From: sfjr@wam.umd.edu (Steve Russell)
Subject: Re: The Business of Poetry
Summary: No poems whatwoever, Sherri, not Steve
Keywords: Sherri, not Steve
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 19:34:57 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.145400.13694@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> "Andrew C. Aiken" <aaiken@silver.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
>In <1992Apr14.103615.13558@hemlock.cray.com> n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:
>>>>I am not fantasizing inexpressiveness.  There are millions of
>>>>people who are not permitted to speak.  Any language they might
>>>>have has been taken from them by their masters.  Your grammar
>>>>of pain stuff is what you can chat about in the cruise ship
>>>>lounge.   Your dark-skinned waiter doesn't want to listen to these
>>>>marvelous chats.   
>>>
>that we can live without virtue, but I would argue that without voluntary
>virtue, capitalism is unworkable. 

Oh, I don't know.  It probably is working, it just isn't fair.  You could
easily say the same thing about Marxism, too.  Problem is, voluntary
virtue is probably too unreliable to envision a just government that relies
on voluntary virtue for its justice.  At the very least, even the virtuous
must be willing to educate themselves on the very issues that the anti-Green
party are defending their right to ignore.  A community of people who care
that people other than themselves don't have a language is required.

>	Certainly, there are many who cannot speak or are prohibited from   
>speaking.  But is the human instinct for freedom merely a social construct?
>I would answer no, that it is innate.  The oppressed learn to speak in code,
>as survivors of the Holocaust have written.

Yes, but must they also be subjected to the guards' discussion of the 'grammar
or pain'?  Better yet, should we continue the old conversations, or should
we try instead to learn the codes, or at the very least understand how the
need for them arose.

>though, is that our needs and hopes are founded upon essentially biological
>needs that we all share: food, shelter, and love.  There may never be
>justice for the waiter, at least not in this world.  

But again, perhaps we can eat our dinners silently, or find more significant
ways of occupying our time than taking cruises.  The fact that justice may
never be realized does not give any of us the right to glibly continue the
work of oppression.  I may never get over being sexually abused when I
was a child, at least not in this world.  Doesn't mean I don't think it
sucks.  And it doesn't mean I'd appreciate listening to a bunch of abusers
discussing the various neices and grandaughter's they'd had--I would think
that there are other world views they should become aware of.

>	Montesquieu gave an example of despotism:  to pick fruit, the 
>people cut down the trees at the root.  We may either attempt to resolve 
>injustices by controlling the effects of class divisions (the existence of
>which, in my estimation, are inevitable) or we may try to cut out the  
>source of class divisions.  The latter results in Gulag.
>

Really?  Like no middle ground?  Wow, that's harsh.

>
>	I suggest that the sanest ideology of all is an anti-ideology.
>
>	I dream of founding the Party of Stagnation.  Its delegates
>would be chosen for their lack of political ambition.  The Party would
>attempt nothing new: it would aspire to do nothing, to lead (or follow)
>us into an uninteresting age, one of small promises and smaller plans,
>a slowing of the world, a return to history.  The Party promises not
>sound and fury, but cool breezes, silence, and understatement.
>
>Patience will rule.
>
>"War?  There will be no war.  Our border disputes will be worked out
> in their time."

heh-heh...I don't think Viet Nam was a border dispute.  Now all of a
sudden you're the optimist :)
>
>P.S. Now, back to poetry.  Just wanted to clear a few things up.

And I just want to point out that I think these discussions are important.
They help me clarify my ideas about what poetry is and why I'm trying to
understand it and be a part of it.  The rest of you stop complaining, hit
N, or prepare to weather a rec.arts.poems.d exchange...I think we all know
which would be worse...

sherri