The Promised Land Project: National Poetry Month: Applying Poetry Toward Unity

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.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

National Poetry Month: Applying Poetry Toward Unity

This project is in of itself a kind of poem, making use of symbol, metaphor, and narrative. "The Promised Land" is symbolic of a collective vision capable of overriding and incorporating one's personal vision. The overall metaphor of the project is that we, as a society, have to move from the land of the dead to the land of the living; this reflects a quote attributed to Thornton Wilder as follows:

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.

It makes use of a narrative, drawn from the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, that appears to me as strikingly prescient for our times to help induce an evolution of consciousness. More about this narrative can be found at the blog entry of July 4, 2010.

By making use of such poetic devices as symbol, metaphor, and narrative, I believe we can construct a framework to enable the more vital use of the arts towards the revitalization of the the moral culture in general.