“The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin (bronze)
Here’s what I’ve been wondering… is it enough to write poetry?
I mean, is it okay to not be an activist in the march-down-the-street-with-a-picket-sign sort of way? To not be writing angry letters to the editor of the local paper? To not be organizing on behalf of the community?
At times, I’m just expressing my little woes and excitements. Or what I notice. Just the small achievements of getting through a day.
And then, dang it, I think yeah, it’s enough.
In my somewhat checkered career, I’ve been what you’d call an activist for (God) close to forty years–card-carrying Communist for about fifteen, journalist, tenant organizer, racial integrationist in Boston, free-lance work as a cultural activist for the last thirty. But I’m a publisher, not a poet. Lots of good memories, tough ones too, once in awhile a little dangerous (they always picked me to do security for visitors because at five feet four I didn’t look the part). You might say a lot of this was a distraction, but from what? It reminds me of what Gertrude Stein said on her deathbed: someone asked her, “What is the answer?” and she stirred and said, “What was the question?” More to the point, Lauren, you’re an artist, an important one. Certainly political things will come out of your work: they already have, and are doing so right now. All to the good. Maybe you’re already an activist and don’t even know it. Your poems, your history of your father in particular, suggest that. Stay with the vision.
If you are primarily an activist is is enough to carry signs in demonstrations, write angry letters to the paper, and organize community action. But if you are a poet, that is not enough. You must write. It is true that finding oneself in the thick of it gives you something to write about, but also it can train the poem to follow the drumbeat rather than the heart that stirs one to beat it.
Lauren, my thoughts exactly. I struggle with those all the time. Here’s part of what happens: I figure the least I can do is sign online petitions, and so my email inbox is filled with far too many messages every day, and it takes too much time to either read and sign or to delete. And then there’s much less time to write. So I’m taking myself off most of these lists. It helps a little, but then friends send me links and ask me to sign *those* petitions.
You die not knowing, according to Berryman.
The issue/question is addressed (after a fashion) in a great poem titled “Berryman” by W.S. Merwin.
Just getting through the day should be enough for anyone.
Some days I look at my hand, wiggle my fingers and think, “goddamn, I’m still here.”
Isn’t *that* enough?
Just re-read my last post and wanted to clarify that I wasn’t trying to be snarky or mean-spirited.
Was just trying to say “yes, yes it is enough”, even for folks out here who aren’t poets/artists/activists.
Some of us are just simple-minded, astonished to still be here and grateful for all the Art and Poetry this world does afford us.
Including every thing you share with us here.
In a certain sense, nothing is ever enough. And yet a poem, a moment of brilliance, a gesture of kindness in our stressed out world, is more than enough. I believe the issue of “enough” itself may be skewed.
I agree with everything each of you offers here. Berryman is right; I’m sure I’ll die not knowing the answer. Knowing that I can’t ever have a final, conclusive answer might help me sort out my repeated concern. In a way, if a person even thinks about “enough,” I suppose that means she knows there is the possibility that it cannot fully exist. That might also mean that sometimes I know I’ve attained it, and sometimes I’ve fallen short. What this amounts to is that I might just think about these things more than I really should.
I think that in art as in politics, indeed in everything involving personal commitment, one eventually surrenders control of the chosen thing, so that whether something is “enough” (which implies possession) becomes irrelevant. Rilke says this, in “Eingang” (“Initiation” or “Beginning”).
… With your eyes, that scarcely can
lift themselves from your broken door-stone,
raise very slowly one dark tree
and place it before heaven: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is great
and like a word, that still in silence lies.
And when your will has grasped its sense,
tenderly release it, let it go.
This may be apparent to the artist, but most people don’t consider politics in this way. No wonder; in our commodified world, it appears never to have had the dignity of creation in the first place. But when you speak of activism, surely it means more than signing a petition or joining a march. It relates to living your life according to a vision based on human or social possibility. When you commit to it, it ceases to be your private possession. It takes on a life of its own. I do see a relationship in this sense between art and politics: in their best state, either one is a community you join into through a process of initiation, not a duty or even an individual choice about how you will spend your time. At least, not for long.