Sam Hamill, etc.

Oy... so I made the valuable mistake of checking the other blogs to see if there was any commentary on my grouching about blogs a few postings ago. I got caught in the labyrinth -- what a weird echo-chamber, interesting experience to see what you have written recounted back to you (Song Against Sex, Jordan?) -- hee hee. I editorialize so rarely that I never realized what a component this is of blogs -- addressing not your "readers" but your assessors, directly.

Anyway, Kasey and I had a small email back-and-forth about the Poets Against War venture and his posting Acknowledged Legislators: A Rant, concerning a Washington Post article that I didn't read prior to writing him. Kasey said that he was going to post some of this on his site but hasn't yet, and so I will step forward and put a little bit on my site, not out of impatience but in an effort to procrastinate yet further, and because my assessors seem interested in this topic. (BTW, please check out Carol Mirakove's latest bit on Circulars, it's a hot one.

My hope is that my position on this is not seen as settling old scores, as being for or against some particular aesthetic, etc., but merely questioning whether it is accurate to say that replacing the terms "poets" with "birdhouse makers" (I used the term "bakers", becaues of Jim Baker) settles the idea of what it means to operate as a collective will against this war (to be). The fact that "poets," as a group, have managed to co-opt some mainstream media space is great, but isn't the game, still, to be writers and articulate, be articulate, in a way not open to writers of petitions, or to movie stars, etc?

Ok, well, here's the back-and-forth. I've taken out all of the hellos and goodbyes but we were very decorous, promise! I hope nonetheless that my tone didn't put Kasey off, or that my ratherless humorless, leaden prose puts you off -- but I'm writing all of this garbage from work:

[bks to ksm]

I think you get it all wrong though, on some level. The idea, for me, is not that poets are just trying to avert this war -- it would be quite remarkable if the Bush administration pulled back from this war, decided to mend relations with the entire European community, went in on various international treaties on the environment, sent AIDS drugs to Africa, took a stance on Palestinian rights, etc. not to mention decided not to bomb North Korea and continue to taunt Iran, etc.

I think that's where the criticism of Hamill lies -- that there is some idea that poets are merely against this war because they're against war in general, but are otherwise not mindful of the larger political universe and are not going to make more significant changes in how they view poetry andor poetics -- it's all subsumed under a humanistic/pacifistic viewpoint that stops once the drama ends.

This is certainly not an argument in favor of what you accurately portray as a sometimes curmudgeonly and ineffective old avant-garde stance, but my sense is that a new sort of running commentary has to be created, a new aesthetics for this, etc. and that it might be worth discussing once we figure out a little more how this is done (the art would have to come first, as usual).

I think the blog andor web phenom might play some part of this -- Heriberto seems most on this case. I'm not against the Hamill project myself, but I do see how it barely imagines how the poetry community will behave once this issue of "the war" has passed -- that's why I don't use the term "the war" in the subtitle to Circulars, it's really going to get much worse, much more intense, almost regardless of what happens.

[ksm to bks]

Naturally I agree with everything you say about the problem extending far beyond the present "drama" with Iraq. And granted, the Hamill project, even if it should prove wildly, miraculously effective in contributing to increased public outrage against war plans, will most likely do little in and of itself to change either the politico-economic base that is the fundamental problem, or the aesthetico-poetic status quo of the mainstream cultural scene. I am treating this from a pragmatic perspective, with two chief considerations in mind:

1) Any social action that might possibly help to prevent the mass bombing of Iraqi civilians is justified and necessary regardless of whatever political or artistic compromises have to be made in the process and regardless of its extended efficacy in any larger context.

2) If such a social action should succeed, it will confer greater popular credibility on the mass of its participants overall, whatever their individual disagreements and inadequacies. This may be cynical, but really, Joe and Doris Blow don't know the difference between an Iowa Confessional Poet and a Radical Oulipian and don't care; if they get up one morning, however, and read in their newspaper "POETS HELP AVERT GENOCIDE," it might increase their interest and somewhere down the line lead to the possibility of more public forums in which poetry can sort out its intestine issues. Sure, it's a trickle-down theory of poetics, fine. But point one is the really important one.

I'm just not sure it's true that, as you say, the art will have to come first. I don't know if life works that way. I'm completely in favor of any "running commentary" or "new aesthetics" that might emerge (and web culture does seem like the arena in which it could happen), but neverthess these things feel much less important to me right now than local solutions to present problems via broad public strokes. If this is short-sighted and naive, I don't see any more reasonable alternative.

[bks to ksm]

I still think the "poets as blunt tool" argument is not a very good one since it detracts from what the true force of being a "poet" is -- not that one is part of a cultural phenomenon that has been there for ages called "poetry," and which, as a unified force, is going up against the war, but because one, as a poet, has found a unique way to argue against this anticipated war, a way that has not been found among writers who are engaged in other practices but which is needed.

In other words, were we merely to be a "blunt tool" we could very well suffer the same sort of fate that that blunt tool of the Vietnam Era, Hanoi Jane Fonda, did when she took a seat in that anti-aircraft gun turret -- just simply get booed off the stage, labelled some effete know-nothing, but worse, never have been listened to anyway.

I've seen this happen around the Lincoln Center event, people using the very idea of "poetry" against the "voice" of the poets because, after all, we are the flourish, the icing on the cake, mostly quite useless to society but a testament to how open things really are -- Rupert Murdoch telling us that Noelle Kocot can say anything she wants and we should be thankful (so long as she doesn't own any newspapers).

So in terms of point one -- sure, anything is justified if it's done correctly, but it a little unclear to me whether that is the case. I have no better solutions myself except to hang back and wait (or start a website!).

If we persist under the rubrik of "poets" as the term has been understood in American society for the past several generations then we are pretty hopeless since we've rarely been turned to to speak on anything of grave importance that does not have to do with the arts. It's too easy to paint what "we" mean in journalism because of this, so, sure, if the folks at Poets Against the War play the media game well enough then there's always the chance of effectiveness -- but if not, then that one gesture of defiance is lost.

We should have the poetry to follow up should the idea of "poets" not do whatever magic it's supposed to perform. Otherwise, we might as well be "Bakers Against the War." (Nothing against bakers, of course.)

I don't quite understand all of point two -- "greater popular credibility on the mass of its participants overall" -- do you mean people will trust poets more? But, yes, of course, I don't expect anyone to care about our little tiffs, I never have (though I think some of them are at least as important as whether Picasso painted a better geranium than Matisse). "Poets Help Avert Genocide" -- this applies much more to Africa to me than to Iraq, which, realistically, will not be a "genocide."

Posted by Brian Stefans at February 20, 2003 12:30 PM