>the machine of the state has many guises,
>and the poetry industry is one of them. even overtly political poets who
>allow their poetry to become part of a national 'heritage' or identity
>are complicit in this.
This is an interesting problem.
One of the bleakest things I've ever seen written on this is the play
Scenes from an Execution, by Howard Barker, in which a Renaissance
painter attempts the ultimate critique of the State and War; but all of
her attempts at dissent and condemnation are destroyed by her own success
as an artist, in that the prestige of the masterpiece she ultimately
creates is at once appropriated by the State, which doesn't care about
the subject or the critique, but sees only its own power in its ability
to absorb and neutralise even the sharpest dissent (perhaps there is the
example of the CIA promotion of Abstract Expressionism behind this). The
way Barker paints it there, there's no way out; an artist is powerless.
There's a tiny flicker of hope in the reaction of a single soldier, who
sees his own reality at last mirrored in art; but it is a highly ironised
hope, which Barker dares you to pick up: it's boobytrapped.
Mind you, he's still writing plays...
Especially, thinking of how many poets have been co-opted into
nationalistic discourses against the profound impulses of their own work
after their death. How is a poet complicit in something over which
he/she has no control?
Best
Alison
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