The Promised Land Project: Merging on to the Rimbaud Trail

Turning Vision into Action....at least hypothetically

Strike up the music of the band
We're blazing a trail for the promised land
Heaven on earth is within you.

Through the writing of stories, poetry, essays, and a novel, I’ve creatively contended with the consumer culture and the problem of the ideal in the modern era. This preoccupation in time would lead to a vision of cultural transformation and where I believe our democratic society needs to go to truly progress beyond the modern era. Conceding my limited credibility, this blog provides a synthesis of recognized visionaries, poets, and writers with the objective of making a credible argument. Ultimately, it is a certain feeling the project strives to inspire and sustain on a certain level, making more vital use of poetry and the arts; consequently whether one agrees or not is less important than whether one senses it and feels it over time.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Merging on to the Rimbaud Trail

There is in poetry a streak of men and women who seem to strive toward something beyond the literary art form, where poetry serves as a means toward a greater society. Such was the case of the French prodigy poet Arthur Rimbaud, who, as a mere teenager, would also cause a revolution in written poetry and provide another part of the foundation of modern poetry. Rimbaud used poetry as a means to become a seer, in correlation to the tumultuous times of the Paris Commune. He'd hoped to restore the people to an optimal, primitive state of existence at times referred to, vaguely, as "sun-child". Rimbaud would fail in this attempt and ultimately renounce his methods.

The trails of both Whitman and Rimbaud come together in that the source of their poetry was inward, toward the primitive, or primal, self. One might call this the soul, or primal soul. The Promised Land Project strives to make sense of the present and project a greater future through the lens of the primal past. On the Whitman trail, this is reflected in a single line from "Song of Myself", where the poet seems to go inward then project outward:

I speak the password primeval....I give the sign of democracy