108094437041847958
The Politics of Poetry
I’ve lamented publicly, loudly and at length about the dire situation in the world of contemporary poetry. It’s become little more than greeting card sentiments or self indulgent fiddle faddle with the intelectual bite of a toothless old man sucking on the pit of a peach. Few would-be poets these days remember that poems are supposed to excite the reader, drive them mad and make them howl. Essex Hemphill knew this and wrote accordingly:
THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES You are not to touch yourself in any way or be familiar with ecstasy. You are not to touch anyone of your own sex or outside of your race then talk about it, photograph it, write it down in explicit details, or paint it red, orange, blue, or dance in honor of its power, dance for its beauty, dance because it's yours. You are not to touch other flesh without a police permit. You have no privacy- the State wants to seize your bed and sleep with you. The State wants to control your sexuality, your birth rate, your passion. The message is clear: your penis, your vagina, your testicles, your womb, your anus, your orgasm, these belong to the State. You are not to touch yourself or be familiar with ecstasy. The erogenous zones are not demilitarized.
~Essex Hemphill, Ceremonies
Go forth, you teenaged e.e. cummings, you underage Nerudas, and do likewise. Break the peach pit open and suck out the juice. Spit in the eye of the poetry teacher who tells you to write about pretty things with no teeth and a pipsqueak voice.
When the government blows up the internet, shuts us all up in cages, ties our hands behind our backs and electrifies our genitals, (for our own safety) our screams of agony and joy will be the only poetry we have left. So hone the scream. The rage. The voice of the needle and the knife. Learn to fuck with your words.
Poetry is political. It�s decadent. Slutty. Anyone who tells you otherwise is jangling keys and throwing shiny, pretty things into jail cells not yet closed and locked.