being inhuman. What is more dangerous?

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Had to have a prayer to some god, she's was perhaps the best, no? She is the identified both as the creator and with wisdom and with a sect of christianity. I love the idea of a prayer for "no knowledge" to a gnostic figure. Was that the question?

No. I understand all the implications of the word and the concept you wanted to introduce with it, but it looks hammered in.

Are you directing the prayer to Sophia as a godlike feminine entity of Christian pre-creation mythology? If so, why do you start with "O lord"?

Are you directing the prayer to a lord-Sophia entity? Even if there is a correlation between Sophia and the pre-creation God, the lord-Sophia expression makes no semantic sense.

Are you directing the prayer to Sophia and the "O lord-" part is only a speliative of some sort?

Whatever the answer, it doesn't fit. It doesn't flow.

O Lord
In the next Genesis...

O Sophia
In the next Genesis...

O lord- Sophia
In the next genesis... I just can't make sense of.


PS: By the way, this is as political a poem as any.

 

[BooMerengue]

"You said that [one of] the danger of mixing politics in poetry is that you lose half your audience. When you classify a poem with a political undertone as being about humanity and not politics, you're not only losing that half of your audience that doesn't agree with the politics behind it, but you're accusing them of being inhuman. What is more dangerous?"

Thank you Lauren. I'm not as well spoken as you and I wasn't sure how to respond to this. On a less grand scale, this reduces MY audience by half, and I don't think that's true. My poem was NOT intended as a 'poem about humanity' though that is a byproduct. I wrote my poem as a wake up call. I wanted people to question it and act on it- one way or another.

 

[twelveoone]

No. I understand all the implications of the word and the concept you wanted to introduce with it, but it looks hammered in.

Are you directing the prayer to Sophia as a godlike feminine entity of Christian pre-creation mythology? If so, why do you start with "O lord"?

Are you directing the prayer to a lord-Sophia entity? Even if there is a correlation between Sophia and the pre-creation God, the lord-Sophia expression makes no semantic sense.

Are you directing the prayer to Sophia and the "O lord-" part is only a speliative of some sort?

Whatever the answer, it doesn't fit. It doesn't flow.

O Lord
In the next Genesis...

O Sophia
In the next Genesis...

O lord- Sophia
In the next genesis... I just can't make sense of.


PS: By the way, this is as political a poem as any.

I don't know this word "speliative", if you are suggesting a comma go there, that you
And yes this is a very political poem, prompted in part by an incomprehensibility on my part, of how people can get so easily fooled when you marry religion with a political goal, prompted also by me finding the text of a radio speech in 1945 (slightly editted) given by Ezra Pound on some National Front website. The unedited version sure looked like he was advocating a pogrom. This is an excellent website that discusses, much better than I ever could.
http://www.utpjournals.com/product/utq/672/672_review_munk.html
This horrifies me, Heidegger was worse, both of these wordy bastards went to comfortable graves, evading the fact that their words may have helped children go to gas chambers.
All I am saying is humanity before politics, yes even humanity before religion, because man has a real tendency to create god in the image and likeness of himself. No child's life is worth either. Language may be another problem, I really don't see us disagreeing on much, in which case I apologize, for either misstating or overstating something.
Now, what I saw in Boo's poem was her primary intent, to draw attention to the horror in Sudan, was there politics involved, of course. Is this good, of course. I do not know what the best course of action may be. Is this dangerous, well depends on, if Ashcroft is lurking about. In which case she has all the more of my respect.
The other danger lies in the fact that if for instance, I write a poem about some asshole government official badly, all I did is harden his support, i.e. half the audience. Boo did not do that.
The worst case is illustrated by the web-site posted above. Boo does not do that at all.
I may have been mislead by the title of the thread. I thought oh.oh.
I do not like politics, as it has a real tendency to divide people in camps.

As for Neruda, I have only read him in English, it looks to be better in Spanish, I did not see anything singing the praises of an ice pick in the back of Trotsky's head, or of Gulags, again his political poetry attacked (what I percieve as) human issues. His Stalinism is a non issue. He was used to contrast with Pound.

As for Darling Ezra, if he wasn't so full of himself and his jew-hatred, he would have even been a better poet, he was quite capable of it. As here.

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

I had one issue with her poem, the word "smoothly", I accepted her defence of it.