The Jim Goar Review (not by Jim Goar)
Jim Goar on yesters blog:
But I wonder if we are asking something of writing here that I don’t think is so important. It seems you want it to be about self reflection, revelation, learning. we are to improve ourselves through our writing. I just think we write ourselves through our writing. our language will change as we change. our blind spots are there in our work. I don’t think that this is bad. if we have that blind spot. let it show (there is no other way. If we are homophobic or racist or a bit scared of the dark. And we go through our work and cut out any sniff of that “ugliness” then the work goes limp.). this is not to say that I am endorsing these beliefs. All that I am saying is that if they are there in yr mind, and they come out on the page, even in little hints, they should not be run away from. If repression is a concern in yr life, fix it in yr life, leave yr work alone.
I jst want to say that I dont accept that division. Life and work are fluid entities - if I am a writer, that seperation is increasingly tenuous, especially if i take consciosuness (not mine, but not not mine either) as my prime subject - a poetry of worded consciousness is necessarily explorative, it also is necessarily observant and critical (that is to to say articulating a critical response to observed sufferings which is itself creative - ie transformative, healing). The subject slips, the object too - a dance, or fall, or laugh. Of course self-improvement is futile, as is world-improvement. But if by improvewe mean transform, and the transformation is internal, is one of perspective and response - then that is the radical liberation and transformative magic/alchemy i wish to practice, that i most admire. where its lacking - okay, its lacking. that is the palce to begin, in the loss, confusion, mire. All this said, I think i agree with most of what Jim says - certainly we write our own subjecthood (and world) into being - and in a sense there's nothign wrong, nothing requiring fixing. But by paying more attention to how I type, how I think, I I cry - to immersing myself in this world, this body - things do change. I can't name it - but there is a shift. And that shift, and putting the effort in to letting that shift happen. to returning it to our awarenes, thats what I practice in buddhism, in poetry, and in therapy. No self, no improvement. Which sounds too like a slogan but... its fascinating Jim read my thoughts that way, I wouldnt be surprised if some of that energy IS in the text, but I don't want to develop THAT voice. I don't want to hide it either - but as Jim has it, simply allowing the dark stuff /the the hidden / the silenced / the illegal / the obscene / the repressed (how's that for a set of redefintions/lateral shoots, Jim?) to come into mind/speech/body/word/light is a huge part of that work - just let it be. But the BE gets pretty heavy when we are acknowledging the depths of our own (and our works own) hatred, misanthropy, rage, worhtlessness, fear, tension, anxiety, etc. something I am not sure Paul McCartney got, if I am right in reading him as being seduced by the possible power of becoming a living Hallmark card.
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Also, Jim was asking a few days back (June 16) on his blog (the real discussion is on the comments page, where his quote is from):
But you mentioned that many poets were going to be speaking against the war ... I wonder though, were any of those poets going to read pro-war (is there such a thing?) poetry? If not, why? Obviously someone out there is happy with what bush is doing.
I think that is a fascinating question. Where are the pro-war poets? Certainly there are pro-war bloggers - and there have been militaristic poets, Kipling springs to mind, for me, and a poet like Anne Waldman does invoke consciosu aggression and destruction through verse - but where were the poets urging on a war agaisnt a country which essentially had done nothing against us? Even in the cradle of empire, there was very little cultural activity to support the developing Crusade. The action was largely off-stage, and the endless news conference diplomacy to get it over to the american people (and then the world) that this is going to happen (oh yeah, and, if you need to question it, it should happen too - in fact it needs to happen). Neil Young sung about the heroism of the airline passengers who fought back agaist the fourth plane's hijackers, and the Dixie Chicks got ambushed for not supporting Bush, and I am sure there were a dozen pro-"our boys" country songs, but when the mantle of supporting the war comes up, it alsways seems mediated and embedded in some grander cause - like defending freedom, spreading democracy - or obfuscated by some slippery semiotics - where supporting our troops means an uncritical rallying around the flag (where flag means the preseident), even if the US action in Iraq, on investigation, has a very complicated relation to the very causes its wraps itself in, and even if supporting the troops means not paying any attention to their suffering and deaths. But while anti-war poetry is -or can be - explicitly anti-war, pro-war poetry tends to overlook or avoid altogther the actual material of war - i mass, organized violence and murder with the aim of achieving domination over an enemy. Goals and organizing principles which continue on the ground in Iraq today. (The whole democracy angle too - c'mon: imagine if the French king had INVADED the 13 colonies and thrown out the British but also decided the northerners were pesky and rounded them up also and handed the whole place to a couple handpicked southerners (not Jefferson, certainly, but maybe Hamilton). Could we celebrate that event on the 4th of July? It's a completely ridiculous scenario unparralled in world history)
It would be interesting to compile this pro-war cultural material, and see to what extent it followed the Bush Administration's lead in ignoring the actual (and quite attractive, from a certain ( Western capitalist imperialist ) viewpoint) reasons for going to war (such as shoring up American hegemony and corporate control in a potentially wealthy (from oil) and strategically imporant (thanks again to oil, and also geography) country with a history (form that same viewpoint) of stirring up trouble) in favor of an americana patchwork of sanitized, blatantly invented, consumer-friendly half-truths, sentimental dodges, and lies. It wasn't particularly masterful or inspired, but it worked (we invaded). A type of creative myopia - of great use in creating a cover story to justify hideous and untold (and even uncounted) violence.
I don't think this is an accident. I think an anti-war poem springs fairly easily out of the basic compassion and even laziness of a human mind. Why go to all that mad fuss of having a war?And, if you are brave or crazy enough - like the futurists - to actually explore and celebrate the psychic drives that lead to war, you find yourself cornered off as some type of freak (but the Italian futuruists would have created GREAT sony Playstation "shooter" games - Doom and its spawn may be their populsit legacy) by the great bourgeois masses. Body parts? Tanks? No thank you. People like their wars at a safe (and homogonized) distance. Because war is an activity we NEED to justify. Any hurt-causing activity, anything we partake of that way, there is some level of us knowing that it doesn't feel right - and the whole "its wrong" moralism of anti-war thought is a type f poorly worded articulation of this - at an energetic level, the violence we perpetuate on to others, the voiding of their life, autonomy, and worth, carries over to us to - we the perpetrator. we, in a thousand ways, are not seprate, not immune. War is an activity which perpetuates, and creates, suffering. For all parties. The veyr real pleasure in violence and war is a short lved rarity compared to the tension, depression, rage, loss, dimentia and pain of the activity of state-organized murder and military repression. In this sense I think the anti-war poetry and protest speaks palpably and prominently to the wishes of the unspoken - or more accurately, unheeeded, for they speak, and are actively ignored) majority throughout the world, which turned out by the millions to protest this agressive, adventurist, immoral war.
( I think, obviously, my thoughts here are complicated by wars against palpable oppressors - resistance struggles. Being on the defense makes it inherently personal, the stakes are revealed, one "rises up" to "strike back". This posture - while also tragic, and difficult, and complicated - is much easier to translate into the arts and writing - hence the numerous poetry readings in support of the Sandinistas in the 70s, whereas the Contras got their money from arms dealers re-routing their profits through offshore banks.
But I wonder if we are asking something of writing here that I don’t think is so important. It seems you want it to be about self reflection, revelation, learning. we are to improve ourselves through our writing. I just think we write ourselves through our writing. our language will change as we change. our blind spots are there in our work. I don’t think that this is bad. if we have that blind spot. let it show (there is no other way. If we are homophobic or racist or a bit scared of the dark. And we go through our work and cut out any sniff of that “ugliness” then the work goes limp.). this is not to say that I am endorsing these beliefs. All that I am saying is that if they are there in yr mind, and they come out on the page, even in little hints, they should not be run away from. If repression is a concern in yr life, fix it in yr life, leave yr work alone.
I jst want to say that I dont accept that division. Life and work are fluid entities - if I am a writer, that seperation is increasingly tenuous, especially if i take consciosuness (not mine, but not not mine either) as my prime subject - a poetry of worded consciousness is necessarily explorative, it also is necessarily observant and critical (that is to to say articulating a critical response to observed sufferings which is itself creative - ie transformative, healing). The subject slips, the object too - a dance, or fall, or laugh. Of course self-improvement is futile, as is world-improvement. But if by improvewe mean transform, and the transformation is internal, is one of perspective and response - then that is the radical liberation and transformative magic/alchemy i wish to practice, that i most admire. where its lacking - okay, its lacking. that is the palce to begin, in the loss, confusion, mire. All this said, I think i agree with most of what Jim says - certainly we write our own subjecthood (and world) into being - and in a sense there's nothign wrong, nothing requiring fixing. But by paying more attention to how I type, how I think, I I cry - to immersing myself in this world, this body - things do change. I can't name it - but there is a shift. And that shift, and putting the effort in to letting that shift happen. to returning it to our awarenes, thats what I practice in buddhism, in poetry, and in therapy. No self, no improvement. Which sounds too like a slogan but... its fascinating Jim read my thoughts that way, I wouldnt be surprised if some of that energy IS in the text, but I don't want to develop THAT voice. I don't want to hide it either - but as Jim has it, simply allowing the dark stuff /the the hidden / the silenced / the illegal / the obscene / the repressed (how's that for a set of redefintions/lateral shoots, Jim?) to come into mind/speech/body/word/light is a huge part of that work - just let it be. But the BE gets pretty heavy when we are acknowledging the depths of our own (and our works own) hatred, misanthropy, rage, worhtlessness, fear, tension, anxiety, etc. something I am not sure Paul McCartney got, if I am right in reading him as being seduced by the possible power of becoming a living Hallmark card.
-
Also, Jim was asking a few days back (June 16) on his blog (the real discussion is on the comments page, where his quote is from):
But you mentioned that many poets were going to be speaking against the war ... I wonder though, were any of those poets going to read pro-war (is there such a thing?) poetry? If not, why? Obviously someone out there is happy with what bush is doing.
I think that is a fascinating question. Where are the pro-war poets? Certainly there are pro-war bloggers - and there have been militaristic poets, Kipling springs to mind, for me, and a poet like Anne Waldman does invoke consciosu aggression and destruction through verse - but where were the poets urging on a war agaisnt a country which essentially had done nothing against us? Even in the cradle of empire, there was very little cultural activity to support the developing Crusade. The action was largely off-stage, and the endless news conference diplomacy to get it over to the american people (and then the world) that this is going to happen (oh yeah, and, if you need to question it, it should happen too - in fact it needs to happen). Neil Young sung about the heroism of the airline passengers who fought back agaist the fourth plane's hijackers, and the Dixie Chicks got ambushed for not supporting Bush, and I am sure there were a dozen pro-"our boys" country songs, but when the mantle of supporting the war comes up, it alsways seems mediated and embedded in some grander cause - like defending freedom, spreading democracy - or obfuscated by some slippery semiotics - where supporting our troops means an uncritical rallying around the flag (where flag means the preseident), even if the US action in Iraq, on investigation, has a very complicated relation to the very causes its wraps itself in, and even if supporting the troops means not paying any attention to their suffering and deaths. But while anti-war poetry is -or can be - explicitly anti-war, pro-war poetry tends to overlook or avoid altogther the actual material of war - i mass, organized violence and murder with the aim of achieving domination over an enemy. Goals and organizing principles which continue on the ground in Iraq today. (The whole democracy angle too - c'mon: imagine if the French king had INVADED the 13 colonies and thrown out the British but also decided the northerners were pesky and rounded them up also and handed the whole place to a couple handpicked southerners (not Jefferson, certainly, but maybe Hamilton). Could we celebrate that event on the 4th of July? It's a completely ridiculous scenario unparralled in world history)
It would be interesting to compile this pro-war cultural material, and see to what extent it followed the Bush Administration's lead in ignoring the actual (and quite attractive, from a certain ( Western capitalist imperialist ) viewpoint) reasons for going to war (such as shoring up American hegemony and corporate control in a potentially wealthy (from oil) and strategically imporant (thanks again to oil, and also geography) country with a history (form that same viewpoint) of stirring up trouble) in favor of an americana patchwork of sanitized, blatantly invented, consumer-friendly half-truths, sentimental dodges, and lies. It wasn't particularly masterful or inspired, but it worked (we invaded). A type of creative myopia - of great use in creating a cover story to justify hideous and untold (and even uncounted) violence.
I don't think this is an accident. I think an anti-war poem springs fairly easily out of the basic compassion and even laziness of a human mind. Why go to all that mad fuss of having a war?And, if you are brave or crazy enough - like the futurists - to actually explore and celebrate the psychic drives that lead to war, you find yourself cornered off as some type of freak (but the Italian futuruists would have created GREAT sony Playstation "shooter" games - Doom and its spawn may be their populsit legacy) by the great bourgeois masses. Body parts? Tanks? No thank you. People like their wars at a safe (and homogonized) distance. Because war is an activity we NEED to justify. Any hurt-causing activity, anything we partake of that way, there is some level of us knowing that it doesn't feel right - and the whole "its wrong" moralism of anti-war thought is a type f poorly worded articulation of this - at an energetic level, the violence we perpetuate on to others, the voiding of their life, autonomy, and worth, carries over to us to - we the perpetrator. we, in a thousand ways, are not seprate, not immune. War is an activity which perpetuates, and creates, suffering. For all parties. The veyr real pleasure in violence and war is a short lved rarity compared to the tension, depression, rage, loss, dimentia and pain of the activity of state-organized murder and military repression. In this sense I think the anti-war poetry and protest speaks palpably and prominently to the wishes of the unspoken - or more accurately, unheeeded, for they speak, and are actively ignored) majority throughout the world, which turned out by the millions to protest this agressive, adventurist, immoral war.
( I think, obviously, my thoughts here are complicated by wars against palpable oppressors - resistance struggles. Being on the defense makes it inherently personal, the stakes are revealed, one "rises up" to "strike back". This posture - while also tragic, and difficult, and complicated - is much easier to translate into the arts and writing - hence the numerous poetry readings in support of the Sandinistas in the 70s, whereas the Contras got their money from arms dealers re-routing their profits through offshore banks.
posted by Kyle at 5:11 PM
4 Comments:
any act of violence is an act of conformity.
You could make a bumper sticker with that comment and sell it to ALL the hippies
Jim hit the nail on the head when he said, we write our ourselves thru writing. that is how I find it. writing and living have no manuals, we must invent and discover thru their very acts. that means mistakes happen. but they happen in any human endevour, like love, hate, sex, reading, speaking etc. etc. to change yr life you must change yr langauage, and vice versa.
as for pro-war poets, there was a website, I can't recall the URL, that was set up to counter the poets against the war website set up by Sam Hamill. and recall Horace writing Dulce et decorum est pro patria moria, sweet and proper to die for the fatherland. which Owen turned on its bitter ear when he fought and wrote in WWI.
the violence advocated by early modernists, like the Marinetti and the futurists and later the surrealists were belied by the centuries bloodshed. was it Breton who said that the ultimate surrealist act was to walk down the street and shoot people at random with a revolver? shit, so it happened, and is happening, presently. would Breton still say such a thing now?
when our govt. demands our and the so-called enemies blood to be spread in the name of freedom, honor and all that bs then we have a duty as citizens to question that demand, and hold our officials accountable to their words and deeds. what sends young people to war is blind obedience, yes, and clever marketing. what to make of all the people driving in the US with I support Our Troops bumper stickers. what does that mean? but only towing the party line. writers, intellectuals, hopefully can see thru such obvious manipulations by the powers and have a real right to protest, speak and even shout their disapproval.
Jim I could use the money - where/what is this bumper sticker waiting to be?
k
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