PINES AND APPLES: ON PURE AND APPLIED ART

Sandra Stephenson
November 2006

Ever-cautious Canadians are seeking to understand Afghanistan, may even be willing to read poetic perspectives about terrorism, to ingest poems about the origins and effects of war and the wisdom of peace. It's likely that Canadians are no longer satisfied with curt language shared by military and political spokespeople, who talk of "getting the job done," without clarifying what the job is. It could be that a contingent of 52 poets under the name "Convergence," 1who hand-delivered peace poems wrapped in original art to Ottawa Parliamentarians throughout 2001, who held a reading at the National Arts Centre four days after September 11, swayed the vote that kept Canada out of Iraq at a time when public opinion polls claimed that Canadians favoured war.

Even as Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall" is often misapplied to justify fencing, say, Mexican and Canadian borders, the poet also inspires the discerning reader to look deeper. There are tangled worlds of experience that cannot be organized by a fence nor by force: worlds that go beyond the poet's or politician's own self-interest, where, as Frost observes, pines and apples do not mix of their own accord, with or without a wall. Nor do they kill each other. To organize this reality into intelligible form - to untangle it - we can use words, not walls, not weapons. In poetry, one uses words metaphorically, as Pure Art or more literally, as Applied Art. Pines and apples.

Pure Art, as I see it, transcends the immediate, however it might take its inspiration there. Applied Art is specific, however it may lend itself to be generalized and extrapolated. To some writers, Nobel Laureates included 2, now is a time to put words to work, to apply them. With their capacity for thundering arrest, for beauty and command, through surpassing attention and skill, they can help to turn the tide of a specific historical juncture. I believe that failure to use pure words in an applied form must, in the foreseeable future, reduce all Art to lamentation (at least on Tuesdays from 3 till 4pm, with Howard Zinn 3).

Twenty years ago and more, I worked in a dusty old publishing office in London , England . Into that place, under the editorship of George (Jiri) Theiner, spilled manuscript after manuscript of poetry such as you find on this site. The magazine was Index on Censorship. Tom Stoppard and Stephen Spender sat on the Board. Playwright and Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, Julian Huxley (Aldous' brother) and George Orwell's wife were Advisors. There, I read poems from every continent on Earth where there was repression and censorship; where torture, exile, imprisonment, psycho-hallucinogenic drug injection and death were the penalties poets risked by writing, reading and publishing. They wrote anyway. One poet cited an old Indonesian saying: "When you cut off the beak of the peacock, it will sing with its plumage." 4Some wrote because of injustice. Others, like Jaroslav Seifert, were imprisoned for writing poetry which was not political at a time when the only writing allowed was to promote the political agenda. Other types of poetry were suspected of containing hidden messages, and some of them did.

In that office I read Poetry under House Arrest (Mircea Dinescu) 5, Free Thoughts on Toilet Paper (Ngugi wa Thiong'o) and free thoughts on cigarette papers which could be eaten if in danger of discovery. I read:

Blessed be the universe!
Blessed be the call of life.
Unchanging about us roll
The paths of unknown worlds.
But the heart - a red grain of sand -
Is ringing out its reply
To dispassionate swarms of stars
And the tearful pleas of mankind.

- Nina Gagen-Torn, translated by M. Molnar (Index 20/8)

and:

Market prices cheap and dear, thick and thin:
The common poets talk of these. Or is it that I am one?
The great poets smile, they talk of lovely rhododendrons....
This is barely Nepali verse..
Broken Nepali, broken lips,
Okra-debts, onion-debts.
Can Nepali poems be written at all?

- Mohan Koirala (Index 19/8)

In repressive situations such as those we have only heard about and can barely imagine, a poet might be inspired to confront death, torture and uncertainty by singing with all his/her might of the strident, terrible love and beauty that could be - Pure Art. Some do, but out of history comes a running witness by poets, of the bare bones of misery, documented in visceral, haunting outpourings that are timeless, however they may seem specific to one time and place. We no longer have child chimney sweeps, but Blake's "'weep, 'weep" still resonates today. Sam Hamill's "gut feeling" in assembling Poets Against War still causes editorialists to turn their pens three and a half years later 6.

Today in North America, we have relatively little to lose, still, by speaking out through poetry. We can lose reputation or gain it, we can cause a disturbance, we can be accused of having our own agenda, we can lose friends and make people uncomfortable. We are not likely with our poems, to fuel inadvertently the side of unchecked militarism, which is already in full swing. We have everything to lose for human dignity, self-determination and safety everywhere by keeping quiet or avoiding the subject of war, genocide, and our responsibility; we have everything to lose for our own freedom and self-respect. We could and can use every opportunity to balance the agenda of justice with beauty and speak against war as a solution to problems, against violence as a resolution to discomfiture. Too often we do not. Afraid to rock the boat, to offend, to misuse the Muses; too short of alternatives, sometimes poets give up.

Canadian writer, Art Joyce engaged recently with me in an intense exchange of e-mails (see www.poetsagainstwar.ca). Between heartland British Columbia and the agricultural outskirts of Montreal, in "Letters to Art," we beat out roles of poetry like beating rugs. Both of us agonize over the need to bend the power of the poem to the utilitarian plow-shares of deriding, begging, railing against war; and are split between thinking that poetry makes a difference and that, censored and self-censored, it cannot change a thing. Art wrote one day: "I vacillate between hope and despair, between W.H. Auden's, 'Poetry makes nothing happen,' and Ginsberg's, 'In poetry is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world.'" The resolve to speak truth has long been the (non-exclusive) property of poets who, far from losing themselves in the moon and other lunatic transportations, ground their art solidly in unblinking perception of life as it manifests itself around them with all its ugliness, injustice and golden moments.

During the Gulf war in the early 1990's, Pinter wrote a poem called "American Football". It built obscenity and blasphemy to these final lines:

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and
kiss me on the mouth.

The author told Andrew Graham-Yooll in an interview published in Index in 1992, that he had used ugly words to draw attention to how words shock, will be disapproved of and hidden, while correspondingly hideous acts take place in civilian territory in full view without appropriate, widespread comment or disapproval. Ugly words can be stopped, but ugly acts cannot. His poem, unsurprisingly, "could not be published in Britain " 7at the time, except in a small socialist paper. It appeared abroad in Holland , Bulgaria , Greece , Finland, and in a small New York magazine, The Bomb. It was a high field goal.

Maybe poetry is enhanced by ugliness; maybe a worthy cause is what makes writing make sense. It does for me. Already engulfed in a sea of words as we are, one might well ask why be so egotistical as to add to the swell. But if there's something that needs emphatically to be said, and it's authentic, the swell has power. Since I began writing poetry, I've discovered ranks upon ranks of people who write too, and who read the poetry of others who write with strength and clarity. Waves of people writing, each in his or her own time and terms, make it unimportant which individuals are picked out for recognition or criticism, because the rest of the poets keep writing. It's not a gift of the schooled or the literary élite alone, but of each person, to express him- or herself in non-ordinary language, about ordinary things; or to struggle to write in ordinary language about extraordinary things. Many will at one time or another, shine in the sun, but the continuous flow of indignant or compassionate, level-headed, eye-opening poetry is a historical phenomenon, wide alive, in which each of us can play a part. Today, the Internet makes this flow simultaneously more impressive and easier to ignore. Political power and communications concentrate in the hands of few, despite appearances to the contrary. They must be reclaimed, and they can be, non-violently.

Poets need community as much as we need isolation. A poet who "cannot write about trees while Iraq burns," 8obeying the turn of her pen toward the expression of pain and frustration she feels and observes, needs to know she is not alone, needs to know there are others who refuse to resort to violence despite what they see, needs to have confirmed that she must not remain silent. Although the fierceness of truth burns through even in solitary confinement or exile, as Argentinean lawyer and short story-writer, Hector Tizon knew, as many a poet has known; moments of doubt and madness fed by a general appearance of indifference in the outside world, can easily be dispelled by a single word from another human being. "Peace." As long as there is at least a trickle of truth, there is hope. Tizon wrote in exile:

Since I refused to sleep among brutes and murderers, the years move on.
Everything seems clear and simple from a distance, but when I recall it,
my words turn into stones and I feel like a drunkard who would have
shot down his memory.... I don't want to be alone anymore, or to forget,
or to keep silent. I don't want the night to surprise me with my own rancour. 9

And here we have a flood: Poets Against War gathers volumes, building on long traditions of masters who have observed war from up-close and from afar. In five countries there are active chapters of this book. In Canada , India , Colombia and Argentina , thanks to the unrelenting labours of Hamill and his wife and the commitments of individuals who appreciate the potential of poetry for social change and documentation, Poets Against War have gathered through readings and the Internet. Even poets who despair completely still have enough hope to send in their words.

In other countries too, writers are counselling together to establish and document facts, reactions, realities in a medium rich enough for the confusions that bristle around the human condition: in script. Thousands of people come together electronically and in person to say to each other: you are not alone. Despite business-as-usual, others know what you know, and will risk their credibility, their finesse, their equanimity, possibly even their freedom to tell what they know. Gone the narrative voice, gone the poetic astuce : it's time to speak as "I."

I feel honoured to be able to participate in an International PAW network, by providing for a Canadian chapter, where poets can post their work and ideas in English and French. Thirty-five years ago Index on Censorship began and gave writers a non-partisan arena for Applied Poetry as well as Pure Poetry that had been Applied to their lives. Eighty-five years ago International PEN was established to protect freedom of expression, and today it has a section for Writers for Peace. Numerous national, international and trans-border associations have emerged from current global situations: many of these are small grass-roots groups for writers with local audiences. PAW, Canadian Writers Against War, Poets for Peace in Canada , and others, are non-violent forums for any person, published or unpublished, who is moved to express poetically his or her every-day concerns, dreams and nightmares about war, or who wants to learn how to do so. Many of these people do not just react to a particular act of war, but address the long dilemma of war and peace in all times. They cannot all be silenced, unless they silence themselves.

Anthologies are circulating in print and electronically, assembling samples of writing about and against war. 10They often place the untutored alongside seasoned writers, military veterans alongside students in what may be one of the most humbling efforts across the social and political spectrum to express basic truth and common sense. It becomes a teaching for all concerned. Such life responding to such cultures of death. Such original, strenuous thinking to arrive at long-standing truths that need to be stated again and again, to be rediscovered in the voices of the living. In the words of Michael Ondaatje about something else entirely, this project is "a very plum plum."

People who work in social justice fields are aware of the ironies of our situation: we work fervently and hope that injustice will come to an end, knowing that, should it do so, we will be out of work. Older now, I think it would be good to be out of work and able to deliver myself up to the Pure poetic voice, but I also think it unlikely to happen in my lifetime. Twenty years ago part of me believed that censorship just might become a thing of the past, as could war, inequality and man-made suffering. Now, informed by one of my colleagues that peace is nothing but the temporary hiatus of hostilities, I'm content to borrow a phrase from 20th century soviet dissidents: "Let's drink to the success of our hopeless enterprise."

To submit poems to Poets Against War/ poètes contre la guerre, Canada , go to:

www.poetsagainstwar.ca .

[Sandra Stephenson is co-founder (with Art Joyce) of Poets Against War, Canada .]

Waging Peace, ed. Susan McMaster, Penumbra Press, Ottawa , 2002

"Ten Nobel Peace Prize winners take aim at US," Associated Press, Sept. 17, 2006

"Rise Like Lions," www.PoetsAgainsttheWar.org, fall newsletter, 2006

W.S. Rendra, interview, Index on Censorship, vol. 21, no.6, 1992, p. 15

written l989, published in part in "Elegies for a Sad Land : Romania ," Index, vol. 21, no. 9, 1992, p. 39

S. Browning, "Pens not Swords," in Foreign Policy in Focus , Sept. 28 2006, poetryofwitness@hotmail.com

The newspapers that rejected the poem were: The Independent; The Guardian; The Observer; London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. (source: Index, vol. 21, no.5, p. 2 ). Most, if not all, had published Pinter before.

Alia Mamdouh and Fadia Faqir, Seattle Arts & Lecture Series, sponsored by Hedgebrook , Washington , 2005.

Hector Tizon, "Annotations on the Dirty War," Index on Censorship, vol 21, no. 2, 1992, p. 32

Examples: In Canada, Waging Peace, Penumbra Press, Ottawa, 2002; Common Sky, Three Squares Press, Toronto; le 11 septembre des poètes du Québec, Trait d`union, 2002;

In the USA , Poets Against the War, Nation, NY, 2003

In the UK, 100 Poets Against War, Salt Publishing, 2003 ; Book of Hopes and Dreams, Bluechrome, Bristol, 2006; Babylon Burning, nthposition.com, 2006