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[Quick and dirty comments on some thing I read on Kasey's {limetree} recently regarding Poets Against the War and the feeling among "us" about it recently. BTW, I had to delete the comments function of my site until Movable Type comes up with some way to keep out the spam.]
I didn't like PAW at all, thought it made the mistake of:
1) making it seem natural that poets would be against the war because poets, like puppies, are against war in general, which we know has not been historically true at all -- quite the opposite. This seemed a deception and a misrepresentation at a time when we really had to make clear that poets who are against the war are free-thinking adults.
2) it equated poems with votes -- the ridiculous parading of numbers of poems contributed was embarrassing considering that numbeer of poems/votes could not have turned an election in Boise, nevermind the country (or the world).
3) the free use of the word "historical" in describing (rather immodestly, I thought) the achievement of the site and the publciation of the book was really distracting, and being a web-guy myself, I can tell you that numbers, content, email lists, all that stuff, are very easy to do on the web -- I had more spam in my inbox this morning than they had poems on their site -- and they didn't organize the site so well, it was ugly and amateurish, nothing to brag so much about (and they DID brag). It looked like the work of monks.
4) after all that, I don't think any of us can point to a single poem that managed to capture the public imagination or serve as a succinct (contradictory, emoitionally nuanced, "poetic," etc) reflection or summary of anti-war (or anti-whatever) feeling. I.e. the words didn't do the work.
So I think it did "us" more harm than good -- that, in an effort for poets to "get along" in a time of crisis (why, so that we can scare them with a united front? 40 of our strongest poets couldn't win a wrestling match with a smalltown junior high school team) we simply pretend we don't have ideas beyond public expressions of pacifism, angst, moral rage, etc -- wrong to me.
"We" poets were represented as rather inarticulate in the face of an administration that likes to walk around with their knives hanging out of their pockets, preferring rather to brandish their grandfatherly and evangelical tones on Fox and CNN. We have to find a way to defeat these tones with our own, which takes precision, practice, charisma, etc. -- not mere numbers and pious exhibitionism.
Poets are not a class, or above it all, or much better at thinking about these things, than anyone else. We fall into the same patterns that Bush falls into when he describes Americans as being naturally this or that, more just, incapable of torture, yadda yadda. We have to resist being "specialists" in anything in this regard, we have to not know our own friends -- to be in the world and outside of this "community." And stop grandstanding among ourselves. If you want to grandstand, go to Union Square.
There is a point to PAW, however, which is to improve upon it. It was still a good idea on some levels.
Oh dear, I'm in a bad mood... sorry dudes. Just stating my opinion.
Brian
[PS: Heriberto Yepez has some similar remarks on his website mexperimental.
Also, it shouldn't be assumed, because of I wrote above, that I am necessarily in favor of the various poetry anthologies coming from the "experimental" side of poetry are more successful -- I don't think so at all.
Finally, I support all efforts by poets to keep these issues alive, though I think it's quite ironic that a digital camera has done more work for "us" in this regard than any of the writing by journalists or defectors from the administration in the past months.]
Posted by Brian Stefans at May 12, 2004 09:38 AM | TrackBack