By: Rita Wong

Rita Wong — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:40:29 +0000

Glad you’re back, Mark! Funny, I just started teaching today, and the class read and responded to a couple of sonnets (by Wanda Coleman and Roger Farr) that involve economic questions (below), though I’ll need to keep looking for poems specifically responding to the current economic climate. Thanks for putting that question in my head.
It’s not a poem, but I just found out about this book/DVD, To the Tar Sands, which looks at the effects of the oil industry boom on communities in Alberta:
http://www.rabble.ca/whatsup/book-launch-journey-tar-sands-and-screening-associated-documentary-film
Things may be slowing down economically, but the pollution of the oil industry remains terrifyingly toxic (for instance see http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/water.html, scroll down to Oct 1- Alberta Tar Sands), and I hope people can find ways to survive that don’t rely on poisoning the land and people’s futures – back to Farr’s “autonomous land initiatives” below… and measurements like the genuine progress indicator (http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm)….
American Sonnet 61
reaching down into my griot bag
of womanish wisdom and wily
social commentary, i come up with bricks
with which to either reconstruct
the past or deconstruct a head. dolor
robs me of art’s coin
as i push, for peanuts, to level walls and
rebuild the ruins of my poetic promise. from
the infinite alphabet of afroblues
intertwinings, i cull apocalyptic visions
(the details and lovers entirely real)
and articulate my voyage beyond that
point where self disappears
mis violentas flores negras
these are my slave songs
- by Wanda Coleman (from Bathwater Wine, Santa Rose, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1998)
XIX
I’m sorry to make of poetry a mockery again
But this evening, as I exited Safeway, the historical process
Of separating the proletariat from the means of subsistence
Forced itself upon my eyes with such a violence
As to break the levees of false consciousness.
For it was there, among the Tylenol and the razor blades
Among a disturbing array of meat and dairy products
I spent $3.38 on mozzarella cheese, $1.04 on Macintosh
Apples, $2.29 on fresh basil, $1.10 on hot-house tomatoes
$1.95 on French-style Artisan bread, and $4.99 on a Green
Drink. Now I admit I’m no campesino. But as the last
Long rays of a late September sun cast shadows over
The obsolete lawns of Oak Bay, I understood precisely
Our need for autonomous land initiatives.
- by Roger Farr, from Surplus (Burnaby, BC: Line Books, 2006)

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:54:16 +0000

Joseph, isn’t that a bit of a blue collar stereotype–”mud on their shoes”? As if country folk are the only ones who have hard lives working for less-than-living-wages. There’s very little mud in NYC outside of our city parks, but if you think there aren’t poor people here doing menial jobs, you’re kidding yourself.

By: Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:54:28 +0000

It’s good to have you back, Mark. Harriet needs some poets with mud on their shoes….

Comments on: Happy New Year?

By: Rita Wong

By: Matt

By: Joseph Hutchison