New and Selected Essays by Denise Levertov

Author:Denise Levertov [Levertov, Denise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811224444
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1992-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

In 1988 the Massachusetts College of Art gave Honorary Degrees to the Marukis, who created the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Murals and have gone on to depict a number of other outstanding crimes of our lifetime. A number of writers and visual artists were honored by an opportunity to contribute to an illustrated catalogue for the exhibition which accompanied their visit.

Poetry, Prophecy, Survival

(early 1980s)

IF A WRITER’S SUBJECT matter frequently includes issues that are prominent in the history of his or her own time—if he or she engages, as is virtually inevitable once such issues enter the work at all, on one side or the other of a controversy—the English-speaking public will demand that that writer account for so doing, and justify the presence of the political in the literary. I said English-speaking because this is much less true in some other cultures—the Hispanic or the Slavic for example. And I should also qualify writer by saying especially one whose main work is in poetry.

Political subject matter is looked upon either as an intruder into the realm of poetry, or as a matter that requires special discussion every time it occurs, and can’t just be taken for granted like any other subject. So the poet is challenged to respond to many questions, ranging from the hostile (which may elicit defense or a shrug of disregard) to the genuinely, and sometimes profoundly, enquiring; and these last reach the artistic conscience and cause the poet to search for authentic personal responses. One such stimulating question I received in the mail was this one:

What relation has the poetry of joy, proclamation, affirmation, to politics?

I would answer:

A poetry of anguish, a poetry of anger, of rage, a poetry that, from literal or deeply imagined experience, depicts and denounces perennial injustice and cruelty in their current forms, and in our peculiar time warns of the unprecedented perils that confront us, can be truly a high poetry, as well wrought as any other. It has the obvious functions of raising consciousness and articulating emotions for people who have not the gift of expression. But we need also the poetry of praise, of love for the world, the vision of the potential for good even in our species which has so messed up the rest of creation, so fouled its own nest. If we lose the sense of contrast, of the opposites to all the grime and gore, the torture, the banality of the computerized apocalypse, we lose the reason for trying to work for redemptive change. Not as an escape—not instead of but as well as developing our consciousness of what Man is doing to the world and how we as individuals are implicated—we need more than ever before to contemplate daily (and to make, if we are so fortunate as to be capable of it) works of praise, works that by power of imagination put us in mind—re-mind us—of all that makes the earth’s survival, and our own lives, worth struggling for. To imagine goodness

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.