[New-Poetry] Thought for the day after the elections

[JforJames at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/8/2006 9:59:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:


I'd go farther than that...To write a poem, in  contermporary
society, is a political  act.
Finnegan


I disagree.  An aesthetic act,  maybe, but not political.  "Political" comes 
from polis, the Greek  word for the city (state).  It's a long jump to claim 
that any aesthetic  act is also a political one, and, yes, I know "the only 
protest is beauty." I  don't believe that the personal is political, as someone 
famously  claimed.  Personal is personal, unless you're living under Stalin, 
where  it becomes a crime against the state to be personal.  In this society  
there is no such crime.  We can make any kind of personal statement we  wish to 
make; this forum is proof of that.  To imagine otherwise is to be  paranoid 
and silly.  James, I don't wish to be unkind, but your statement  is 
hyperbolically silly.  Can you provide one example--i. e. any  poem--that supports what 
you've said?




Sam, 
It's not one poem...it's that all  poems support the my statement. 
A poem surely is,  first, an aesthetic act. But if that was all it was 
poetry would backed into that  small box of art for art's sake... 
instead of at large as art  for sake of humankind. 
Of course, my stock &  trade is the aphorism. 
And the aphorism is not an  instrument of proof but of  
provocation. But if the above  statement was a thesis,  
I'd say that the forces arrayed  against poetry, the poet,  
and poetic sensibility are many  in this day and age. 
To name only a few: the modern  workplace and marketplace,  
the mass media culture, intense  engagement with gadgetry, 
machine and devices, the  fixations on celebrity and rabid 
sports fandom, the bombardment of  visual and sonic stimula,  
miked up preachers in  stadia-sized mega-churches, pet fetishes,  
cosmetic surgery and fitness  crazes, global capitalism  
and its making of cheap goods  into our only gods, 
educational system deficiencies,  environmental degradation, 
litter, waste products and  overcomsumption, carelessness and 
lack of attention, overmedicaton  and overmediation,  
etc. These social forces are, in  turn, supported by  
our political policies in  a symbiotic exchange of resources 
and control. 
The poet, though virtually  ignored in contemporary 
society, writes a simple poem.  He/she uses a very  
rudimentary and commonplace  instrument: the word.  
He/she make use of very few  resources in her/his art.  
The poet doesn't wrap the  Reichstag in Mylar. The poet  
doesn't draw blueprints to erect  the world's tallest building.  
The poet doesn't spend million  dollars on traveling road show, 
juggernaut of stacked amps, laser  light show, and pyrotechnic  
extravaganza. The poet writes,  reads, and maybe publishes  
in this or that corner of the  planet and the web.  
True, the poet, too, wants to be  seen, wants audience, 
at least on the level of  community. But the his/her poem  
is saying something else. The  poem is saying that there 
is place for the authentic, for  attention and for emotions,  
for close observation, for  contemplation, for the comic and  
the tragic without the trappings  of showmanship. That there  
is, still, a kind of speech that,  by construct of sound and content, 
that calls out to the human  spirit against the bewildering  
blizzard of signal noise. It says  listen. It says think.  
It says slow down. It says stand  up and dance. It says sit up  
and pay notice to what is going  on around you, really see it,  
hear it. So in that way, the poem, any poem, is a political  act.
 
 
The Butterfly Effect
 
     In '72, Edward Lorenz gave a  famous address, 
"Does the Flap of a  Butterfly's Wings in Brazil 
set off a  Tornado in Texas?" Sensitive  dependence 
on initial conditions: A  principle of what came  
to be known  as chaos theory...

But let's say it's  only a figurative tornado
that rips through an area northwest of Crawford,  Texas,
tear-asses across the 1600 acres of our President's ranch, 
the  'Western White House', far from the real one 
at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,  and maybe 
that butterfly isn't even an exotic from faraway
in the Amazon  rainforests, ravaged as they are 
at a rate of 10,000 square miles per year,  disappearing 
in Belgium-sized bites, maybe the butterfly is just a sulfur  
or cabbage white, common to unmown fields 
and suburban  backyards.
 
     Perhaps it all starts in the  back of a bookstore,
before twenty or so people sitting on folding  chairs,
because the flap of that butterfly's wings 
is nothing more than  the pages of a poem, 
turned in a young woman's hands at an open mike,
as  she speaks her mind, asks to be heard.


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