Under normal conditions the outcome of the Presidential election might well have been one to favor the arts. There were signs that Obama acknowledged that art plays a significant role in society and examination of McCain's various policy statements showed his public policy on arts education to be quite contrasting. Additionally McCain had a well known record as he voted repeatedly to cut funding for or terminate the National Endowment for the Arts.
But these are not ordinary times. Today is supposed to be the big retail day of the year and shopping results will likely be disappointing to those who mull over the the sales stats looking for a some kind of trend.
The economy that is being transferred from the existing administration in Washington to the new President Obama is dismal. Employment figures are taking a beating. Sales of big ticket items, cars, homes, etc. are stalled and investments in traditional commodities and job creation are in decline. It is not likely that as the song goes, "Happy Days are Here Again."
Poets & Writers online features a story this week that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt recently requested that its editors stop acquiring books. We are talking about a significant sized publisher here.
In these hard times that are likely to grow even more worrisome in the months ahead, it is hard to see how the arts will likely benefit from much philanthropic activity if business are fighting for survival.
Small publishing houses who often find it hard to make ends meet will be challenged even grater. I can't imagine the state of writing grants improving. These things surly will make the competition for those looking to get their first manuscript published more exigent.
It is hard to see the way out of this economic calamity that we are in, but I might suggest that if you are one who is still doing Christmas/holiday exchanges, you might consider giving a new copy of one of your favorite poet's works that was published by a small press. It's a place to start.
"The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be." - John Ashbery
Have you ever stopped for a moment to ask yourself what the poem wants? Ok, chuckle if you want, but people are always trying to force something out of a poem that they believe is secretly hidden by the poet. Something he or she hopes you'll look for, but never find. I know this because more than one person has suggested the same.
When I write a poem, I may well have something in mind, but I may not. For the most part what I have in mind is of lesser significance that what the reader finds in the poem. By that I don't mean what I've hidden and they have decoded, but rather what that poem speaks to them in their own voice.
When someone tries to discern what I am saying in poetry, they may well become befuddled. My advise to readers of poetry is to let the poem become yours. Once that has happened, you'll know what it is telling you.
So often I’ve heard in the course of conversation, others questioning the relevancy of poetry in contemporary times. Without enlisting hours of diatribe countering such skeptical reasoning in an attempt to convince them they are wrong, I’d prefer to take just a few minutes to simply respond in terms of the relevance it holds to me as a poet. You see, I’m convinced that poetry is not for everyone. Just as I am convinced that while I believe baseball is far more interesting on so many levels than football, there are people who will never have the capacity to see, if you’ll pardon my metaphor, the sheer poetry of a 6-4-3 double play.
You first have to accept that poetry is an artistic expression. I find many unable or unwilling to allow themselves to think of language in that light. I for example have no gift for math whatsoever and so I find algebra equations simply math that is difficult to understand, much the same way some people cannot get past language that challenges any preconceived notions of logic to be a turn off and will not make the effort to find the art within.
Gustav Mahler, the German speaking composer from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in what is today the Czech Republic, once said, “If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.” In any art form, the expression that is trying to find an opening to the rest of the word needs a medium to act as a doorway. It is in Mahler’s words that I believe I can best defend the relevancy of poetry as a poet. If there were a way to express myself at those times when that interior doorway is open- in a simple straight forward way perhaps I would not be a poet.
Rita Dove describes poetry is distilled and powerful language. Paul Engle suggests it is language raised to the Nth power. Whatever way you wish to describe it, it is different than ordinary language. If I could paint, perhaps I would open my interior self on canvass. I don’t, but I do paint with words on white pages. My art is poetry. Poetry is my medium of expression; it is therefore very much relevant to me even in these times.
After a very intense day at work I came home, had dinner, watched a bit of TV and had a glass of wine and now have sit down to collect my thoughts.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is heavy on my mind. I suppose in part, because I always find political assassination to be particularly distasteful. It is so contrary to the order of society and political discourse. Another reason I think it hits home with me is that I have been thinking a lot lately about the role of arts in society the past few days and how democratic nations where free speech is tolerated is a place where arts should by all rights flourish and those nations that are controlled by a strong government of censorship and repression of ideas should be free of such artistic expression.
I look at China and Burma for example and am amazed at the courage it takes to be an artist outside the control of the government in these places. Still, we see evidence of courageous individuals who risk much under harsh conditions. Then I think how in our own country so many of us sit back and watch quietly as so many elements of our freedom are challenged from within.
The Pakistani people are truly at a critical juncture and it seems obvious there is a very fine line between the existence of a presumed democratic state and a military controlled one and just how tenuous democracy has become there.
It’s funny that political discourse and artistic expression can both provoke strong reactions from people. So here I am tonight, not listening to any music that I can share with you, but instead considering just how much alike the arts and political discourse are. How both need a positive nurturing environment to remain healthy.
The people of Pakistan tonight must surely recognize how delicate the order to their society is. The rest of us wait, and watch to see how it responds to the challenges it is presented with. What kind of order and society will survive.
Meanwhile, I think about poetry, music, and other fine arts and realize they aren’t just art, but expressions and reflections of who we are. We need to stop treating them as “just” arts, like in the educational process they are less than. Less than science or math or history. They are after all, who we are as a people. When art is restricted, our expressions are muffled. When that happens, freedom and democracy are on the line.
Political assassinations not only kill people, but the expression of ideas. Suppression of the arts will kill them too.
"Life before my father’s murder Any hope of life to come is removed; this place is born of the loss of her father and her mother's betrayal" -Frieda Hughes commentary
A New York Times article [Poetry Prize Sets Off Resignations at Society] details a controversy that has grown within the Poetry Society of America, but it seems to me it has raised even larger questions for the world of arts and literature, questions which I have not formulated a view as of yet.
The issue within the PSA centers around an award, the Frost Medal, which has been awarded to the poet John Hollander. The worthiness of Hollander's poetry itself is not in question, but a statement made by Hollander referring to referred to West African, Mexican and Central American as “cultures without literatures," and an interviewer on NPR who had paraphrased him as saying, “there isn’t much quality work coming from nonwhite poets today.”
Should such remarks be taken into consideration by the PSA or any organization seeking to honor a poet, writer or artist of any kind? Or, should the artistic work they produce be the soul basis for such recognition? The Hollander incident is of course not an isolated incident of controversy among poets. Ezra Pound for example is widely know for his anti-Semitism. Should that fact detract from the literary appreciation of his work? Can we appreciate great works of art and literature without bestowing accolades and honors upon the artists themselves?
No, I still don't have and answer to these questions, and I am sure this is not likely to be the last time this issue arises.
I read with amazement this article about the retirement of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. After all this time he blames the GOP losses in the midterm election on American impatience.
I won't even bother to discuss the numerous scandals among GOP House members which he denied lead to the Republican electoral demise. But I will take issue with the insistence that the American people are impatient where the war is concerned.
Patience, or lack thereof is only a small part of the electoral revolt where the war in Iraq is concerned. It is far more than impatience. He ignores the fact that the vast majority of America realizes that they were mislead in the first place. There was no compelling reason for the US to make an unprovoked strike on Iraq. Information about possible nuclear concerns were grossly exaggerated and information at the time suggested so. We had UN inspectors in the country again surveying the situation.
It is true that the existing government in Iraq was wrought with human rights abuses, but so is the Sudan, so is China, Sri Lanka, Labia, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire, El Salvador, Colombia, Turkey and the list of places with major human rights abuses goes on. Where is the U.S. response in these places? The fact is that our government and in particular the Bush administration found it politically expedient to go to war with Iraq, and they believed it would be a short campaign and there would be minimal causalities. They shifted resources from Afghanistan (a real stronghold for anti-American extremists) to Iraq.
For all the bad you could say about the Saddam Hussein, he did after all rise in power with behind the scenes help from the United States government. Further there existed a stable government environment that was not susceptible to outside interference in the region.
What Representative Hastert ignores of fails to understand is that we know the truth about Iraq and it is an ugly scar in the history of the U.S.
At last count, we've lost at least 3,699 U.S. servicemen and women in the ear in Iraq. At least 25,000 Americans have been wounded. This Mr. Hastert is a pretty heavy price to pay for what amounts to a lie. Your President was bound and determined to go to war in Iraq to the extent that he would present less than honest assessments of facts. That is a polite way of saying he lied.
On the other side, the price has been worse. By other side I am speaking of Iraqi citizens. Bush's war has created a vacuum in leadership in country where there is no consensus among the Iraqi people themselves. There are deep divisions between neighboring people. To the point of bloody civil strife on a daily basis. The death toll in one day alone in a northern Kurdish province that was previously one of the quieter spots is now at least 400.
We've destroyed so much of the countries infrastructure, in the capital alone they are lucky to have an hour or two electricity a day. One seriously has to ask the question, are they better off today than under Saddam?
Efforts to create a democratic government in Iraq have had only partial success. While the structure of a legislative body now exists, the divisions between the Iraqi people themselves are so deep that this brave body of men and women that rick their own lives daily are in worse gridlock than anything we've ever witnessed here in America.
Given this, and the fact that this whole mess has in fact lead to greater disdain for America Islamic people worldwide, how exactly has this made us safer?
In all this it is amazing how prophetic Dick Cheney was in 1994. The question is what lead to his mental lapse?
Congressman Hastert needs to understand that the American people are not simply an impatient bunch. No, we realize that George Bush pulled a Gulf of Tonkin on us (see here, here, and especially here) and are angered and the loss of lives on both sides, the loss of American prestige, the monetary cost of over $450 billion of non-budgeted tax money and counting , and creating a cause celeb for recruiting anti-American terrorists. If THIS is not a crime against the American people and humanity as a whole, I don't know what is.
Shock waves -Frieda Hughes: poetry The Diameter of the Bomb (by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), translated by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes, Selected Poems edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, Faber) "
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