Great article - thanks for sharing it with us. I for one, agree that poetry
does not need to compromise itself, nor does it need to conform to
societal/media influences. AND if we get read it's by those who want to read
us. They are the few that defy convention, the few that continue to struggle
in an ever-pervading technological yoghurt of globalisation. They are the
readers of literature. I'm probably boring against the luscious lips of
Cosmo's plastic shrines, but I'm encouraged by knowing myself, my failings
and weaknesses and that in poetry I can be personal as a liberation of self;
thereby remaining the artist, defining the human condition as a continuum
for those who came before. I'm encouraged by these words by Anais Nin
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,
there is only the meaning we each give to our life,
an individual meaning, an individual plot,
like an individual novel, a book for each person.
We are going to the moon, that is not very far.
Man has so much farther to go within himself.
HH
>A. noted: 'None of the newspapers take anything like a serious attitude to
>arts reporting/reviewing....The coverage is events/celebrity led, and nowt
>to be done about it.'
>
>This chimed with some sentiments I expressed in a recent interview, and I
>reproduce them in order to advance the discussion here:
>
>'Poets are all too human. Whether juggling two jobs or scribbling away the
>months on public money they moan that they have no profile. So what? They
>should enjoy their freedom from a popular readership; it lets them become
>honest writers rather than skilful performers who are defined by audience
>response. Do they really want to compromise the self for its billboard
>image? If literature is not responsible to and for more than the material
>then it is just another dish on the hedonist's menu. Already the novel is
>prominently listed on the Specials board; I'm in no hurry to chalk up
>poetry.
> No-one is above the conundrum of the world (as Salman Rushdie
>discovered) but I'm numb every time I read a newspaper: why does anyone
>care
>about who won where by what when there's a famine, a flood, and the locusts
>are coming? The truth is that no one really does; no one knows how to care
>now our destiny's technological, everything's taken care of, and we've
>ticked the correct box. Wonder why that cover-girl is smiling when she
>suspects (correctly) we want to humiliate her? She smiles because the
>everyday is where the terrified, over time, become indifferent in every
>sense. Writers are not immune so they need to keep their distance from this
>newsflash condition.'
>
>Later in the interview I note: '...Modern democracies have abrogated the
>notion of citizen for that of consumer. While insisting in its legislative
>role on a social contract, the government has become little more than a
>regulator of commerce - and an ineffectual one at that. Only those who have
>worked to 'establish person' can remove the unjust label 'consumer' that is
>sewn on them as a yellow star was on David Vogel, Primo Levi and Paul
>Celan.
>And what sews on that designer label? Television. Echoing Adorno, Neil
>Postman observes in 'Amusing Our Selves To Death': "It is in the nature of
>the medium that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to.
>accommodate the values of show business."
> Because I have production-managed live broadcasts to sixty million
>American homes I know how television choreographs sensation instead of
>investigating experience. Having toured with her, I'm aware that Janet
>Jackson is a modest and honourable woman; unfortunately the media
>'superstar
>' is a narcotic. The elusive vagrant Poetry won't become one so long as the
>received (which is more a brand than a voice) is avoided for the
>individuated and therefore authentic.
> However ridiculous it sounds, and however partial my attempts, I work
>to
>preserve the sanctity of the subjective as it is declared in the poem by
>opposing a market where effective branding is mistaken for value... Art has
>become artefact and the subjective has been objectified so that it has an
>exchange-value. But to yoke art to market forces is to subscribe to an
>ideology every bit as tyrannical as that of Socialist Realism. I am
>heartened when I hear that 'poetry does not sell' - Poetry is not for sale.
> If understanding is a precondition of citizenry then the opposite is
>true of consumerism. An indiscriminate mass consumes more than the same
>number of realised individuals. And poets must resist the pressure to
>become
>'a product of' this that or the other; instead they must get real. The
>strength of poetry in totalitarian states, where it inspires large
>audiences
>who are out for more than enjoyment, suggests that oppression also forces
>the authentic voice to develop. If poetry is 'truly democratic' it is so
>because of, not in spite of, its ability to individuate.'
>
>David Howard
>www.relevents.org
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