Comments on: Fast poetry

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:32:21 +0000

Dream Song 61
Full moon. Our Narragansett gales subside
and the land is celebrating men of war
more or less, less or more.
In valleys, thin on headlands, narrow & wide
our targets rest. In us we trust. Far, near,
the bivouacs of fear
are solemn in the moon somewhere tonight,
in turning time. It’s late for gratitude,
an annual, rude
roar of a moment’s turkey’s ‘Thanks’. Bright & white
their ordered markers undulate away
awaiting no day.
Away from us, from Henry’s feel or fail,
campaigners lie with mouldered toes, disarmed,
out of order,
with whom we will one. The war is real,
and a sullen glory pauses over them harmed,
incident to murder.
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By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:29:23 +0000

Sorry if you thought I was insulting you. But thanks for insulting me in your response. Classy.
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By: michael robbins

michael robbins — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:21:00 +0000

No need to refute Chomsky’s logic, eh? Just call him “his holiness,” thereby suggesting that I believe every honeyed word that falls from his lips.
Also a good tactic: pretend the argument’s about something other than it is, if you can’t refute it. For instance, if someone points out the injustice of a situation, pretend he said he was “eager to be put in harm’s way,” then ask him why he isn’t doing something that would have exactly zero effect on the situation.
The question of our complicity precisely does not lead to the conclusion that we should enlist — but then, no sane person thinks it does, so you’re pushing an open door. If you & I enlisted, do you think that futile gesture would make the situation better in even the slightest way? How? Did you imagine that I was pointing out our complicity because it makes me feel bad? So the problem is about my individual psychology? Because all my enlisting would do (again, nobody else has to be told this) is make me feel less guilty. Wouldn’t make the situation or the war any better.
Since you insist on juvenile sniping, I’ll decline to respond to you again. Questions of ethical responsibility for political & economic horrors are actually too important to me for me to be bothered with people who can’t have a discussion without dragging it onto some inane level of personal insult.
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By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:10:07 +0000

Ooooohhhh, well then if his holiness Noam Chomsky says so, I guess I have to agree. Ok, fine Michael, since you’re so eager to be put in harm’s way, why don’t you drop what you’re doing right now and go enlist? What’s stopping you?
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:47:25 +0000

Also, Slate.com reveals the RNC protesters making my case for me:
“Two cops approach the group. A medic pulls out his radio. ‘To Snipe, to Snipe, this is Whiskey Tango, do you hear us? We’ve got two coming.’ The police, both women, ask the group to clear the ramp. Some do, some don’t. ‘These people have nothing against you,’ one of the officers explains, indicating the drivers. ‘Just give us a few minutes,’ pleads a protester. One officer pulls out a can that looks like WD-40. ‘If you do not move, I will mace this group,’ she says. They move.”
“These people have nothing against you.” It’s a dialogue, all part of the wonders of the free marketplace of ideas. Hey, we just disagree.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:44:54 +0000

That’s great, Matt. You should write a manifesto. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the question was how to end the wars that are started in rude disregard of yr sensibilities. Conscription would arouse public opposition to the war that the government could not ignore, & would make wars more difficult to fight. And, of course, you & I are as responsible for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths our disadvantaged proxies have caused as they are — more so, probably, since we have a greater degree of freedom to oppose the war. Since you don’t actually seem to see what the point is, here’s Chomsky making the case better than I can:
“I was very much involved in the resistance, but I was never against the draft. I disagreed with a lot of my friends and associates on that, for a very good reason, I think at least as nobody seems to agree. In my view, if there’s going to be an army, I think it ought to be a citizen’s army. Now, here I do agree with some people, the top brass, they don’t want a citizen’s army. They want a mercenary army, what we call a volunteer army. A mercenary army of the disadvantaged. And in fact, in the Vietnam war, the U.S. military realized, they had made a very bad mistake. I mean, for the first time I think ever in the history of European imperialism, including us, they had used a citizen’s army to fight a vicious, brutal, colonial war, and civilians just cannot do that kind of a thing. For that, you need the French foreign legion, the Gurkhas or something like that. Every predecessor has used mercenaries, often drawn from the country that they’re attacking like England ran India with Indian mercenaries. You take them from one place and send them to kill people in the other place. That’s the standard way to run imperial wars. They’re just too brutal and violent and murderous. Civilians are not going to be able to do it for very long. What happened was, the army started falling apart. One of the reasons that the army was withdrawn was because the top military wanted it out of there. They were afraid they were not going to have an army anymore. Soldiers were fragging officers. The whole thing was falling apart. They were on drugs. And that’s why I think that they’re not going to have a draft. That’s why I’m in favor of it. If there’s going to be an army that will fight brutal, colonial wars, and that’s the only likely kind of war, I’m not talking about the militarization of space and that kind of thing, I mean ground wars, it ought to be a citizen’s army so that the attitudes of the society are reflected in the military.”
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By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:12:47 +0000

Uh, yeah, I know what the point is. I just think sending more people to war just for the sake of equality is stupid. We shouldn’t be sending anyone. We shouldn’t be starting wars in the fucking first place.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:33:36 +0000

Well, that’s the point, Matt. You (& Boyd & I) can stay home while less fortunate folks go do our killing for us. & dying.
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By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:07:14 +0000

I like Michael’s, Angela’s, and Boyd’s comments, but if they ever bring back the draft, I’ll be in Canada, thank you.
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By: Boyd Nielson

Boyd Nielson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:12:25 +0000

And by “Fixies rise up! etc.” I hope it is clear (and, doubtless, how absurd I clarify this) that I mean, by God, you better at least be riding a Bianchi.
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By: Boyd Nielson

Boyd Nielson — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:24:47 +0000

Michael and Angela are insightful. Michael’s post (specifically his point about the draft) needs to be read, especially at a time when the media is reporting what (few) protests there are at, say, the RNC as though we were seeing a new proliferation of Timothy McVeighs. National policy is about as threatened by these episodes of smashed windows and slashed tires as it is by Critical Mass. Fixies rise up! etc.
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By: Angela G.

Angela G. — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:59:21 +0000

Pardon the illiterate-sounding typing mistakes: I’m on a computer keyboard that’s 4 feet away from my monitor — and I wear reading glasses.
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By: Angela G.

Angela G. — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:28:14 +0000

Michael is right: Here’s how the Vietnam War really ended. It wasn’t mass protests, it was the soldiers who fought against an injustice war: went AWOL, and refused to fight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmGhHEIDETI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMOkUwBYzDM
And the protests in the U.S. here ARE “are preplanned, government-sanctioned, cordoned affairs, conducted between flanks of thousands of armed & visored riot police.”
Look at what happened yesterday in Minneapolis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0UUsdCx3Qg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ougH8G6UnkI
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:50:12 +0000

Alan,
He’ll proably yell at me for bringing up his name, but my son, Brooks, a poet and musician, was one of the main organizers of a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Chicago ’68 demonstrations. This just happened on Thursday, in downtown Chicago, and it was a really successful event, with hundreds of people there, including quite a few members of the press. There was lots of music (including a marching band that traveled all the way from Vermont!), poetry (including an Allen Ginsberg impersonator), street puppetry, and speech making… A very festive anti-imperialist occasion. There is that famous photo of all the young radicals climbing on the horse and rider statue, waving Viet Cong flags–the cops had the statue cordoned off to prevent a reenactment of that.
Anyway, much preparation went into this, and the people involved in conceptualizing the whole thing and carrying it off were, almost all of them, young writers and artists of some kind, and it looks as if an ongoing, loose federation might emerge from it to carry out future events. Hooray for young Chicago poets seeking to move the space of poetry beyond the page, I say.
So I report this just to offer one example of what some younger poets are doing, since it seems very relevant to your post.
Kent
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By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:21:50 +0000

but what about the March on Washington? or Malcom X’s gathered protests? those were organized. those were planned. those had massive turn-outs. i understand it was a matter of history and social upheaval all around, in an unplanned (Rosa Parks, for example, or the Detroit riots or the Washington, DC riots, too) or planned manner, but there was still organization involved in some major protests.
i do agree that a lot of protests are squashed by “designated areas” as if free speech weren’t allowed in one place or the other, and that protests nowadays are not as effective, but maybe it’s cause the police’ve gotten smarter? the Man’s learned? or have political organizers become uninvented?
on the poetic side, wouldn’t slow poetry be that sock in the gut that would upset the status quo or however, since it’s a little more unexpected? i have mixed feelings bout it myself…i’m not so post-modern to suggest that all poetry should be meta or whatever whatever, but on the other hand, just one poetry event a month — even if it’s thoughtful — is too little to grab an audience’s attention, no?
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:34:57 +0000

>>How could the largest series of protests in world history not fail to stop the war?
I think part of the answer lies in the nature of the protests & of the protesters. Today’s “protests” in the U.S. are preplanned, government-sanctioned, cordoned affairs, conducted between flanks of thousands of armed & visored riot police. They’re not protests, they’re parades. And the protesters are people whose support the government doesn’t need. In the sixties, the protesters were often men who were openly defying their government’s orders, “brave young men,” as Chomsky’s dedication in At War with Asia eloquently had it, “who refuse to fight in a criminal war.” And the protests often created real instability, actually threatening social functioning. Without real risk to the social, to the ISAs, protests are easily tolerated — they’re even welcomed as evidence of a smoothly functioning democracy. Witness Bush’s smirking dismissals whenever he’s asked about some uncouth noises emanating from a distant “free speech zone”: “They have the right to disagree, that’s what democracy’s all about.”
To be effective, protesters should refuse to recognize specific “zones” of free speech, should refuse to obtain marching permits, should refuse to coordinate with police representatives, & should strive to actually shut down cities & businesses. Commuters should be actively prevented from using highways, shoppers from entering businesses, &c. This sort of chaos is what led to the sorts of Gramscian ethico-political compromises that ironically render today’s protests toothless: revocation of conscription; reduction of domestic casualties; softening of repression of political speech.
The most efficient way to end the war would be to reinstate the draft. It should be reinstated anyway, simply as a matter of economic justice, but the middle classes would be less likely to underwrite endless military Keynesianism if their sons & daughters’ blood were mixing with that of the underclasses in the streets of Sadr City.
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