the woods are full of policemen
A question was posited in a poetry group I'm part of on Facebook. The gist of it was: Do poets have an obligation to speak out in their poems, especially during fraught times such as the ones we live in now, or is it fine to continue writing poems about love and desire and whatever else you want? Must poetry be political, must it carry a message, or does it exist for its own sake?
I have been stewing on this, chewing on this, for weeks, now. I don't have any answers, but I have a lot of thoughts.
Bertolt Brecht said: You can't write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen. I both agree and disagree with that statement. It is more difficult to write about the trees when the cops are coming at you with billyclubs swinging and guns ablaze. At the beginning of 2017, I found that most of my poems were overtly political; I tried to write about other things but in the wake of the orange nightmare's inauguration it was almost impossible for a while. And that's not anything new for me--I go in cycles with my writing, where at times it is not overtly political and other times it is. So I do understand what Brecht is saying there. But on the other hand...it may be harder to write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen, but I wouldn't say you can't. Can't sounds like shouldn't sounds like--to cop a phrase from Patti Smith--the word suggests rules and regulations to me. And it's like this: the trees and the cops are both always there. Sometimes you write about the cops. Sometimes you write about the trees. Sometimes you write about the trees but the shadow of the cops still falls across the page or lurks behind the pines. It's like this: for some of us, the woods have always been full of policemen, so it is an act of resistance to say no, fuck you, I'm gonna write about the goddamn trees. (I'll get back to that thought, later.) Or, as Miguel James (translated by Guillermo Parra) puts it:
Against the Police
My entire Ouevre is against the police
If I write a Love poem it's against the police
And if I sing the nakedness of bodies I sing against the police
And if I make this earth a metaphor I make a metaphor against the police
If I speak wildly in my poems I speak against the police
And if I manage to create a poem it's against the police
I haven't written a single word, a verse, a stanza that isn't against the police
All my prose is against the police
My entire Oeuvre
Including this poem
My whole Ouevre
Is against the police.
Consider this: you can be a political person without always--or ever--bringing politics overtly into your writing. Consider this: yes, the choice to "leave politics out of it" is, in itself, a political choice. But writing a poem that isn't explicit in its political viewpoints doesn't mean you, or the work, is apolitical. Consider this: everything is political, but aren't you tired of poorly-written rants masquerading as poems? Aren't you tired of the hundreds of thousands of poets who write contrived pieces about every single tragedy and headline? I am. Especially when they look down on other poets for not writing about every news item. How can you write about love, or flowers, or food at a time like this? they tweet. It's the literary version of why is no one talking about this???!11?, and it drives me just as batty. Just because I'm writing about being a fucked up teenage girl, or about sex, or motherhood, doesn't mean I'm not holding space for the tragedy in Las Vegas or the Catalan independence movement. Consider this: it's possible to care about more than one thing at a time. Not writing a poem about every single news item doesn't mean you're not aware of it, or don't care. And to be honest, many of those Ode to the Latest News-type poems seem forced. Poetry is not something that should be forced. If you feel called to write a poem about, or inspired by, a specific event, you must, but if you do it just because you think you should... Let me put it this way: I'd rather read a hundred thousand poems about the way the human heart works than one more virtue-signaling knee-jerk reaction to world politics disguised as a poem with a few line-breaks and flouncy words.
And, once again, many poets write both overtly political poems and poems about a multitude of other things, depending on what they are called to in the moment. Think of my poetry mama Diane di Prima, who wrote Revolutionary Letters but also wrote Loba (which is nothing less than a gorgeous work of feminist/feminine mysticism) and also wrote things like "More or Less Love Poems":
10.
you are not quite
the air I breathe
thank god.
so go.
11.
No babe
We'd never
Swing together
but the syncopation would be something wild
Or think of my dude Percy Bysshe Shelley, who wrote "The Masque of Anarchy" but also wrote poems such as "Hymn of Pan" and "To the Moon."
Jericho Brown writes: Every poem is a love poem. Every poem is a political poem. So say the masters. Every love poem is political. Every political poem must fall in love. Skunk Anansie sings: Yes, it's fucking political. Everything's political. But as I said earlier on in this rant-masquerading-as-essay: for some of us, the woods have always been full of policemen, so it is an act of resistance to say no, fuck you, I'm gonna write about the goddamn trees. All of us, all of our loves and lives and bodies, are political, but some of us more so than others; that is, some of our loves and lives and bodies are not merely political but are in fact battlegrounds where other people hash out their politics. For poets who are women, or trans or nonbinary or gender non-conforming, for poets who are LGBTQ+, mentally ill, neurodivergent, disabled, for poets of color--for any poet who is not a straight, white, able-bodied, neurotypical cis man--our survival is an act of resistance, and telling our stories, every tiny nuance of them, is a political act, a protest. And all our poetry is informed by our identities and struggles (and our beliefs and biases), whether we are overt about it or not. I am always writing from the perspective of a queer nonbinary femme, a mad woman, a mama, a witch, an anarcha-socialist, etc.--it's just that I don't always want to write about my fears or anger, I don't always want to write revolutionary letters. Sometimes I need to write about being stopped in my car, waiting for a coal train to pass in the early dark of a November evening.
What it boils down to, for me, are those rules and regulations I mentioned before. I dislike, I abhor, having rules placed upon my life or my body, and I also abhor having rules placed upon my writing--whether that be the subject matter or the style. I don't want to toe any party line, whether that comes by way of a fascist dictator or a black bloc-er. I will not be Anna Akhmatova, denounced by the Communist Party as a "harlot-nun" for daring to write about the erotic and the mystic, called bourgeoise for writing love poems because love is not a concern for revolutionaries. (I'd disagree and say that love is of utmost concern for revolutionaries, but that is another rant for another time.) If you tell me that I should leave politics out of my writing, I will be furious, and I'll write a whole book full of political poems just to prove I can. But if you tell me I'm not a real activist because all I write about is love, you best believe I'm gonna keep writing love poems, l-u-v.
The woods are full of policemen but we must be able to write about every aspect of the woods. I don't think shoulds, or should-nots, or rules and regulations and obligations, have any place in poetry or any other art form. Too much of that will do nothing but stifle it to death. Alice Notley said it best:
The first rule of poetry is honesty;
the second rule is fuck you.
OTHER THINGS:
The completion of both the second edition of Major Arcana of the Punk Rock Tarot and Reckless Chants #25 have been pushed back a bit, as you should already be aware of if you preordered. I have no excuses other than that I have a lot on my mind, what with the whole baby-on-the-way thing, and also I am distractible and tend to set projects aside to work on other projects.
Speaking of...Reckless Chants #25 has changed form. It will not be a collection of essays on various topics. Instead, it's gonna be a novella about the autumn/winter of 2000, and nervous breakdowns, and the cafe I hung out at on Belmont Ave. in Chicago.
Yesterday (November 10) marked the first Yahrzeit (anniversary of the passing) of Leonard Cohen, so I've been listening to Cohen and covers of Cohen songs for the past two days. You should go listen to Anonymous Choir's haunting rendition of "The Partisan." Really, you should.