November 06, 2006
the race
It is with mounting nausea that we watch poets race to cast their liberal votes for candidates more conservative than the Republicans they found beyond revulsion twenty years ago — and indeed race not just to feed at this trough but serve the slop. They support abortion by explaining why one should vote an anti-abortion ticket; oppose war by stumping for candidates who supported war at every turn, other than the brief moment when it has seemed politically expedient; propose an ethics which abandons the territory of ethics entirely and can't even produce the pragmatic results it claims. It is at best exhaustion, for which there is no sufficient excuse; at worst it's unpaid labor in perfecting the logic of following orders, for which there's no sufficient punishment.
If our disgust seems magnified, it's because we cherish the possibility that poetry allows forms of thought, of consciousness, which might imagine some retort other than celebrating the chance to eat shit as long as it's only the second-worst shit available.
Not all historical moments are identical, and not all politicans are the same. This moment has had its specificity, and its historicality, and it has been this: when the poets most needed to imagine what might be necessary, they muttered passively of necessity; when the poets most needed to be radical, they were good soldiers.
Posted by jane at November 6, 2006 08:45 PM | TrackBack