So many look to our ancient scribes
and modern wordsmiths (or “wordsmythes”, as my Beloved calls us) for comfort
and reassurance in trying times. I remember listening to NPR on September 11,
2001 and hearing Billy Collins on the air, clearly unprepared for an event such
as he was asked to comment thoughtfully and artfully on at a moment’s notice.
When racism rears its ugly head on a seemingly daily basis, quotes from Gandhi
and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King speckle the interwebs. I don’t find much
comfort in their words, despite their idyllic messages of hope and peace, especially
since both, and so many more seeking the same, met violent ends.
Change is like birth. Neither is
accomplished without some bloodshed. The future progress of America won’t lie
in the hands of poets and songwriters, nor should it. If people are inspired to
go out and do the things, make the sacrifices that will be required, that’s
fine. But thinking that a song will change the world all by itself is falling
far short of the necessary steps. Rally cries, soundtracks can motivate, but
they can’t compel, nor should they be required to do so.
The landscapes of poets is as wide-ranging
as the number of folks who label themselves poets. Some write to forget.
Others, to remember. Some put pretty words together and live or die on the
praise that follows. Some craft abstractions that may hold meaning for a
precious few, but escape the understanding, and often the attention, of the
masses. The masses have gradually been excluded from the enjoyment of poetry
anyway, as schools spend more time sustaining the lives of students at the
expense of their emotional survival.
It interests me to note how art
continued thru wars, depressions, political upheavals, and natural disasters
over the centuries. The Germans continued to be born, fall in love, paint, and
write even in the darkest days of Hitler’s reign. These brutal humans, in the
big picture, always end up being a blip on the radar of humanity’s long
existence. This doesn’t mean people don’t die in the meantime. People will
always die, it’s safe to say. But there is a bigger picture. Humanity survives.
Good does eventually win out, despite the cost. And unless subsequent generations
are taught the lessons, made to believe that the lessons are real, evil will
repeat itself. And the artists will continue to record it all.
Maybe the history books should consist
of poems and paintings. Maybe each page should play the songs of an era, all
points of view. Art seems to get closest to the ideas in discussion. I have
resisted for a long time including the horror of COVID-19 in my poems. I was
unwilling to afford it the dignity of a poem, draw any more attention to it
than the illnesses and deaths it has left in its wake already have. But I can’t
always select what my poems will be about. In fact, I can rarely write these
days without very personal motivation. I am still horrified by wearing a mask,
and consider it a necessary tragedy of our everyday lives now. Yet, I wrote a
poem about them. I have an old friend who died early on, slipping into an
induced coma before we all knew what was happening. I know he’ll make an
appearance at some point, but I can’t predict when. Others I know who’ve survived
will no doubt incorporate their experiences into future work, in their way.
It can’t be an artist’s job to
lead, follow, or assist in the spread of propaganda. I believe it was former
U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove who described her role as that of a witness. We
are powerful witnesses indeed, and when all the bodies on all sides have been shed
from their electrical selves, when time passes and brings us to the next big
medium, it is the art that will tell the stories of people. It will be the art
that remains, our voices in the future wilderness.
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