The Antisocial Socialist

 April is National Poetry Month and, not being of said nation, I manage to forget that a lot. However. A friend elsewebs posted this one and I would be remiss if I didn't share it with you.

Nearly immediately after I learned of Leonard Cohen's death—while it was an inevitability for which I'd been steeling myself for months—I was whisked off to a weekend-long union thing, and haven't been able to so much as crack open my laptop in the past 72 hours or so. I've had access to Facebook and such, but I've been in passive reception mode, squinting at news, and poems, and song lyrics, and links to videos through the tiny screen of my cell phone in between sitting still and watching PowerPoint after PowerPoint. I was, to be fair, surrounded by a good number of people also mourning Leonard Cohen, but unlike the deaths of most famous people, this is an intensely personal grief that needs to be written, not spoken. Tributes to Leonard Cohen are really best written with a cigarette dangling out of one's mouth in the Chelsea Hotel while a kohl-eyed girl drowsily calls your name from the unmade bed, and anyway, I don't even smoke.

Which is to say that I haven't been in an environment that's been particularly conducive to collecting all of my thoughts, let alone writing them down.

When an artist dies at 82, having accrued international fame and reknown, amassed a body of work near-universally acknowledged as genius, it's a cause for celebration rather than mourning, but fuck it, I'm sad. Leonard Cohen is one of my earliest musical memories— maybe my earliest one. Unlike so many kids, I didn't rebel against the music my parents listened to, because it was "Suzanne" and "So Long Marianne" and "That's No Way To Say Goodbye" and "Chelsea Hotel" and "Famous Blue Raincoat" that my mother played, on the tape deck, to the point where we had to routinely rewind the exhausted plastic with a pen. It was his songs that I painstakingly tried to pluck out on piano or strum on guitar, his poems and novels in tattered books that I brought into my English classes, and later, when I was a teenager, his songs that inspired the rest of the music I'd grow to love.

There's a transcendence to Cohen's poetry, and that's why so much of the world is grieving just like me. He tapped into something dark and primal and sultry and seductive, these bleak and rich songs of sex and death and God and longing. But there's also an intense specificity. It's the words and music of a particular milieu, the cultural fabric of 60s and 70s Jewish Montreal that is in my DNA, even though I wasn't born yet, or born there. It's not just that Cohen was brilliant, but he was ours, by far the greatest poet and songwriter to come out of this country, from the same strange, haunted corner of it as my own family.

The world is hell right now, and threatening to descend into an even deeper, unimaginable hell, and there are so many things to mourn. But thank you, Mr. Cohen. I'll have your music to help me survive it.

Watching Remembrance Day assemblies in a public school these days is akin to watching The Passion. Stripped of the context of Jesus' life and preachings, Mel Gibson's atrocity was nothing more than torture porn, and worse still, torture porn in slow-motion. Likewise, stripped of the context of history (does no one teach Causes of WWI in history class anymore?), Remembrance Day assemblies are poorly crafted mummers plays, reminding the children that Our Glorious Dead Died For YOUR Sins—you ingrates. You slothful, cowardly ingrates, who don't really appreciate the freedom and democracy bought through the sacrifices of long-dead young men. It's a strange message in a school, in a city, where so many are refugees from war-torn countries, where so many are acutely aware of the realities and the horrors of war and have experienced it much more directly than have their teachers.

The lack of context, in our case, was surreal. In avoidance of a direct engagement with what war is, everything gets thrown together in a pastiche of "things that kind of make us think of soldiers and war." We got photos of the trenches and smiling regiments and skeletal Holocaust victims and the atom bomb and propaganda posters set in a PowerPoint to the tune of Lennon's "Imagine." We got the expected rhyming poems about the importance of poppies. We got a lecture from a 22-year-old soldier on the importance of Canada's peacekeeping missions. We got a glurge song about wanting to punch a dude in the face for not observing the two minutes of silence. We got the most godawful rendition of "Amazing Grace" I have ever heard. The fake coffin brought in to commemorate the dead of WWI and WWII was draped in a maple leaf flag—the one that wasn't used in Canada until 1965. But who cares about historical accuracy, amirite?

The thing is, the idea of remembering soldiers who died in war is really important. Really, really important (though, in fairness, we ought to take more time in general to remember workers whose lives are considered expendable by those who employ them). We do both the dead and the living a disservice, though, when we lie about why they died and what the wars were fought over.

Because, yeah, they died for someone's sins. But it wasn't the sins of my context-deprived children. They died for the sins of the rich and powerful. Not for freedom or democracy* in most cases, but because someone was greedy, someone was after a piece of land, someone had a longstanding grudge. That doesn't make them less brave or less worthy of remembering. But understanding why wars were fought goes a long way towards making sure more brave young folks don't join the ranks of the fallen.

For obvious reasons, I am not in charge of organizing the Remembrance Day Assembly at our school. I'd likely have read excerpts from Johnny Got His Gun and Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Or read poetry with complicated rhyming schemes (or even no rhyming scheme at all!). My favourite WWI poems are Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est and The Parable of the Young Man and the Old, but since I post them most years, I thought I'd do Brecht this time.**

TO MY COUNTRYMEN

(An meine Landsleute)

You, who live on in towns that passed away,
Now show yourselves some mercy, I implore.
Do not go marching into some new war
As if the old wars had not had their day,
But show yourselves some mercy, I implore.

You men, reach for the spade and not the knife.
You'd have a roof right now above your head
If you had taken up the spade instead.
And with a roof one has a better life.
You men, reach for the trowel, not the knife.

You children, that you all may remain alive,
Your fathers and your mothers you must waken
And if in ruins you would not survive,
Tell them you will not take what they have taken,
You children, that you all may remain alive.

You mothers, since the word is yours to give
To stand for war or not to stand for war
I beg you, mothers, let your children live!
Let birth, not death, be what they thank you for.
I beg you, mothers, let your children live!

Frankie Armstrong's version.

* Whose democracy, exactly, were they fighting for? Canadian women didn't have the right to vote until 1919 (two years after WW1), and people of Asian descent didn't get it until 1948 (three years after WWII). Inuit people didn't get to vote until 1950. It wasn't until 1960 that other indigenous people in Canada (many of whom fought and died in the wars!) could vote without losing their status.

** At least I think Brecht wrote it. There's always a chance that one of his girlfriends wrote it and he took the credit.

Here you have the catchword around which has long circled a debate familiar to you. Its familiarity tells you how unfruitful it has been, for it has not advanced beyond the monotonous reiteration of arguments for and against: on the one hand, the correct political line is demanded of the poet; on the other, one is justified in expecting his work to have quality. Such a formulation is of course unsatisfactory as long as the connection between the two factors, political line and quality, has not been perceived. Of course, the connection can be asserted dogmatically. You can declare: a work that shows the correct political tendency need show no other quality. You can also declare: a work that exhibits the correct tendency must of necessity have every other quality.

This second formulation is not uninteresting, and, moreover, it is correct. I adopt it as my own. But in doing so I abstain from asserting it dogmatically. It must be proved.

(Bad political folksingers, I'm looking at you.)

I was wondering today what Benjamin's and Brecht's friendship must have been like. It's not that I imagine Brecht as more of a hardass (though he probably was), but there's a certain touching optimism that I see in Benjamin's work that makes me think that he must have argued a lot with the sort of personality who wrote something like "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" I really wish I had a time machine, though it probably still wouldn't help as I don't speak German.

Also, Benjamin's adorable fanboying writing about Karl Kraus makes me now want to read Karl Kraus. Have any of you read him?

Identity Card

Record!
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the nineth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?

Record!
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks..
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?

Record!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew

My father.. descends from the family of the plow
Not from a privileged class
And my grandfather..was a farmer
Neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Teaches me the pride of the sun
Before teaching me how to read
And my house is like a watchman's hut
Made of branches and cane
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name without a title!

Record!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks..
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!

Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate poeple
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper's flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!

by Mahmoud Darwish
1964

Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine's national poet, is dead. He never had a chance to go home.

R.I.P.

Via one_serious_cat:"Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along."

art terrorism was a lot funnier before some douche from OCAD used it as an excuse to call in a bomb scare at a fundraising event for AIDS research. But I appreciate it when Banksy replaces gallery and museum pieces or viral marketing goes awry.

biotic baking brigade: I used to be really into these guys. I don't think they do much as a collective anymore, but the idea has caught on and now pompous asshats are getting pwned by pies (usually vegan) all over the world. The pie's the limit!

gwendolyn macewan is one of my favourite poets. She lived here in Toronto and wrote poetry and plays and drank herself to death. I used to live across from a park named after her. She was a depressed, broken person but utterly brilliant and prolific. Some of her poems are here but you really should check out some of her books. Also, she was a total cat person and sort of looked like me.

leftist trainspotting is a major pastime of mine. It refers specifically to the study of leftist sectarian splits. My basic worldview is similar to that of most of the people and organizations that I mock, but that doesn't matter. Most splits occur for hilarious reasons.

Here are some fine examples of leftist transpotting: U.S. | Nepal

Also check out pemm.

nestor makhno was a Ukrainian anarchist who fought basically everyone during the Russian Revolution, on horseback, and with a wicked mustache. If the Bolsheviks are to be believed, he was an utter dick in almost every way. I find him rather interesting even though I suspect that they're probably right.

phil ochs: Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan were, respectively, the Tupac and Biggie of their day. Bob Dylan told Phil Ochs that he was a journalist, not a folksinger. I gather Phil Ochs told Bob Dylan some things that can't be repeated in polite company. Both had some self-destructive tendencies but Phil Ochs died of his, whereas Bob Dylan sold out and became a Christian. Guess which one I like better?

the coming beecopalypse (OR zombie porn): I'll talk about the beepocalypse, because it's more interesting. Bees all over the world have been dying of something called Colony Collapse Disorder. There are many theories as to what causes this, but the bottom line is that if the bee population is drastically reduced, the current food shortages we're seeing (which aren't really shortages but distribution problems but that's a whole other rant) are going to get even worse. Bees die, you die. I find the idea fascinatingly horrifying. (Also see: peak bee, peak banana.)

I sort of got more haphazard about writing towards the end of my trip. I also started running out of space on my memory card.

( Day 11 )

( Day 12 )

The best thing to read on LJ today is an ongoing discussion between springheel_jack (if you're not reading his LJ, you're missing out), spimby, fengi, and others about U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and his latest hilarious interview. (Relevant links: this one, this one, this one, and this one.)

I have very little to add to the discussion. I haven't heard of the guy before, which is at least in part because he doesn't write the sort of poetry that I tend to read. Not that I read that much poetry, but when I do, it's the kind of poetry he criticizes. Out of curiosity, I read some of Kooser's poetry and I was not impressed. The only thing worse than bad poetry is boring poetry. I may not entirely get T.S. Eliot (and really, I've never studied poetry as an academic), but I've lost count of the number of times I've read The Wasteland, in part because of its complexity. It's not that there's anything wrong with light reading, of course. There's something wrong with anti-intellectualism and with encouraging readers not to read work that includes words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. This kind of populism reinforces cultural elitism and the idea that "the masses" can't understand anything that uses polysyllabic vocabulary.

Anyway, I was all ready to be smug about Canada's Poet Laureate, but then I found out that it wasn't George Bowering anymore. I think ours might actually be worse than Kooser.

(To go off on a tangent for a moment, the one time I ever agreed with Objectivists is when they called the TTC's poetry campaign "Poetry in the Way." We have differing reasons, of course == they thought ads should go there, I think that poems should not be complete crap -- but that's another story.)

Really, public cultural initiatives shouldn't encourage mediocrity. I'm inclined to agree with springheel_jack that it's probably intentional in Kooser's case. Sigh.

By the way, what's with this "modern poetry is so hard to understand" meme? Was John Donne very simple and straightforward and I'm just missing something?

Still no interwebs at home (we're looking at about two weeks before I'm back online), but from what I gather:

Commandante Ramona and Irving Layton are dead.
Ariel Sharon is still alive.

Life isn't fair.

(More later: I have a lot of posts to read through.)