Last night, 30 of us – 17 men & 13 women – sat in a circle & read our poems to one another. It’s great to see some people who are very dear to me, like Erica Hunt & James Sherry, as well as to meet others, such as John Koethe, for the very first time. Today is the main day of the retreat itself. Here is the last of the six questions we were given to contemplate:

 

Can poetry challenge militarized language and propaganda? Are textual critique, parody, and satire adequate responses or do they reify these abuses?

 

Let’s think about this:

 

¨       No one has spoken or written with more passion & commitment to the concept of a “man standing by his word” than has Ezra Pound, a fascist paranoid schizophrenic.

 

¨       The term avant-garde, the 200-year-old literary tradition with which many of this blog’s readers have some identification, has its origins in military strategy.

 

¨       A substantial portion of Americans still believe that

§         Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots with one another

§         Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction

§         Iraq presented a clear & present danger to the US

 

Can my linebreak here or a little heightened irony there undo the damage of the entire military-industrial complex, the concentration of news sources into the hands of a few giant rapacious corporations & the world domination politik of the Bush regime? What’s wrong with this picture?

 

In fact, poetry can function – indeed it does function – as an underground railroad of the mind, a mechanism for opening up critical thought concerning all kinds of issues, “militarized language and propaganda” included. Poetry does experientially what something like George Lakoff’s reframing project does critically & both are certainly needed in today’s world.

 

Even more important are the ways in which the arts figure change & transformation, dynamics that might be applied more broadly social.

 

None of these, however, is sufficient. There is no way to halt the depredation of the Bush regime without, in fact, taking the presidency away from the Republican party. Given that this party will stop at nothing to seize power – rig a Supreme Court vote, recall a newly elected governor, redraw congressional districts well outside of the normal guidelines – this will not be an easy task. But it is one that can be accomplished. However, this will not occur through improved tropes nor higher caliber flarf, even in the New York Times, but solely through political action.

 

I have written before – and I will reiterate the point here – that I don’t think that a member of Congress, including a senator, can ever beat a sitting president – the U.S. has only had one senator directly elected to the presidency in its entire history*, though senators traditionally clog the nomination process. For the Democrats in the U.S., this leaves very few options. The only credible ones are Howard Dean & General Clark. It may be ironic that Clark should be more credible as an outsider than Dennis Kucinich, but that is inherent in the structure of American politics more than in the positions of the two men. Between Clark & Dean, I am persuaded that Dean represents the more progressive alternative – he has a record of consistency that, while not perfect, is far better than Clark’s** – and his grassroots approach to fundraising, done in good part through the internet and “meetup,” promises to narrow the traditional Republican fundraising advantage.

 

I point this out to note that the way to challenge & defeat “militarized language & propaganda” is not through poetry, but through same political action a steelworker or waitress might take. The idea that poetry is in this sense a different practice strikes me as a genre-based mode of megalomania. If poets are serious about taking on the forces of darkness, the avenues for action are plentiful.

 

 

 

* JFK in 1960, with no incumbent and against VP Richard Nixon, in an election that depended on fraud in the city of Chicago. Eight years later, Nixon would run as an outsider, beating a man who had been VP for just a single term after a long career in the Senate.

 

** Tho it is worth noting here that the ideal ticket may be Dean-Clark.