The Promised Land Project: National Poetry Month: Countering the Alienating Effects of Poetry

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.

Monday, April 4, 2011

National Poetry Month: Countering the Alienating Effects of Poetry

In poetry, we recognize that less can be more. As we celebrate national poetry month, we should also recognize an all too common sentiment throughout our nation that none of it might even be better.

There's a grim irony that poetry can have such an alienating effect on people. The average citizen, for example, who might attempt to read T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, perhaps the premier poem of high modernism, is apt feel alienated from the poem, and poetry in general, by its cryptic use of language.

The irony that seems indicative of the modern era is that poets and poetry by historic definition affectively inflame our emotions, not leave us in the cold. Furthermore, throughout human history poetry and the arts in general have been used to bring people together. As the avant-garde pushed the margins of poetry, it had the effect of marginalizing itself from the average citizen. It reflects the fragmentation of all of the arts throughout the modern era and lends itself to questions of elitism and government funding of the arts.

But as we celebrate National Poetry Month, I beleive that by taking a broader view of poetry, poetry still has the potential to bring people together at a time when our nation struggles with divisions and entrenched narrow interests that threaten the integrity of the greater collective.