here's an excerpt from Tide of Voices: Why Poetry Matters Now
by Mark Doty
via
Poets.org -
read the full article here
"The driver who sets out from Key West to Seattle enters into less a
shifting world of regional difference than an unfolding interstate
highway system of remarkable regularity where even the familiar names
morph together into combined Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bells, Burger Kings,
Exxon Mobile stations. And this isn't just on a cross-country drive.
Increasingly, a mall on any continent is alarmingly alike. And the
stylish T-shirts made by hand in Brooklyn last year pour forth in
streamlined versions from the factories of Mexico and China and
Singapore into the sale bins of the planet.
And at the same time, it is no exaggeration to say that poetry is
thriving. Never in my lifetime have there been so many readings,
festivals, seminars, creative writing classes, workshops, gatherings.
I've never known young people to be as keenly interested, as open to
poetry. I think this is because art is never made by committees, resists
the focus group, cannot be market-tested, cannot, if the truth be told,
be sold. Sure, you can buy a book of poems, but no one is going to get
rich from this undertaking, and no one is going to invest in poetry
futures or trade poetic commodities. It is the stubborn, essentially
worthless, production of one person, one sensibility, giving form to how
it feels to be oneself.
That is paradoxically precious and absolutely worthless. A poem has
no value, cannot be possessed. You can memorize it, give it away, sing
it, email it to everybody you know. Is it yours or anyone's? It can only
have been made by the one who made it, but you make it your own as you
take it in. You can imitate the poems of others, but that isn't really
the point. The goal is to make the poems that no one could have made but
you, whatever those turn out to be. That is why poetry is at this
moment necessary, irreplaceable, of inherent value. It is not
threatened, not in the sense that people are about to stop writing it or
reading it or thinking about it. It's threatened in a larger sense, in
that its root, which is the particular idiosyncratic stuff of selfhood,
may itself wither or become as rare as a Florida Panther. To what extent
can the forces that run the world homogenize us? We don't know the
answer to that yet."
..............................................................................................
And here is the poem Doty references at the end of that article by Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali
Revenge
At times ... I wish
I could meet in a duel
the man who killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me
into
a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I’d rest at last,
and if I were ready—
I would take my revenge!
*
But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him,
or a father who’d put
his right hand over
the heart’s place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they’d set—
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.
*
Likewise ... I
would not murder him
if it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and children who
couldn’t bear his absence
and whom his gifts would thrill.
Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbors he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school...
asking about him
and sending him regards.
*
But if he turned
out to be on his own—
cut off like a branch from a tree—
without a mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and without kin or neighbors or friends,
colleagues or companions,
then I’d add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness—
not the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I’d be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street—as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.
read more about
Taha Muhammad Ali here
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