Prose for Poets, Poetry for Prose Writers: How I Read and Write in Troubled Times

II

LANGUAGE PATTERN  ORDER

I have quoted a lot of other writers because I believe, as writers, that part of the experience we have in writing and reading is to be in conversation with all that as been written. But what exactly is that experience beyond the overt meaning of a text? Italo Calvino, the Italian critic and novelist, wrote that poetry and fiction have, “the ability to impose patterns of language, of vision, of imagination, of mental effort, of the correlation of facts, and in short the creation (and by creation I mean selection and organization) of a model of values that is at the same time aesthetic and ethical, essential to any plan of action especially in political life.” When I read poetry or prose I am paying attention, first of all, to those patterns of language, of vision. In other words I am trying here to show, through several examples in poetry and prose, not only what—for me—links poetry and prose, but how the links and echoes in a text are also linked to the linkages, the language, the connections among readers—and that is a powerful force against any kind of oppression. As the great Kenyan wrier, Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote: “Language has been as much the tool of conquest and resistance as the sword… In a world like ours, every point on its surface is a center of the whole. The challenge is for the inhabitants of a specific point to see the links that bind them to all other points.” As the great Mexican poet, Otavio Paz once wrote, “a society without poetry is a society without dreams, without words, and most importantly, without that bridge between one person and another… If a society abolishes [this] it commits spiritual suicide.”

So, as a corollary to this discussion about poetry and prose, or rather hovering in the background, is a way writers of prose and poetry can deal with various types of oppression—beyond writing directly about it as a form of overt protest. I do not mean we should not write political, sociological or ecological texts—about a third of what I have written could be classified not as political poetry but as poetic descriptions of some horrible situations. But that is not for everyone, and too often results in taking an absolutist, either/or, holier than thou and divisive, self-righteous propaganda from either side.

I am simply trying to assert here the value of creating art itself. Indeed, today, in the Ukraine, the writers and artists who protest then invasion include the young woman who plays the folk song “Starry Night” on her violin in her basement and broadcasts it every night on YouTube, or the Ukrainian artists who paint on used ammunition boxes. When asked what we can do a Ukrainian poet replied, “just write.” And there is Bret Lott, whose Gather the Olives: On Food Hope and the Holy Land, uses food, the shared meal, to reveal a land, a vision, a world that is the real world hidden beneath the usual headlines. It reveals a truth and beauty we often forget but need desperately to remember, and as artists, to portray.

This Keatsian idea of linking truth and beauty was an idea first proposed by the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who believed that the beauty in any art, by which he meant form and pattern, is a moral act, and as such undermines the immoral visions of those in power. It is what makes art dangerous to those people. One thing I learned in my experiences during the Yugoslav wars is that dictators fear poets and writers because they tell the truth, which makes them popular among the citizens. The same applies to artists, musicians, teachers, and journalists. These were the kinds of professionals we were able to smuggle out of Sarajevo in particular—why?  because they were targeted for jail or assassination. My friend and poet, the late Dane Zajc analyzed this in terms of writers and our use of language as he described what he called the “stalkers:"

They keep inventing new words, thus alienating their speech from the language of their native land. The stalkers use their language to create a land of their own, their own exclusive domain accessible only to the initiated. Those who do not know how to use their language (it is not actually a language, but a curious hodgepodge of words, floating on the surface and obstructing the view of the depths) stand out in the crowd like a sore thumb.

And recently Connie May Fowler shared what she sent to her workshop reminding us that we are, as writers, “Civilization Keeper[s]:”

During rising tides of fascism, every word we write is an act of resistance. Dictators gorge on chaos. It empowers them, fattens them, and serves the purposes of their acolytes and handlers: A confused and off-centered populace is easier to control than one that is focused and organized. 

Connie and Zajc’s words should remind us that what we do, and how we do it as writers is crucial in ways we may not have suspected. For example, Stanislaw Baranczak, the Polish poet, describes the powerful undercurrent of how language works: “regardless of theme and specific address, poetry [writing] is always some kind of protest…. That's why all the metaphors and rhythms—it's just a way of putting the world's chaotic gibberish in some meaningful order and restoring the original weight to abused words. That's why all the concreteness and conciseness—to resist the engulfing power of the world's empty abstractions and statistical generalities. That's why all the speaking in first person singular and seeing things from a strictly individual perspective—it's poetry's [Writing’s] way of standing up to the world whenever it tries to elbow the individual aside and of the stage.”

I am thinking also of Robert Hass’ notion that, “Because rhythm has direct access to the unconscious, because it can hypnotize us, enter our bodies and make us move, it is power. And power is political. That is why rhythm is always revolutionary ground. It is always the place where the organic rises to abolish the mechanical and where energy announces the abolition of tradition. New rhythms are new perceptions.” It is those patterns that Calvino talked about that create rhythm. It is what scares the dictators and chaos makers.

For example, a novel like recent Nobel winner Han Kang’s The White Book is made up of short chapters, each with a reference to white, a color which gradually comes in the end to be associated with the death of her sister, and which unites—links—the whole text as its associations evolve and expand. When we experience those links, we also link ourselves to her vision—and to each other as readers.  Or Richard Powers’s The Overstory whose images of various trees create a kind of evolving story that echoes through the various stories through the book. I think also of Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams held together by evolving ideas of what Einstein might have thought of the concept of Time, or Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table held together by associating stories with chemical elements from his life including the holocaust. It is not simply these story plots but how their parts interact, echo and evolve, and therefore engage us.

It can create a unique and shared vision that is the basis for understanding our world-- for when we write we remake some small part of our broken world. I think of two poets who wrote under dictatorships—Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska’s poem, “I’m Working on the World:”

And Czech poet Jaroslav Siefert who wrote, “All language [poetry or prose] can be thought of as an effort to achieve freedom, to feel the joy and sensuality of freedom. What we seek in language is the freedom to be able to express one's most intimate thoughts… it ultimately assumes the form of political freedom.”