RIGHT ON, Steve. Edward Mycue
--- On Tue, 6/10/08, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Conference on Poetry of the Seventies
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 6:28 AM
Thanks for the fresh air here, Dominic! I find many of the other posts quite
narrow here re the history of what some now call "the long sixties"
(1964 - 1975). It is true that much of what happened stirred the right wing
into a fury - the ultimate political and socila repressions of which are
manifest in Bush et al. (Abstinence, 'axis of evil', pre-emptive war,
etc., etc). But think of the ideas and actual stuff that actually emerged from
or became hugely manifest during that period:
Opposition to the Vietnam War
Black, Feminist, Gay, Latino & other Third World civil rights and
liberation movements (pluralism, multiculturism)
Ecological Consciousness and actions (Earth Day), including issue of food and
opposition to the food industry. (i.e., organic alternatives, solar eneryg,
etc.)
Apple computer.
Emergence and practice of Buddism and many other 'alternative'
religions.
Blues, Folks, roots revivals, Beatles, Stones, John Coltrane, Ornette Colman,
etc., etc.
Oh, yes, poetry's break out from the academy. Not just the Beats, but a
wild variety of poets, but a huge interest and audiences for poetry and poets
that emerged from all the various movements. (Many of us started Presses during
that time,)
Yes, there were dark sides to all of this, (Is that a surprise?! But why does
it become the obsessive focus instead of important stuff, seeds and all?)
Yes, much of the time offered fun, but that was combined with a scary sense of
risk, and real acts of courage.
Yes, there remains blowback. But to reduce it all to narcissism and drugs is
all part of the right wing blowback is part of 'their game'. Those
forces have been on an over 30 year campaign to bury it all. Talk about the
'return of repressed' is much more to the point. George Bush and their
boys are what that campaign has given us. Whatever might be his forseeable
limits, Obama's campaign and the huge support he has drawn from the young,
has thrown some much needed light back into the world.
So take off the narrow blinders, I say,
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Adam Curtis's "The
Century of the Self" traces a line from Reich and
Marcuse (and Laing, and...) to yuppies to celeb-culture.
It's always important to ask "whose sixties". Most people
weren't
involved in the swinging metropolitan version. The things my folks
passed on to me from the sixties were things like Martin Carthy, the
Incredible String Band - intensely curious about the past, about the
signs and tokens of our shared culture (conceived vastly more widely
than "official" culture, but extending rather than abolishing it),
about the future possibilities repressed precisely by a too-limited
conception of what our traditions were.
Dominic
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