I appreciate this article though perhaps only agree with about 80% (which is still a high percentage) of how author Jaswinder Bolina connects the dots. In his last paragraph, for instance, Bolina writes about the poet’s role, “... disrupt the culture of privilege that insulates us. And we need to disrupt it, not for our egoistic desire for a larger audience, but for the sake of our art. The only job of the poet is to destabilize and expand language. This is how poetry changes the world—not by grand ambition or the lauding of critics. It takes the plodding, unending effort of many to alter line by line, phrase by phrase, word by word the way we describe ourselves and everything around us. This is how we change perception. This is how we change the mind. We can’t do it while isolated by our privilege.” The context of Bolina’s article is the (privilege of) the MFA/academic etc. But his observation can be applied to many other contexts which generate context-specific poetry. The issue isn’t really how academia affects the poet-academic’s language since all contexts affect language. The issue is how to live a life that disrupts complacency (in Bolina’s case, the academic context but it could apply to many other contexts). So for the last paragraph, for instance, when he says “the only job of the poet is to destabilize and expand language,” I feel Bolina should have more specifically connected the dots about how to live life in a way that disrupts things we don’t like about life (abuse, privilege, etc) and that such ACTIONS will affect language. So the job of the poet then, if he wants to change language, is not just specifically to change language but live life in a certain way. (I think Bolinas does this elsewhere in this long article but don’t know why he didn’t connect it in the important Conclusion-paragraph). Three poets’ quotes came to mind as I read this — quotes that I appreciate: “I never criticize how poets make money.”—Philip Lamantia “To be a poet, build a road”, not a metaphorical road but an actual road—Indrana Amirthanayagam, paraphrased (a poet who turned his back on academia after he got his MFA and ended up being a diplomat) “To be a poet is not to write poems but to find a new way of life.”—Paul LaFleur poetryfoundation.org/article/249164
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 16:41:54 +0000
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