State of the Union and Poetry Politic Blog: A Blog in 50 Days (Half Way Through)

Check out PoetryPolitic Blog, a blog in support of the recent Wave Books anthology State of the Union, in particular Susan Schultz's recent poem featured there.

I look forward to reading this anthology, even though I have to say that the broadness of the blog's title brings up poetic issues that the more stately--State of the Union--does not. Which is to say, once one begins to engage in a discussion of "political poetry," one makes a choice to suggest that some poetry is "political" and some is not--a point that, in the broader public sphere, almost always favors the non-political (as non-divisive, non-partisan, non-didactic, non-arm-twisting). In the poetry world, "political poetry" so frequently comes to mean poetry that is partisan by way of its thematics or content--and probably 95% of poets see this sort of gesture as self-congratulatory, delimited, or boring. I have made my own arguments regarding "war resistance poetry," peace poetry (stay tuned for that essay), and resistance poetries more generally, partly because I see the employment of the term "political" in such a broad sense feels counter-productive.

Still, reading CA Conrad's poem (and, to an extent, Joseph Lease's "America"), I find myself again enchanted by the idea of a poetry addressed to political leaders and to America more broadly--hearkening back not only to Allen Ginsberg's hilarious parody of a rant, "America," but all the poems that Ginsberg was echoing--not only Whitman and Hughes and McKay and countless others, but also the poems of regular Americans, writing poems and submitting them as poetic editorials to the newspapers of the day, that functioned as letters to the nation.

The cast of poets included suggests that they have chosen many poets and movements who would have been making the above argument over the past few decades, which makes it all the more intriguing:

John Ashbery, Anselm Berrigan, Lucille Clifton, CAConrad, Peter Gizzi, Albert Goldbarth, Terrance Hayes, Fanny Howe, Tao Lin, Eileen Myles, Michael Palmer, Wang Ping, Richard Siken, Juliana Spahr, James Tate, Catherine Wagner, Joe Wenderoth, Dara Wier, Rebecca Wolff, John Yau and many more.

While some of the above, such as Lucille Clifton, CA Conrad, and Juliana Spahr, could be seen as poets directly engaging "the political," others, such as John Ashbery, Peter Gizzi, and Michael Palmer have a more oblique relationship at least to the idea of a "political" (content) poetry; the avant, the language, and the post-avant rubbing elbows with what might be termed the vulgar politicoes (of which I occasionally find membership)--now that's an interesting project.

To Wave Books' credit, proceeds, as they state on their website, "for State of the Union will be donated to Swords to Plowshares, a not-for-profit organization devoted to reducing homelessness and poverty among veterans through advocacy, public education and partnerships with local, state and national entities." That's good people.

"Creation" by Kenneth Patchen

Creation


Wherever the dead are there they are and
Nothing more. But you and I can expect
To see angels in the meadowgrass that look
Like cows -
And wherever we are in paradise
in furnished room without bath and
six flights up
Is all God! We read
To one another, loving the sound of the s’s
Slipping up on the f’s and much is good
Enough to raise the hair on our heads, like Rilke and Wilfred Owen

Any person who loves another person,
Wherever in the world, is with us in this room -
Even though there are battlefields.

Kenneth Patchen

New from the Sidewalk Blogger

There are many costly bridges to nowhere. This one, set in the other recent addition to the United States (Hawaii, courtesy of the Sidewalk Blogger SMS), is suggestive of the uneven development of our great Union, and how a governor of Alaska could say "please," "thanks" and "thanks but I'll use the money on other things," when the inner cities crumble and infrastructure rots in the provinces.

"Arabs Are Not Decent": More on Obama=Arab

Just in case you missed it, Arab is the new Black. Barack Obama is not feared by white America because he is black, but because he is "Arab." (See previous post, Another Reason to Vote for Obama: He's Arab American!). Notice John McCain's response--not to undermine the notion that Arab means untrustworthy, or un-American--but to say that Obama's not a bad guy.

This from the Chicago Tribune today:

On Friday, McCain rejected the bait.

"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:

"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of "palling around with terrorists" because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical. If less directly, McCain, too, has sought to exploit Obama's Chicago neighborhood ties to William Ayers, while trying simultaneously to steer voters' attention to his plans for the financial crisis.

The Oceana Four (2008): Thoughts on the Symbolic Action as Mode of (Poetic) Address

The first picture above is one of my favorites from any symbolic action--the juxtaposition between the protestors on the airplane with the line of military below demonstrates both the vital and courageous actions of the Oceana 4, as well as the potential limits of such an act, insofar as it effects an abyssal rupture between the servicemen watching below and themselves. The servicemen, with their backs to us, seem a faceless mass against the particular faces of the war resisters; such an act may risk going "over their heads" (literally and figuratively), rather than being addressed to them particularly.

Four people got atop the B-52 on display at the Oceana air show this weekend. They were detained as were 8 observers. 11 people received letters banning them from all Naval installations from Virginia to Maine. Steve Baggarly of the Norfolk Catholic Worker violated a previously received letter and will go to US District Court in Norfolk on November 3rd on a trespass charge which carries up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.

Peace,
Kim Williams
Norfolk CW House
1321 W 38th St
Norfolk VA 23508
757-423-5420

Air Shows and Resistance

by Steve Baggarly



Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, Virginia, hosted its fiftieth annual air show this weekend. Oceana is home to F-18 Hornets and Super Hornets which are deployed on aircraft carriers stationed at Norfolk Naval Base. This year's show, dubbed "A Legacy of Excellence," is one of over 200 air shows taking place across the country this year from March to November.

Air shows are the US Military's hottest community relations and recruiting tool. Many take place on military bases that are opened to the public for the occasion, others at local airports or fair grounds.

At Oceana, attendees were dazzled by active duty fighters, bombers, transports, and spy planes, as well as historical and stunt aircraft, displayed both on the ground and in speed-filled, eardrum-shattering air demonstrations. Booths sponsored by defense contractors lauding the next generations of military aircraft under development offered pencils, stickers, and glossy photos of sleek futuristic war planes.

With local radio stations playing rock and country music, lines of concession stands, and picnicking areas, the show was an intentionally family affair as the endless stream of strollers attested. Also on hand were small Naval river craft crowded with kids behind the machine guns, a rack of M-4 and M-16 rifles and Army issue shotguns for visitors to handle, an opportunity for small children to lay in the grass with a sniper's rifle and peer through its sights, and a virtual Army experience in which groups of people embark on their own company-sized Army mission. But the Navy's Blue Angels precision flying team and the other military aircraft were the stars of the show.

Unmentioned anywhere was the sole purpose for the existence of all the assembled high-tech weaponry on display. Nowhere was their killing vocation acknowledged. Nowhere was the reality of the people under the bombs even whispered; the deafening explosions, the quaking earth, the fear, the chaos, the smoke and fire, the loss of homes, jobs, utilities, and resources, the burning of flesh, the spurting of blood,
the pain and shock, the blinding, maiming, and crippling, the loss of limbs, the deep psychological trauma, the soul-rending howls of new orphans and widows. Nowhere was mentioned the inherently indiscriminate nature of airstrikes; that every time a bomb bay door opens or a wing launcher is fired that civilians, innocents, and children are as likely as anything to be blown to shreds. Nowhere were the photos of decapitated or blood-drenched Iraqi and Afghan children.

Nowhere was posted the definition of war crimes.

Such realities would have upset what was essentially a religious event. Faith in the weapons was palpable. The aircraft were heralded as the source of freedom and security, peace and prosperity. These attributes of a deity were readily assigned to the warplanes, the airborne idols of our national religion, militarism. In the end it is our B-52's and F-18's and our stealth fighters and bombers that we believe will save us. We entrust our children to their protection, swell with pride when they join the ranks in their service, and freely give our money to create ever more lethal versions. This is the message of the air shows; life as we know it is made possible by these planes and we owe them our absolute and undying allegiance.

There are two air shows each year in Virginia's Hampton Roads area, and several hundred thousand people attend the three-day events. This weekend at Oceana four people disturbed the good order of the show by climbing atop the B-52 bomber on display with banners reading "We Shalt Not Kill" and "Weapons of Mass Destruction are Nothing to Celebrate." Each one of the Air Force's 66 nuclear capable B-52's can
carry the equivalent of 320 Hiroshima bombs. They can also carry 70,000 pounds of conventional weapons (including cluster bombs, cruise missiles and gravity bombs) and in their 45 year history have carpet bombed Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The four banner bearers were detained along with eight observers. Eleven people were given letters banning them from Naval installations from Virginia to Maine. One member of the Norfolk Catholic Worker violated a previous banning order and will face a trespassing charge in Federal Court in Norfolk on November 3rd that carries up to 6 months in jail and a $500 fine.

Air shows are public liturgies venerating our gods of metal. They glorify our wars and they indoctrinate our children. Go to airshowbuzz.com and find the air show nearest you. Then grab some friends, some signs, literature, puppets or a bullhorn, and, as Dan Berrigan said, "Don't just do something, stand there!"

Also go to for more info: http://www.jonahhouse.org/Oceana.htm

A Veteran Speaks Out

Hilary Bok on the Impossibility of Bringing Democracy Through Violence

Check out this piece by Hilzoy (i.e. Hilary Bok, professor of bioethics at Johns Hopkins). Thanks to Brian Gunn for passing it along!

A slice:

Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to.

And another was this: liberation is not just a matter of removing an oppressive government. It can seem that way when you live under tyranny. Nothing is more comprehensible than people living in apartheid South Africa, or under Saddam, thinking: if only that government were removed from power, things would be better. They would have to be. After all, how could they possibly be worse?

Unfortunately, there are almost always ways in which things could be worse.

"Soldiers of Conscience" Showing on PBS October 16th, 9pm (check local listings)

Trailer for "Soldiers of Conscience" (not for the faint of heart)

Interview with Ian Slattery, associate producer of "Soldiers of Conscience." He tells some amazing stories that bring human faces to the statistics...for example, that show 75% of soldiers (3/4) did NOT fire their weapons during live fire combat in World War II. It explores the making of the film, etc.

Poetry and Investment

From the hallowed pages of The Onion. This one performs the typical great work of comedy and of metaphor--that of yoking two very different things together: here, poetry and pork barrel politics. If only the problems of poetry could be solved by money (then, what?). If only the money problems could be solved by poetry (then, what?). Poetry is indeed a kind of infrastructure, but thank God no one has to drive over it everyday, hanging over abysses.

WASHINGTON—The National Endowment for the Arts announced Monday that it has begun construction on a $1.3 billion, 14-line lyric poem-—its largest investment in the nation's aesthetic-industrial complex since the $850 million interpretive-dance budget of 1985.

"America's metaphors have become strained beyond recognition, our nation's verses are severely overwrought, and if one merely examines the internal logic of some of these archaic poems, they are in danger of completely falling apart," said the project's head stanza foreman Dana Gioia. "We need to make sure America's poems remain the biggest, best-designed, best-funded poems in the world."

Gioia confirmed that the public-works composition will be assembled letter-by-letter atop a solid base of the relationship between man and nature. The poem's structure, laid out extensively on lined-paper blueprints, involves a traditional three- quatrain-and-a-couplet framework, which will be tethered to an iambic meter for increased stability and symmetry. If the planners can secure an additional $6.2 million in funding, they may affix a long dash to the end of line three, though Gioia said that is a purely optimistic projection at this stage.

The poem is expected not only to revitalize the community, Gioia said, but also create jobs for the nation's hundreds of out-of-work poets. According to the proposed budget, the poem's 224 authors have allocated $4 million for the final rhyming couplet, $52 million to insert hyphens into the word "tomorrow" so it reads "to-morrow," $7.45 for a used copy of John Keats' Selected Poems for ideas and inspiration, and $450 million for a simile likening human fate to the wind.

Some experts, however, say the poem is already at risk of going over budget, citing the soaring $5,000-per-square-inch cost of vellum, and an ambitious but perhaps ill-conceived $135 million undertaking to make the word "owl" rhyme with "soul."

"We've already put 200 hours of manpower into the semicolon at the end of the first stanza," said Charles Simic, poet laureate of the United States and head author of the still- untitled piece. "And I've got my best guys working around the clock to convert all the 'overs' in the piece into one-syllable 'o'ers.' I got [Nobel Prize winner Seamus] Heaney and [Margaret] Atwood stripping all the V's and tacking apostrophes in their place. It's grunt work, but somebody's got to do it if this poem's going to get done."

Gioia denied allegations that the poem is being mismanaged, claiming that he has implemented several measures to keep the project on schedule, including giving no more than two words to each poet, limiting alliteration and assonance to a maximum of three words per line, cutting out all extraneous allusions to Eliot and Yeats, and restricting any unwieldy metaphors hinting at the vast alienation of modernity.

Although the poem is still in the early stages of construction, it has already come under fire for serious structural issues, including a shaky foundation and a half-dozen partial synecdoches.

"This poem is an eyesore," said literary critic Stanley Fish. "The whole right side of the verse is barely being held up by a load-bearing enjambment, and it seems as if they just sloppily patched up all the holes in the piece with plagiarized Rod McKuen passages."

In addition, the tenuous line that was being drawn between the narrator's mortality and winter unexpectedly collapsed on itself Monday. Two poets were killed in the incident.

"Sure, some of the imagery might be beautiful, but is this poem actually going to be useful?" Fish said. "Or are people just going to look at it and go, 'Huh. Interesting.' Why not put this money toward something everybody can enjoy, like a TV pilot or a New Yorker cartoon caption?"

"The government needs to stop throwing billions of dollars at the arts," he added.

Fish cautioned that previous attempts to funnel money into poetry had been cut short before they were fully completed, resulting in the large number of unfinished, million-dollar poems that are still lying unread across the country to this day.

CA Conrad's interview of poet Kristen Gallagher at the RNC protests

This is from CA Conrad's interview with poet and artist Kristen Gallagher, on her experience at the "Unconvention," part of the protests of the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis a couple months ago.

The basic idea of CAFF [Cheap Art for Freedom] is to

1) defy, ridicule, undermine, and make obsolete the sanctity of affluent-society art
2) create cultural spaces that will be managed by the people who use them
3) explode the myth of scarcity by making beautiful art out of trash and/or super-cheap surplus materials
4) never exchange money with the people who we exchange art with
5) redistribute creativity to the masses
6) function as a collective, never as a hierarchy or out of forced unity
7) collectively share all our personal resources according to the differences in our abilities and incomes, so that we can all take part in CAFF with equal expense/burden

Every year, we get together in a different city for one week and attempt two types of action:

1) to give away cheap art we have made (sometimes together, sometimes separately) or taught others to make (in street education workshops in screen printing, spray paint art, sewing, cardboard sculpture, etc.) over the previous year (and we try to do this either in poor neighborhoods, shelters, or in solidarity with other events like community protests or political street theatre events, etc.)

2) to make a large-scale cardboard-based interactive sculpture in some kind of park or public place. (For example, last year we made a large sculpture in Washington Square in honor of Iraqis who dies from the war—we get the names and photos of as many as we could and built a monument which invited passersby and people from the community to take part in writing the names. After about 12 hours of manning the site, we left it, only to return hours later to find the whole thing still going strong WITHOUT our presence. The people took it over—as we always wanted!)