Sentinel Poetry Online

Issue 45

ISSN 1479-425X

August, 2006

Amatoritsero Ede

 

The Poet as Terrorist

 

The morpheme, commodity, immediately rings a high-school bell, where the Economics teacher would initiate call-and-response in slow fragmented, syllabic and sing-song accentuation rounded off by his echoing students:

                 “Coom-mooo..!”

                 “Commodity!”

                 Heavy pause; then he would emphasise the economic weight of the intoned fragments by quickly taking a deep breath and aiming for a rhyming call with:

                 “Utiiiiii..!”

                 “Utility!”

                 The message had been clear: goods, Commodity in economic parlance, are the central reason for the study of Economics; and the simple arithmetic of their buying and selling as it relates to value or Utility. If a good has no utility there would be no point in thinking of selling or buying it. And goods come in multifarious ways. In a hard-nosed capitalist sense any object or idea that has ‘value’ – monetary or otherwise – and that can be exchanged as such is a ‘commodity’. The corollary to this is that once a good or idea depreciates in value its status as a commodity is in jeopardy.

                 Although poetry does have some value, both as an idea and as a commodity, most publishers dive for cover when a poetry manuscript walks through their doors. It is like the so-called suicide bomber coming to lunch!

                 “Hello, I am a poet!”

                 And all the security alarm bells in publishers’ foyers ring stridently from London to New York to Toronto and Johannesburg. Or –

                 “Hello, I am Cinna ‘da’ poet!”

                 “Kill him for his bad verses!”

                 Unfortunately for the publisher there are too many ‘Cinnas’ around. His paths are strewn with bad poems, pretensions to poetry, limericks and witticisms…many-headed monsters that pursue him in his nightmares. It is a desperate enough situation to have real careful poets in the house at all, how much more horrifying a poetaster or rhymester. So there has to be security measures put in place to keep these terrorists in check. The usual rejection slip does not do the trick anymore nor does warnings by publishers that ‘we are not considering poetry manuscripts for the next two centuries!’ The worst of these guerrillas are the bad poets with an ego! It reminds one of Dylan Thomas crying out in a drunken stupor:

                 ‘I am a worthy cause!’

                 Well, at least Thomas threatened and delivered. He was not just the talking terrorist. He blew things up! He wrote great poetry when he was not trying to kill the bottle – “Death by Drowning” would be a befitting epitaph; drowning in his own vomit, that is. But the poetaster…we are considering a bad poet who thinks he is Eliot and Pound combined with a little dash of Walcott for good measure. Such a one is a walking time bomb, ready to crash any petulant publisher’s bedroom, manuscript pointed like a missile at our poor friend’s head!

                 “Publish or perish!”

                 ‘The axis of evil’ that is bad poetry and fat egos, the vanity or alternative presses and liberal pot-head patrons who promote them, are under attack by the coalition forces of Publishers for Profit Incorporated. And the battle is being fought on all fronts, with editors in the avant-garde of Homeland security. Those poets who slip through border controls would have proven through years of endured physical torture, extreme poverty, and the dedication of a madman that they qualify! Then they are wheeled around in mannequin pirouette to expose the flesh of their commodification.

                 If it is ‘sexy’ enough they pass through the halls of Capitalia. Then their offerings become poetry as ‘commodity’, upon which the publisher dare bet his cringing dollars, with the hope that the wayward investment might win a local prize or two at the least or the Nobel at the most and increase sales. Publishers are not vultures, no; they are businessmen. And in the world of high-strung capitalism you put your money where your ‘belly’ is. This is especially so for the cash-and-carry publisher – the vanity press or the new-fangled electronic Publisher-on-Demand. They are the hated handmaiden of poetasters; all are equally detestable to the trade or educational publisher because they simply allow these up-to-no-good loafers turn belligerent.

                 So poetry generally becomes untouchable in the world of trade book publishing – no point sniffing what you do not intend to eat. The harassed poetaster has to take his dirty-bomb ware to little unknown corners of the publishing fringe. Some have tried luring acceptance by beating out popular poems, through the ‘slam industry’. It is working miracles amongst youth in need of distraction from drugs and other more lethal poisons. After all poetry is better than pot! But your self-respecting trade publisher is not buying it; so much for poetry as commodity.

                 What about poetry as transforming idea, that is, poetry as ‘value’ but not necessarily a commodity; poetry as the ‘idea and dynamic’ that has been the engine of cultural revolutions and huge social changes as within the Harlem Renaissance in America and its resonance in the Black Consciousness impulse of Apartheid South African poetry; Negrismo and Negritude in Cuba and Paris respectively? There was much dross in the work of these periods – perhaps important dregs for their impassioned messages – but we are looking at the sum total of the gold that left the dross at the bottom of the alchemist pot. Perhaps this is a place to comment on the criticism of ‘quaint’ poetry that would ignore the urgency of the message; message – especially political message, should not be ignored, of course, but dressed with a grace of execution.

                 What would the history of the civil rights movement in America be like without the energising rhetoric of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance? Or can we imagine a free South Africa without the work of her poets, who suffered much to keep the spirit of those in the trenches alive? Would it have been wise for the publisher to condemn these to the edge of their budget sheets? Perhaps we ask too much of a business man by expecting him to sow where he will certainly not reap! Or we are appealing to higher ideals in a money system, whose wheeling and dealing requires an imprisonment of ‘the idea’ in the first place. Nevertheless poetry was at the forefront of modern political struggles of the oppressed in the South – the south denoting all areas of modernity suppressed under the Universalist rhetoric of an aggressive North.

                 Poetry was instrumental in the liberation of Africa from physical colonialism, in the upliftment of African America and her inclusion in the polity as enfranchised citizenry; in cultural rejuvenation from Cuba to Haiti and in the resurgence of cultural pride amongst the black Diaspora as evinced in the Negritude movement. As such poetry is relevant, even if in the background of overarching cultural movements all over the world. Unfortunately, the proliferation of bad poetry today removes from the ‘value’, which the genre is supposed to carry along with it and confuses publishers the more while legitimising their suspicions of the declaiming bard.

                 The more headless rhyming there is out there, the less likely publishers are to take poets serious. So we have sad small presses entering the fray. It helps indeed but still limits poetry, which could otherwise – as discourse – have important socio-political import. The naming of one effort in Canada, as ‘Sorrowland’ Press is instructive in underscoring the state of affairs. For the publisher, who seeks manuscripts as the ‘super commodity’ his response to the poet’s bickering would probably be:

                 “…ach! Be gone, take your sorrow elsewhere!”   But there is still hope out there: ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’

 

***

 

Ink Thoughts

ISSN 1715-0299

Spring 2005

Heather O’ Neil

 

In Review

 

Sorrowland Press, a new Ottawa micropublisher has launched its first two publications, I See a Darkness and Jalapeno Diamond. Both of these are chapbook sized anthologies with local as well as National and International contributors.

                 I See a Darkness is a hard core look at the bleak, inner darkness that spreads and engulfs like a cancer, licking at raw wounds.... It’s about being farther down than down.... Read the book.... It’s a bright darkness against a washed out wasteland of sap.

                 Jalapeno Diamond is about craving, addiction, the “kick” that lands us down and flat till the next time.... An impressive collection of works that leave a taste, a smell, lets you touch and feel that wanting.... Gritty and true.... Damien Bailey, the editor of both books, has chosen well.

 

***

 

For more reviews and mentions click here.

Sorrowland Press Reviews and Respect

©2008 Sorrowland Press and all respective artists within.