The Promised Land Project: The Problem of Poetry Setting Itself Apart from the Average Citizen

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.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

The Problem of Poetry Setting Itself Apart from the Average Citizen

Getting back on the Whitman Trail, we move into the strange reactions from later poets of high modernism. The American poet Ezra Pound, who became enamored by the Symbolists and other influences beyond American poetry, seems to return to his homeland like a quarrelsome prodigal son to settle a kind of family argument, as reflected by his poem “A Pact”:

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman –
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root –
Let there be commerce between us.

While it's generally accepted Whitman was a groundbreaking poet, Pound can't say that. He has to say "broke the new wood" instead of the commonly used term "broke new ground". As noted in the earlier blog on May 19th, Pound gave us the dictum to “make it new”, and poets and students of poetry to this day are attempting to enliven the language of their poetry by steering clear of clichés, abstractions, and other writing heresies of the writing cult of poetry as Art with a capital ‘A’. Yet paradoxically, by attempting to enliven the language of poetry, poets must wonder why the art form has become dead to the average citizen. By steering clear of commonly used phrases, poetry can also set itself apart from the common man and woman. This runs counter to the Whitman concept of merging.