A really fine interview, Rachel.
My problem, such as it is (I actually like my footnoted usage, feels
like a little mischief) is that most of the available terms are too
quirky for the intended audience, hopefully the general reader (tho
I'd be happy enough with the sargeant reader). "Citizens" or
"residents" of the US doesn't work--would require too many
qualifications. What my first paragraph talks about is a cultural
myth that I have to undermine. It is a cultural myth (or rather a set
of cultural myths), though I know lots of individual US cits or
residents who are less starry-eyed about Cuba than Ry Cooder, and
less dumb than George Bush.
Here's the first bit:
Relations with Cuba have preoccupied the North American
imagination[i] far more than one might expect, given the island's
small size and minimal power. North American understanding of Cuba
has, at the same time, been obscured by mythologies of both the right
and the left, in which Cubans have also been known to indulge. Cuba
has been imagined as a place simpler than our own, whose people are
less inhibited and more passionate, friendly to strangers and prone
to dancing in the street, a land strangely set apart in a childhood
fantasy, as evidenced by the opulent hulks that cruise its streets.
For those of the left, there's the equally simplified Cuba of heroes,
where the new man, freed from the shackles of exploitive cultures,
has managed to create a society based on cooperation and compassion
rather than greed, despite the opposition of the giant to the north.
The reality has always been more complex.
[i] With apologies to Canadian readers, I have used "North American"
to indicate a citizen of the United States. Most Latin Americans find
it annoyingly presumptuous that we call ourselves Americans to the
exclusion of the hemisphere's other inhabitants. Thus far the English
language offers no equivalent to the Spanish estadounidense,
"unitedstatesian."
Writing anything about Cuba is a tightrope walk.
Mark
At 08:36 AM 9/11/2007, you wrote:
>Peter wrote:
>
> > How does Bowering deal with this?
>
>I ask George about this whole subject in the interview we did for Jacket 33.
>One of my questions begins:
>
>'As I think you know I've got no quarrel with your take on the arrogance of
>empire or really with "USAmerican," except that I always find myself
>involuntarily cycling through all the poems it would have ruined if
>USAmericans had adopted it earlier: "The pure products of USAmerica / go
>crazy," "I hear USAmerica singing, the varied carols I hear," "Let USAmerica
>be USAmerica again." It's so corporate - which is very appropriate on one
>level, but as language it curls my ear.'
>
>To read his answers:
>
>http://jacketmagazine.com/33/loden-bowering-iv.shtml
>
>Rachel Loden
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Cudmore
> > Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 8:58 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: America's Guardian Myths
> >
> > The thing is not to find convenient terms of abuse, but
> > simply a precise yet
> > concise way of speaking. 'American' fits the bill for
> > concision, but not for
> > precision.
> >
> > How does Bowering deal with this?
> >
> > P
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> > > Behalf Of Douglas Barbour
> > > Sent: 10 September 2007 16:05
> > > To: [log in to unmask]
> > > Subject: Re: America's Guardian Myths
> > >
> > > That's precisely why I try to remember to follow our
> > ex-Poet Laureate
> > > when it's called for. But of course we are all Norteamericanos....
> > >
> > > Doug
> > > On 8-Sep-07, at 9:28 PM, Halvard Johnson wrote:
> > >
> > > > Just don't let George Bowering catch you
> > > > calling USAmericans Americans.
> > > Douglas Barbour
> > > 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> > > Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> > > (780) 436 3320
> > > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> > >
> > > Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> > > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> > >
> > > Someone to talk to, for God's sake, some-
> > > thing to love that will never hit back
> > >
> > > Phyllis Webb
> >
