tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5910291709965283166.post7923384352167407396..comments2024-01-14T12:04:49.488-05:00Comments on Behind the Lines: Poetry, War, & Peacemaking: The Ghost of Tom McGrath at Occupy Wall StreetPhilip Metreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05449159681282927289noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5910291709965283166.post-12664679683115928532011-10-29T11:12:41.312-04:002011-10-29T11:12:41.312-04:00Lyle, you're my go-to guy for all things McGra...Lyle, you're my go-to guy for all things McGrathian... I've been thinking also about how these signs are quite situationist, how they refuse to be limited to "issues," refuse transparency, and thus they act less as windows into the meaning of the protest and more as moveable walls for some kind of habitation...Philip Metreshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05449159681282927289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5910291709965283166.post-16568308981170301402011-10-28T22:39:18.615-04:002011-10-28T22:39:18.615-04:00Great post. And great signs in the photos here.
T...Great post. And great signs in the photos here.<br /><br />There's a brief poem by Tom McGrath that I have in my cubicle at work. (I work in a large office in a large corporation, on a floor full of cubicles. The cubicles are gray, the windows are gray, the walls of the office are partly stark white and partly military green.)<br /><br />Not sure how the lines might break here in the comment box; the poem is four lines.<br /><br />*<br /><br />Route Song and Epitaph<br /><br />Living on catastrophe, eating the pure light,<br />What have we come to but the mother dark?<br />Over our heads, obscurely, the stars work<br />Heedless. They did not invent the night.<br /><br />*<br /><br />In the online poetry magazine <a href="http://www.pemmicanpress.com/" rel="nofollow">Pemmican</a> is an essay by McGrath, "Problems of the Revolutionary Poet in Contemporary Times," <a href="http://www.pemmicanpress.com/articles/revolutionary-mcgrath.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, in which he elaborates further on some of his ideas about poetry and politics and the connections between the two. The essay (or a version of it) also is in the <i>North Dakota Quarterly</i> issue you've cited in your post here; the NDQ issue was devoted in its entirety to the life and work of Tom McGrath.Lyle Daggetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10731915540520704368noreply@blogger.com