Poetry on this basis would have no otherness. It would merely be a
confirmation of what one already knows. And indeed neither in the ballads
referenced nor in, say, *Fixing to Die Rag* ('... be the first ones on your
block / to have your son come home in a box' and so forth) nor yet in Joe
Green's own *A Short History* does it seem possible that someone Vietnamese
could becoming a speaking subject, as the urn does at the end of Keats' ode.
But without that extra extent ( 'vast Provinces, they had only heard of the
remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them'), without at least some
implication of the other, such as through irony, pity and dismay turn back
on themselves and risk shading into _self_ pity.


You miss the implications of the last lines in "A Short History" which
say, specifically, Goodbye to All That.  That's exactly the move that
is made.

Then I kicked in the bedroom door.

Shot this picture.

Reader.  Rider.  Horses.

Slaked.  Plausive.  Ignorant.

Just there everything is undone.  No irony, pity and dismay shading
into self pity -- no silencing of the outside.

Those last words do the job -- and, of course, escape the reader.  Unless.

These sorts of poems usually read from the same point of view, all in
all... to hell with that. That's what the last three words mean.





On Nov 6, 2007 6:21 PM, MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Christopher,
>
> I was quite taken with your segue from Keats' "false
> coinage" to anti-war poetry. As I recall, people did
> indeed _listen_ to it (however execrable it sometimes
> was) at rallies and protests, but whether Strand is
> right to say that they _read_ it, I'm not so sure.
>
> That and your Country Joe sig reminded me of how, at
> the beginning of the Iraq war, it was pop musicians
> like Patti Smith and Michael Stipe who put out a call
> for songs against the war, and _they_ were _listened_
> to as well. Some, like R.E.M.'s "Final Straw," even
> became hits. (War as good careerism, like famine used
> to be?) And, of course, it wasn't necessary to _read_
> the lyrics of those protest songs.
>
> I wonder how many folks will read (as opposed to
> merely buying) Tom Brokaw's _Boom: Voices of the
> Sixties_, his story of 1968 in the US as told through
> interviews with everyone from Mark Rudd to Karl Rove
> (if you can imagine).
>
> Candice
>
>     as I raise my head to broadcast my objection
> as your latest triumph draws the final straw
> who died and lifted you up to perfection?
>     and what silenced me is written into law
>
> (R.E.M.)
>
>
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