Comments on: Poetics (Mine)

By: Mark Nowak

Mark Nowak — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:24:21 +0000

Thanks, all, for the wonderful comments, the story, the poems, and references.
And Jasper, someone from UC-Santa Cruz called me over the weekend to discuss the AFSCME situation and poetry exercises to use–glad to hear you are using some, too! Fyi, the work of Carol Tarlen (1943-2004), AFSCME 3218 member and clerical worker at U.C.-San Francisco, might be useful during these times. Here’s a link to a few of her poems & brief bio:
http://www.whatifjournal.org/pages/Online/0504visionaryvoices.html

By: Jasper

Jasper — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:01:05 +0000

Mark,
I’ve really appreciated your voice here.
Here’s a story about your work that, perhaps, you’ll appreciate: I’ve been teaching a creative writing course for high school students this summer–through a program that takes place in the dorms at UC Berkeley, but is run by an independent company (ASA)–and on Friday of last week we read the first section of Shut Up, Shut Down. Coincidentally, the super-exploited service workers of AFSCME 3299 are going to shut down/shut up the entire University of California today and all this week, from San Diego to San Francisco, despite the UC’s legal chicanery and intimidation techniques.
Because I’m not working for UC, and thus not protected by the Academic Student Employee’s union at UC, the UAW, I can’t really sympathy strike this week without jeopardizing my job/pay. In truth, it’s been a tough decision, and I’m not really sure what I should do/should have done. . .
But what I’ve decided is that I’ll move my classes out of the dorms, i.e. outside the picket, take my students down to the strike and have them interview workers and write a poem. They will have your fine work as a model. And I’ll print out this post and give it to them to read tonight. . .
Solid,
Jasper
P.S. Kent: I taught poems from Kasey’s Breathalyzer next to Mark’s book, as I wanted to show them different ways of working with social materials. So there!

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:48:09 +0000

Wonderful, impressive project, Mark.
I wonder if you’ve found any Flarf miner poets in your research, yet?
Kent

By: Jennifer S. Flescher

Jennifer S. Flescher — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:40:28 +0000

Thank you so much for this deep, wide post!
I am working on a project about oil — and came across your post just after writing, again, about Nigeria — one of the most painful stories about the cost — financial and human — of oil.
Thought I’d share this poem by
Aj Dagga Tolar, a poet from Lagos.
He writes, in an excerpt from the title poem of his book, “This Country is Not a Poem:”
This country is a poem
Is only for the heart to lie
To make Art no die
This country, no be place
For human faces
To live to love this country
Na just like space
For all of us to dey die
My heart no go greee mek Art dey lie
This country is not a poem
The way they make poetry
To make this country
Sound good to the ear
But here who cares
The death of a dirty lie on the lips
Before the words dried out to die
This country
Who cares
For the poetry of our existence
The way they care for poetry
Leaving us every moment with metaphors
To feel not at all the failing of poetry
This country
Dare you to ask
“Have you seen dead bodies before?”
Answer with another ask
“Are there not dead bodies everywhere?”
Stuff enough to make more poems
Who cares to hear
Lagos is a poem, not a place
Ajegunle is a poem, not a place
Cannot sit to hear this poem
SUNG in Yoruba:
Kile ni wa gbo
Kile ni wa wo
Ara mo ri ri
Kilo oju ori leko ri
Kile ni wa gbo
Kile ni wa wo
…
For a people mugged down in mud
Every breath a struggle to keep
The breath like that of animals
Humans lost all life…like Hannibal
Desecrate the place unfit for Villa and Zapata
Hang the statue in the square
This is the sad end of Saddam’s story
Still alive savouring life on
Like Bush the liar unable to Blair
The people not to see their land
Their oil still flowing into wrong pockets
Guns boomed, they die to be able to kill
My heart is pained say no be dem
But the innocent young ones of mothers
Like our own mothers
Cut down to weep dry tears
For lost sons
This is the common end of hope
Stringed on the guns of another
From across the borderline
Who also like them heed only onto profit
From our dying
If then we free to fight
This country into a poem
Art first must be rid of lies
For only then can hearts crave to die
For the people
For a new poem
For a new country
Not this stiff old song of profit
Making this country is not a poem
This country is a poem
Is only for the heart to lie
To make Art no die
This country, no be place
For human faces
To live to love This country
Na just like space
For all of us to dey die
My heart no go greee make Art dey lie
This country is not a poem

By: Jana

Jana — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:51:51 +0000

Stunning post, Mark. Wish I could sign up for that course. I can’t think of a more revelatory way to look at the intersections of culture, economics, race, class, production, environment, . . .
Thanks for pulling together this rich sampling of works.

By: Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:48:10 +0000

Just FYI, Mark, for poetry there is also Eleanor Swanson's fine sequence on the Ludlow Massacre, Trembling in the Bones: http://ghostroad.wordpress.com/work/eleanor-swanson/