our barbaric yawps
it's depressing the state of the world right now. so much its difficult to keep on balance and remain sane. i often question myself what efficacy can writing have when the world is burning. i suppose my question is as old as writing, as old as civilization, and that writing, reading and living do go on.
don't they.
well but so to fight depression and oppression. even saying no to the present realities might be just enough even if it is not an adequate response. by saying no i mean to say fuck you to the paranoids and oppressors and their creation of our toxic political and economic moment. as joseph brodsky said it wasn't strength that held him together during the old soviet oppressions; it was his obstinacy.
still i haven't a fucking clue. i turn to the roman poets, to classical chinese poets, to post-war eastern european poets for strength and guidance. i learn from them that we always have the right to language and poetry and must exercise our rights for writing/reading in every possible configuration we can make. the most political act writers can do is to write and read whatever the hell we choose.
we make the world as we go along, and the world makes us up too. i am doing my best not to despair or succumb to bland numbness. i demand my rights of poetry. in every manner of making. fucking hell yes.
i began this rant with the intention to write a little about the feelings of writerly neglect. you know the feelings. we all have them. these emotions can lead to despair and a sense of worthlessness. what does it matter. why all these words. will they, will i be remembered? then i thought it doesn't matter at all. i make my poems because i want to. because i need to. because i am alive. you too. all of you. if something of ours is remembered and/or is considered great, okay. but we won't be around to bask in its glory. rather write/read because your life depends on it. read/write for the love of life. yours and mine. read and write because of because. if there is glory to be had in the making it wholly resides in the act. no fame, no fortune, nothing but our supreme pleasures in the live actions of writing and reading.
5 Comments:
well said. i suppose we just write and let it be. i seldom seldom know how it falls to the readers...very few do i think. so it is. i just finished a new project and am unsure if it is great or crap. will probably never know. feedback is almost nill these days. so is distribution. hummmm. i dont think i wrote better or worse when living in bay area surrounded by poets...dont think that matters unless you are ego driven or must work in the pobizz and you dont seem marked by either of those.
nothing i do is going to save the world...so sue and i going to county fair tonite to eat peach pie and listen to bluegrass...i could stay home and read poetry but i am not. so there.
Richard, the real question for me is if my children and their children survive and happen to read me what will they think of me? As someone who knew what shit was comin down or as someone who just blew it off? I suspect they'd prefer the former which is why I think of Brecht's
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
About the dark times
and try to write with that in mind.
Wow, thanks, Richard. I needed that rant.
Richard, of course, when Brecht sang about the dark time he also sang about love and apple trees ...
john:
jean genet was an early influence on me. mostly for his autobiographicals writings on sex/text and the air of crime. now i'm interested in his later political activism. i just bought tonight a book titled LATE GENET about those activist years. i think brecht is spot on when he writes about his ugly times and also about love too. i recall an anecdote i read somewhere about i think ceslaw milosz. how the polish poet was convinced of his obessions when he found a young couple necking in a street where the the block over there was a firefight.
jim:
we never know what impact we have and will never know. doesn't matter, i argue, if the work is honest and the heart full of love. i mean that, seriously. i don't know but i think love, and sometimes poetry, can maybe save the world, or at least the person.
jean:
write back at you. muchos gracias!
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