February 15, 2006
valentine's day is over
Every day we can agree with Bachelardette is like the day after Valentine's Day (didn't Morrissey say that?) To wit: "how will poets' situations change if the world does not?" Yes, yes. We take this not as plaintive despair but a battle cry.
To radical purists who think poets should stop jockeying for jobs and money and cultural capital that can be converted later into jobs and money: fight for nationalized health care, so poets can afford to get sick while pursuing aesthetic purity! (Alas, at the most empirical level, with decades of data available, it's obvious that voting Democratic helps this not happen. The fight is elsewhere!)
And to anti-elitist populists who think that intractably opaque or "academic" poems have destroyed poetry's market share and that such poetry offers contempt for the struggling citizen without time or energy or educational privilege to engage such art: don't blame poetry! Stand with poetry—fight for a world where life isn't reduced to mere survival!
Posted by jane at February 15, 2006 11:06 AM | TrackBack