Poetry for Southern California

 

Front Page

 

 

Welcome to Poetix 5/2008

Cover Story, Richard Modiano

Orange County Poetry Festival Events

Sponsored by Tebot Bach and the OC Poetry Hosts

Click here for detailed descriptions of all events. (PDF document)

Friday, May 2, 2008, 8:00 pm
Contemporary Poetry in Translation
Noted poet/translators read and discuss their translations of various poets.
Golden West College, Huntington Beach, CA
Community Room 102
Featuring Paul Vangelisti, Hélène Cardona, Niloufar Talebi Hosted by Larry Colker

Saturday, May 3, 2008, 7:00 pm
Indie Presses Present
Tebot Bach, Moon Tide Press, World Parade Books, and West-Coast Bias Press present readings by representative authors.
Golden West College, Huntington Beach, CA
Community Room 102
Featuring Gerald Locklin, Donna Hilbert, Sam Pereira, Catharine Clarke-Sayles, Kate Buckley, Brendan Constantine, Regina Nervo, Paul Kareem Tayyar

Sunday, May 4, 2008, 3 pm and 7 pm
Kids, Teens, and Young Adults Poetry, sponsored by Tebot Bach
3 pm - Kids Poetry (Grades 1-8)
7 pm -Teens and Young Adults Poetry
Golden West College, Huntington Beach, CA
Community Room 102

Monday, May 5, 2008, 6:00 pm
Environmental Reading, Hosted by John Gardiner
Laguna Niguel Library
30341 Crown Valley Parkway
Laguna Niguel, CA
Original poetry and Shakespeare reading, featuring Kate Buckley, John Gardiner, Lily Greenberg, Jane Hilary, Ricki Mandeville, Carrie Pohlhammer

Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Gypsy Den, hosted by Jaimes Palacio
Featuring Louise Mathias, Terry Hertzler, and musical guest Ruby

Wednesday, May 7, 2008, 8:00 pm
New Voices, hosted by Jaimes Palacio
The Ugly Mug Caffé
261 North Glassell Ave.
Orange CA
7:30 open reading sign-ups
Featuring Ally Lever, Elizabeth Aamot, Eric Morago, Heather Love, James Kelly, Kat Sanchez, The Picard Maneuver

COVER STORY

By Richard Modiano

 

 

Poetry and Revolution

Since May 2008 is the fortieth anniversary of the May 1968 “almost revolution” in France, it seems appropriate to talk about poetry and revolution. Specifically, what kind of poetry is revolutionary?

A revolutionary poetry would benefit from a revolutionary poetics to provide guidance if not a set of rules for the poet to follow. What might such a poetics look like?

A revolutionary poetics will, above all, be a "partisan" and "committed" poetics, a "committed" art, a consciously and resolutely committed poetry- that is to say, an "imperfect" poetry. An "impartial" or "uncommitted" poetry, as a complete aesthetic activity, will only be possible when it is the people themselves who make art and not a specialized class of art workers. But today art must assimilate its quota of work so that work can assimilate its quota of art.

Revolutionary poetry finds a new audience in those who struggle, and it finds its themes in their problems. For revolutionary poetry, lucid people are the ones who think and feel and exist in a world which they can change; in spite of all the problems and difficulties, they are convinced that they can transform it in a revolutionary way. Revolutionary poetry therefore has no need to struggle to create an "audience." On the contrary, it can be said that at present a greater audience exists for this kind of poetry than there are poets able to supply that audience.

What does this audience require of us? An art full of moral examples worthy of imitation? No. Humans partake more of creation than innovation. Besides, the reader should be the one to give us moral examples. She might ask us for a fuller, more complete work, aimed—in a separate or coordinated fashion—at the intelligence, the emotions, the powers of intuition.

Should she ask us for a poetry of denunciation? Yes and no. No, if the denunciation is directed toward the others, if it is conceived that those who are not struggling might sympathize with us and increase their awareness. Yes, if the denunciation acts as information, as testimony, as another combat weapon for those engaged in the struggle. Why denounce imperialism to show one more time that it is evil? We can denounce imperialism but should strive to do it as a way of proposing concrete battles.

A revolutionary poetry must above all show the process which generates the problems. It is thus the opposite of a poetry principally dedicated to celebrating results, the opposite of a self-sufficient and contemplative poetry, the opposite of a poetry which "beautifully illustrates" ideas or concepts which we already possess. (This narcissistic posture has nothing to do with those who struggle.) To show a process is not exactly equivalent to analyzing it. To analyze, in the traditional sense of the word, always implies a closed prior judgment. To analyze a problem is to show the problem (not the process) permeated with judgments which the analysis itself generates a priori. To analyze is to block off from the outset any possibility for analysis on the part of the interlocutor.

To show the process of a problem, on the other hand, is to submit it to judgment without pronouncing the verdict. There is a style of news reporting which puts more emphasis on the commentary than on the news item. There is another kind of reporting which presents the news and evaluates it through the arrangement of the item on the page or by its position in the paper. To show the process of a problem is like showing the very development of the news item, without commentary; it is like showing the multifaceted evolution of a piece of information without evaluating it. The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience—which is the subject. The objective element is showing the process—which is the object.

Revolutionary poetry is an answer, but it is also a question that will discover its own answers in the course of its development. Revolutionary poetry can make use of true stories or of fiction, or a combination of both in the same poem. It can use whatever genre, or all genres. It can use poetry as a pluralistic art form or as a specialized form of expression. These questions are indifferent to it, since they do not represent its real alternatives or problems, and much less its real goals. These are not the battles or polemics it is interested in sparking.

Revolutionary poetry can also be enjoyable, both for the maker and for its new audience. Those who struggle do not struggle on the edge of life, but in the midst of it. Struggle is life and vice-versa. One does not struggle in order to live "later on." The struggle requires organization—the organization of life, and the organization of life is equivalent to the organization of the struggle. And in life, as in the struggle, there is everything, including enjoyment. Revolutionary poetry can enjoy itself despite everything which conspires to negate enjoyment.

Revolutionary poetry rejects exhibitionism in both (literal) senses of the word, the narcissistic and the commercial. Revolutionary poetry is no longer interested in predetermined taste, and much less in "good taste." It is not quality which it seeks in an artist's work. The only thing it is interested in is how an artist responds to the following question: What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the "cultured" elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?

The poet who subscribes to this new poetics should not have personal self—realization as her object. From now on she should also have another activity. She should place her role as revolutionary or aspiring revolutionary above all else. In a word, she should try to fulfill herself as a human being and not just as an artist. Revolutionary poetry cannot lose sight of the fact that its essential goal as a new poetics is to disappear. It is no longer a matter of replacing one school with another, one "ism" with another, poetry with anti-poetry, but of truly letting a thousand different flowers bloom. The future lies with folk art. But let us no longer display folk art with demagogic pride, with a celebrative air. Let us exhibit it instead as a cruel denunciation, as a painful testimony to the level at which the peoples of the world have been forced to limit their artistic creativity. The future, without doubt, will be with folk art, but then there will be no need to call it that, because nobody and nothing will any longer be able to again paralyze the creative spirit of the people.

Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.