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POETRYETC  2000

POETRYETC 2000

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Subject:

Double Life of VERONIQUE

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Date:

Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:10:49 -0400 (EDT)

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Sorry about the previous post's misrendering of the film title--and of
yesterday's post in which the Stones's "Memo FROM Turner" was likewise
misrendered. I have had another listen to that song, meanwhile, and feel
reasonably sure that the following quotation from its lyrics is accurate.
(Also recalled that "Memo From Turner" was written in 1968, politically
enough, and for a film called _Performance_ that Mick Jagger co-produced
and released in--I think--1970. I've never seen it myself, but assuming
that it touches on the main theme of the song, I'd guess it to be about
interestedness, and interests hidden within interests, pockets lined by
deeper pockets.) Here are a few excerpts, with ellipses marking the
jump cuts:

Come now, gentlemen,
I know there's some mistake
How forgetful I'm becoming
now you've fixed your business straight.
....
I watched you at the coke convention
Back in 1965....
You're the gray gray man
Whose daughter licks policemen's buttons clean
You're the man who squats behind
The man who works the salt machine.
....
Be wary, please, my gentle friends
Of all the skins you breed
They have a nasty habit
Of eating hands that bleed.

So remember who you say you are
And keep your noses clean
Boys will be boys, they play with toys
So be strong with your beast.


If my quotes from and allusions to various films and pieces of music
have registered an unease with the UN project, let me emphasize that
an unease is all it is. I'm not questioning the integrity of anyone
involved--least of all John Kinsella, whose integrity is beyond
question, as far as I'm concerned, and whom I also respect enough to
believe that he knows what he's doing when he says he's "working from
within." I do not know Ram or anything about him beyond what he's told
us himself, and although I appreciated his most recent post, it didn't
tell me anything more than his previous list posts have. There are still
unanswered questions that have not assuaged my unease, but neither JK
nor Ram has any obligation to do so, after all.

Regarding the UN in particular, it hardly qualifies as a "grassroots"
entity and, among international organizations, the extent to which it's
been a force for good is far less than Amnesty International, say, or--
among examples of specifically writer-related organizations, PEN (it
seems to me at least). Ram has said that he doesn't work for the UN, but
I'd like to know what exactly his relationship to it is then and how
exactly he's "working through" the UN to organize this event, which his
most recent post described as both a "UN event" and not that at all,
but rather "YOUR event."

As far as the UN qua UN goes, it's too much of a muchness with
Government relative to poetry, in my opinion, and without implying any
lack of confidence in John Kinsella's manifestly authentic, activist
anarchism (or in his ability to work effectively "from within" the
belly of a beast like the UN), the one consistent feature of anarchism
historically has, I believe, been its op-position-ality to Government.
That's one way in which poetry has always seemed to me to be anarchist
by definition, so I tend to feel the same unease about national poet
laureates, for example, as I do about the UN project as a poetry and/or
poetryetc project. Just on the level of language (which, of course, for
poetry is THE level--poetry's Real, in a manner of speaking), I wonder
about the disjunctive usages of a term like "peace-keeping force." The
UN can use such a term unironically and unreflexively, using it as if
it were simple and unproblematic. Could any poet or poem worthy of the
name do so? I wonder.

Candice



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