The Promised Land Project: Revitalization of Art and Life

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

Revitalization of Art and Life

I'm not one to call poetry a dead art form but it's not surprising the proclamation gets tossed around a bit: it could use some revitalization. Rimbaud attempted as much, and not without some success; yet the ramifications of his art would also help to set poetry on a path towards increasing esotericism. Rather than referring to poetry as a dead art form, I put it more diplomatically: as the avant-garde pushed the margins of the art form, the art form has become marginalized. I've read before that poets inhabit the margins of society but can come to the forefront in times of crisis. The Promised Land Project provides a vision of how poetry does just that.

In his study of Rimbaud, the writer Henry Miller states as follows: "It does not require paper and ink to create poetry or to disseminate it. Primitive peoples on the whole are poets of action, poets of life." Recalling as we set out on the Whitman trail (see blog, May 17th), the challenge is to move poetry from the pages to the people, from the written poetic, paper and types, or paper and ink, to the living poetic, bodies and souls, poets of life. Thus we're attempting a revitalization of both art and life where poetry, and art in general, give rhythm to action, as Rimbaud put it in his 1871 seer letter.