Regarding Freedom of Art and Speech

UPDATE: Please read through the end of the comments section--everything personal has been resolved. Also, I have edited the tenses in the introduction to reflect the current status.

I've got a lot on my plate from AWP: seven reviews to write and the AWP recap. Plus there are, I think, two or three posts left in the Strong Verse series. However, an event came to my attention today--back in Gainesville, Florida--my old poetry stomping grounds.

A good friend of mine, who is a conservative in a sea of progressives, read a poem that has been decried as racist--consequently he has been banned from one place of poetry reading and was on the verge of being banned from another one--the oldest continual weekly poetry open-mike reading in the state--possibly the country (going strong for 20 years)--though that director (as seen in the comments) has eschewed any such path of censorship.

Here I'll say no more. What follows is the poem, "The New American Slavery," by Michael Bobbitt. After that is my letter to the two poets in charge of the readings who have banned and are thinking of banning a poet for their interpretation of his poem.

I ask you two things, readers: 1) do you find the poem racist? 2) how do you find my letter in response?

Thanks all,

GMP

The New American Slavery

We’re on the cusp of a new world

An order unlike anything our fathers could have imagined

We’ve been trading morality for comfort for too many years

And finally, painted into the corner of our own undoing

We’ve decided to just close our minds

Sit Indian-style like children

And chuckle while shit burns down.

We’ve finally outsmarted ourselves

Reasoned that style and platitudes

Could uplift us straight out of reality

“They’s a nigger in the woodpile”

My granddaddy would say

And though I hated his language

I can only imagine he was prophesizing about right now

And how our leaders herd us like cats

Into unnaturally straight lines

“Come on up here little pussies…

Massa’s got some healthcare for you

Come on up to the porch, Toby,

And get you some free milk…”

The fields are going unplanted

The harvest time will come and go unnoticed

But we’ll just keep grinning

And eating

And not worryin bout nothing

Cause Massa’s got this magic machine

And he just gots to hit a button

And corn will roll out this here contraption—

Wheat and chicken and flour

Will just pop right out I think

And we don’t need to ever plant the fields

Or tend the flocks again.

The rich folks’ll keep the magic machines rolling

And we’ll just grin and think about equality

And how nuthin’s really equal

If’n we don’t get to pay less and take a little more

On account of all the wrong done to our granddaddies and such.

But I’m starting to think the magic machines

Might not be working proper

It’s turning cold again and I worry about the empty fields

I’m doing what I’m told, though.

I continue to hope, to think “Yes we can” all the time

But I’m gettin hungry

And it’s taking longer each season

To get my ‘lotment.

I hear the Chinamen gots all the rice they can eat

But it still don’t seem right

They should have to work so hard

At planting and harvesting—

Food is a basic human right—

What sorta evil Massa they got

Makes them work to eat?

The baby’s sick most days now

And we’re all pretty fed up

With the failin’ machines

Think maybe we’ll get pitchforks and torches

And tear apart that woodpile

Till we find that liar done trained us out of farming.

I tried to plant a garden today

But I couldn’t work out all the steps anymore

Massa’s forgot about me

And momma’s long gone

And it’s turning colder again.

MY RESPONSE TO THE BANNING:

Jimmy and David,

I'm sorry, but since when did the CMC PoJam or other Poetry institutions (TWIS) become centers of repression?

I'm hearing from Bobbitt about his banning. In my day we read naked and drunk--people would read poems about cunts and doing coke with William Burroughs while children were in the room. No one batted an eye. Hell, David--you screamed about cunts at a reading at Michael Bobbitt's house while my children were present.

Though I was annoyed--and disgusted--I certainly never thought about curtailing your freedom of speech.

Moreover, on frequent occasions folks would gleefully read--to gleeful response--poetry that was vehemently anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-American, anti-man, and anti-white. That is to say, religionist, Marxist, progressive, totalitarian, seditious, misandrous, and racist.

Certainly you can't be banning Michael Bobbitt for the use of the word "nigger" or "Chinaman." I have heard that first word uttered at the CMC on more than one occasion--and none of its pracitioners were banned. Though I have never been to TWIS, I have a hard time imagining that you, David, you who so frequently employ "cunt"--which is the female equivalent of "nigger"--and could easily be accused of writing misogynist poetry--would have the gall to accuse someone of writing "racist" poetry.

Moreover, how on earth can either of you possibly imagine bringing in the police force into all of this? Do you truly wish humanity to be ruled by the state? I thought you, Jimmy, were an anarchist.

More than all of this, though, perhaps you should actually read the poem. In no way is it racist. It is obvious that the terms "nigger" and "Chinaman" are used ironically and for effect through the voice of the speaker.

Nothing I see in the poem justifies anything resembling a dustup over its language--perhaps its content should anger one due to the inherent oppression we have been receiving since at least the first Bush administration, ramped up by Clinton, exploded by Bush, and exploited by Obama--but Bobbitt's poem is in no way a racist work.

Even if it were, in what way is it of either of yours to police someone's thoughts or language? And David, how dare you interrupt someone's reading? The proper response--if you were offended by the poem--would be to address Michael after the reading.

I pray that you all will realize the grave error you have made--and the damage you are doing to the freedom of art in Gainesville.

Peace,

Michael

Strong Verse, Part 6: Lyric, Narrative, and Dialogue

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Playing music with someone must line up quarks in the brain. My banjo playin' buddy David Yezzi wrote the following:

Contemporary poetry is woefully limited by its over-reliance on the lyric form, but the lyric itself is today further reduced by the absence of the dramatic element, by the loss of voices (and of milieux) other than the poet’s own.

in March's New Criterion. I'll let his entire article serve as part 6 of my discourse on what makes for strong verse.

Duffy giving Beckham a Break?

Oh, now this--this is funny.

FTA:

When a 34 year-old athlete tears his Achilles Tendon, it is not comparable to the death of a hero in one of the greatest literary works in history. In fact, the comparison pretty much defecates all over the greatness of the original work. It’s pretty much like romanticizing a 55 year-old man’s colonoscopy.

The "poem" in question.

Quite a fall for Carol Ann Duffy to idolize David Beckham, if you ask me.

Strong Verse, Part 5: Fun+Van+Full=Strong

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

As a dutiful and motivated undergraduate, I took a senior seminar entitled History and Theory of the Novel. I still have an incomplete in the class because I never liked the idea of journaling. I suppose I'm paying that back with the blog (hey Professor Wegner, can I have a passing grade now?).

Anyway, no class on novel theory would be complete without the pillars of Lukacs and Bakhtin. What struck me then, as a young poet who had been interested in narrative and epic poetry for four or five years at that point was that Lukacs and especially Bakhtin put the novel against the epic and discussed what novels could do so well that epic literature couldn't--essentially contain the multivocal nature of a heterogenous society. The poet-contrarian in me noted that in a backhand way they were telling me what poetry did best--to join together voices in a homogenous society.

I view people as people. We come together and make our own culture and where we are together without division and where we work together without derision is where civilization grows. I am a big fan of civilization, ergo I am a big fan of poetry. I'm civilized, therefore I versify.

As a poet, though, I made the keen observation that, with the exception of poets, no one seems to give two shits about poetry. Upon further digging, I found that few poets even cared about poetry outside of their own work. As someone who would prefer the possibility of living off of his writing, this was troubling, at best.

Now as a student of history it was clear that not too long ago poets could live from their work--we all understand the historical significance of patrons, etc. and how the university system (and a bit of private charity) has essentially replaced that system in our new and improved egalitarian society. Good on us. 150 years ago or so, however, patronage was few and far between but you still had poets like Longfellow and Tennyson selling mountains of copies of their verse. Today, not so much.

It was then that I realized what the problem was. Not that it is difficult to "make a living" from poetry--it is and always has been--most writers of any genre work on spec for their entire lives and have other careers--as editors or teachers or doctors or lawyers--that pay the bills. Moreover, just because Tennyson and Longfellow (and Hardy and Kipling) pulled in the dough doesn't mean that Poe or Lazarus (or Hopkins or Dickinson) did.

The problem with poetry readership today lies in the fact that is referenced in this article from the Boston Globe. The problem is that poetry is not an everyday occurrence. Even The Writer's Almanac, arguably the only mass-media daily dose of poetry, only airs at odd times of the day--in the evenings or late mornings--not during rush hour when the most folks are listening to their local NPR stations. The Christian Science Monitor and The New Yorker, being the largest weekly outlets (followed by The Nation) have poetry but it's "hidden" in the pages--sort of like NPR and these fine weeklies have poetry out of a sense of duty but don't really wanna.

So, again, why?

Lukacs and Bahktin would argue that we are a fundamentally different people and no longer need poetry. Silliman did argue that movies, music, and TV take the place of fun and full-verse poetry in our lives.

I say bah. We're still the same people who figured out how to plant crops so that we didn't have to forage any more. Granted, we have a mountain more stored information but it's not like our brains got any faster or could hold any more stuff--we just have a larger collective memory (and exobrains). Literature, music, and art still work on our psyches in the same ways (indeed, this is why drama and film and television are so damnably powerful).

Therefore poetry is still of the same value.

So why does no one care?

Part of it has to do with poets. That's what Part 4 of the series tried to highlight. We must realize that if we are to have an audience we must understand and engage that audience. But poets are not all.

As I argued in Part 2 of this series, most of the problem with poetry--from the reader's side--is that there is no longer any poetry to care about. That's the "magic" of full verse. Fun verse is light and airy and joyful but not deep and van verse is too dense for most readers--they're turned off by the avant-garde and can't build attachments to light verse. But it's in full verse that we build lifetime readers of poetry.

Of course, they aren't going to read that full verse poetry without an introduction to the motifs and styles and tropes of poems that they can easily learn from fun verse and poetry will stagnate again without van verse.

Because we need all three for poetry to thrive, this series will focus on a poetics not of full verse, but a poetics of strong verse.

Strong Verse, Part 4: Notes Towards a Perfection of Poetry

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5

So WAY back in 2006, when this blog was still a twinkle in its father's eye, I spent a summer in the family castle of Ezra Pound in Brunnenburg, Italy. Having read a great deal of Pound's zany poetry propaganda, I wrote a typography-heavy manifesto called "a poetics of perfection." For many obvious reasons, it and its accompanying chapbook remain hidden.

Culling through the exuberance to the meat of the argument, however, brings me to the next step in the development of a strong poetics. Some of it came through in the declaration, but this work on "Strong Verse" will, I hope, expand upon and update the declaration. Here I present the manifesto, with exuberance redacted:

How does one approach perfection in poetry?

1. Use Precise Language:

a) Do not use a thousand words when four will do.
Repetition is neutral. It is the unnecessary that is disgusting.

b) Do not use lukewarm language.
Use the word that means what you are saying. English is second only to German for usefulness in this regard.

c) If you must be ambiguous, do not be vague.
Have more than one meaning but don't be paralyzed by every possible meaning a reader works on your words. That is, open the doors of your language – don’t tear down the house.

2. Write With Authority

a) If it didn’t happen to you, write like it did.

b) Don't use "as if" or "seems" or any similar word or phrase.

3. Give the readers what they need.

a) Poetry should not require a secret decoder ring.
If your poetry requires esoteric references either explain them or make them clear enough that your readers can find the information on their own. One may need to read Hamlet in order to fully understand “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” but at least Eliot tells us that.

b) Your readers care about your verse, not you.
They don’t care about your inside jokes, emotions, thoughts, knowledge, tantric ability, whatever. They care about the language that you have given the world.

c) Your readers don't know you.
Instead of expecting them to "get you" and your references, assume they don't know what you're talking about. Don't spoonfeed them but remember any deficiencies they will have. Allow them the chance to understand your work as you do.

4. Use Natural Language

a) Write the way you speak.

b) Poetry is linguistic art, but it is still language.
That is, your poetry must exist within a common idiom. If no one lives your language, your art has no impact.

tl;dr:

1. Use Precise Language

2. Write With Authority

3. Give the Readers What They Need

4. Use Natural Language

I think perhaps (1) and (4) could be combined. As I said, this is a rehash from a 4-year-old ranty sort of work. The final two points I want to resurrect from Italian ashes are these:

Poets must be recalled from their staleness and complicity.
In Pound's time, this was the Edwardian-style of overstuffed, Longfellowian rhyming verse. Today it is the Silliman-school of versa-obscura and, conversely, his correct attacks on the so-called "School of Quietude." I have long maintained that non-avant poets need to broaden the horizon of their verse.

No one will read poetry until we are writing poems that are good to read.
Poets are caretakers of humanity, not forensic scientists of letters. We must write for the good of the world and not for the amusement of our own devices, ourselves, or our over-educated brains.

This, along with the three classifications of verse from last week (and the rest of the blog, really) will serve as a foundation for the forthcoming poetics of Strong Verse. Happy reading and happy writing, fellow poets!

Strong Verse, Part 3: Trobar ric, part the second: Fun Verse, Van Verse, and Full Verse

Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5

So first we'll need new terms.

Semantics is always important, you know.

Trobar leu is easy. "Light verse" is already an accepted term that is only a vehicle for derision when an idiot is speaking. However, since idiots often speak, let's go with "fun verse," for reasons we'll see later.

Trobar clu presents a greater renaming problem. In many respects it's a form of shibboleth--a poetry for poets' sake, a secret handshake--and at the same time it can and does pull the art of poetry forward. "Vanguard verse" is delightful and alliterative--and retains a nod to "avant-garde" without owing a loaded debt. Since "fun verse" is a spondee, however, I think we should stick with that metrical pattern and skip, Cockney-like, to "van verse."

So we are left with Trobar ric. "Rich verse" is the obvious answer, but I think "ripe verse" is more accurate--if less serious. Likewise I am tempted by "perfect verse" though that is 1) too big of a hand-tip and 2) annoyingly arrogant. "Plenary verse" is the right feel but the wrong word, metrically and lexically. So we're left with the "Saxony" shortenings of plenary: "whole" and "full." As "whole" has a popular and unwanted homophone, we'll go with "full verse."

So we have three classes of poetry, coming roughly from the troubadoric terms:

Fun verse

Van verse

Full verse.

They line up metrically and alliteratively. Good and poetic terms for good and poetic things.

Fun verse is easy to read and immediately understandable but does not gain meaning upon multiple readings. It is not superficial or shallow--for those words are far too loaded to be useful but, if such a word can serve here, fey, or indeed, fun.

We must have fun verse because it teaches readers that poetry is not a puzzle while endearing and indoctrinating them into poetry's many forms and folds. It must be praised and encouraged as it, like all poetry, is difficult to write well.

Van verse is poetry that is exceedingly difficult for the layman to read and understand. Only poets and rare connoisseurs of poetry enjoy--or benefit from--reading it. The closed nature of van verse in no way diminishes it. All art needs a vanguard to discover what can and what cannot work within the limits of the mode.

We must, however, ensure that we--as poets and teachers and promoters of poetry--do not treat van verse as if it were the "only proper form" of writing poetry. Too many poets view form and experimentation as more important connection--and because of the grave tendency within "the right people" to view anything that has popular appeal with derision, there is a trend toward valuing "the new" and "the difficult" and "the unpopular" above all others. Such hubris cannot be encouraged--though we should not commit the reverse sin of throwing out van verse altogether. Just as surely as we will lose new readers without fun verse we will lose all freshness without van verse.

Full verse should combine the best of fun and van verse. It should be easy to read and immediately understandable but it should reward and grow from multiple readings. The form should not be in the forefront but appear as a supporting structure to the verse. It is from full verse that the language should grow--as it once did through the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Longfellow.

Full verse, being neglected in the current longueur, must be encouraged and gotten out to the layman reader. Perhaps the efforts of EA, Longfellow, and Dante will remind people that such works are enjoyed by more than just the attendees of MFA programs and workshops. Perhaps not. To say that the current world of mainstream publishing is unfriendly to poetry is to make an obvious understatement. Serialization might help. A friendly magazine certainly would--perhaps Poetry or another high-tone rag can serialize a long narrative poem. Maybe one of the many periodicals famous for publishing short stories. But again, maybe not. I'm not enthusiastic about the world of print publishing. Serialization online similar to online comics may be the best bet.

Obviously I'm most interested in full verse--as I likely would have been interested in van verse at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries--as a lover and defender of the art of poetry I feel compelled to ensure it is a complete art--with introductory, experimental, and mature work.

As this series continues, which will probably get some name like "complete poetry," we'll look at how to integrate full poetry into the already established teaching curricula of van poetry (and how to get fun poetry in there, too) and what changes can be made (or proposed) that will allow room for full poetry in publishing (where fun poetry and van poetry are already well-established, if not well-read).

Strong Verse, Part 2: Trobar ric, part the first

Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Troubadors, the medieval rock stars who gave us the Canzone, the Sonnet, and the Sestina, divided poetry into three classes:

Trobar leu, or light verse: broad-based and appealing poetry meant to reach as wide an audience as possible.

Trobar clus, or closed verse: difficult and complex verse for poets and fine connoisseurs of poetry.

Trobar ric, or rich verse: a middle path between the two--involving wordplay and complexity but without losing its broad appeal.

My contention is that we, as poets, have given up on trobar ric and that this is precisely why poetry has failed as a popular medium for art.

Ron Silliman correctly points out that experiments in poetry fall into the trobar clus category. His conclusions about trobar ric and leu are off--and his thoughts on trobar clus could use some refining. At any rate, I am not here to bow to him, but I thought since I ran across his post researching this one I should mention it.

So here it is:

Most poetry that sells is trobar leu: Billy Collins, Shel Silverstein, Bok's Eunoia, Ginsberg--it's easy to read and immediately understandable. It may reward multiple readings and deep delving but, more often than not, all that's there is there.

Most poetry that is praised by poets is, not surprisingly, trobar clus. Unlike Silliman, however, I include not just avant-garde works in the Pound/Olson/Johnson vein or some of the complex trickery of a Mohammed (most avant-garde poetry is trobar leu anyway--see flarf). I also include most of the neo-formalists--as for many of them--whether audience or poet--the majesty of the structure overcomes the subject--and an obsession with small forms has resulted in "little" poetry. It's often praised and well-received by other poets but it's not on a grand enough scale to draw in laymen--while a painter may be interested in brush strokes an observer wants to see the whole picture.

So we have candy and we have caviar. What we don't have is a main course.