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Reflections of Poems and about Poetry



Poetry in the global age

In a global world marked by uncertainties, belief in the human spirit is needed. This poetry can give.  However, it should not be merely a lyrical protest while covering up places of silence, but support a new kind of world governance fore mostly through culture. To this poetry can give wisdom and ethics while inspiring to seek the dialogue with the other. Poetry does this best when working through the complexities of life while heeding even small things, like the question of a child.

Even though Virgil made poetry into a myth he created under official contract to uphold the Roman state, Homer showed a real difference. Poetry is a real measure for man if expressed in all freedom from state and political structures, and gives to people the self confidence they need to cope with changes.

In that sense, poetry has become over time most subtle, sensitive to details and subjective in outlook even while wishing to claim the greatest possible objectivity. This every poem does when referring to man and the situation in the world.

When speaking about a world under pressure of globalization, then asked for is a special knowledge on how to escape all the contradictory forces which can converge at one and the same location to exploit it like sharks which attack a piece of meat thrown into the sea. If poetry is to translate the escape into showing a way into the future, and this despite all uncertainties, then the logos of feelings and of honest thoughts must manifest themselves again. Some truth is found if it lets humanity move on instead of bleeding to death. Indeed, every poem can become a small tribute feeding the stream of humanity. It makes a difference if people begin to address each other in a most poetic way, for that makes possible what Marx had called 'human self-consciousness'.

When 'Poets against war' together with Sam Hamill started to publish one poem a day, it inspired so many to step out of silence and face ever more openly the situation they were living and experiencing at that time, namely after 911 first the new war in Afghanistan, and then the invasion into Iraq in March 2003.

It opened up a new topos for poetry. As explained by Brendan Kennelly, poetry has to face both violence and the myths created around use of violence. For a long time, Ireland suffered civil strife since violence was viewed as a force of liberation. Oddly enough, this act of equating violence with liberation took place during First World War, that is when others like Paul Klee were horrified by war and all its destructive forces. Brendan Kennelly in his ‘Cromwell poems’ shows what happens to children when bombs go off unexpectedly, as was so often the case in Northern Ireland. Violence reigned until the peace process got under way and still there is a lot of unease existing as the work of redemption based on truthful accounting and remembering is not the same as the most difficult act of all: to forgive. This was attempted by the Polish bishop of Wroclaw when asking the Germans who had been ousted out of Breslau, now the city of Wroclaw, after 1945 ‘to forgive that one has to ask for forgiveness!’

Only by showing the innocence of life, can poetry convince mankind to give up hate and violence and instead to let trust and faithfulness have a chance to open up doors, as was the case in South Africa after Nelson Mandela finally got out of jail and then freed his prison guards. To take the others with him, that meant he trusts not only man, but the greatness in man.

And even then trust is not self understood. First a poem must allow for a human understanding of the conflict. That is the lesson from Belfast and of those who like photographer Kevin Cooper, work in conflict zones. By learning to show a human understanding, he gets to know and to anticipate the prerequisites which shall be fulfilled to get the peace process going. This keen sense, observed in poems, goes before any human reason can prevail help resolve conflicts out of 'love for life'.

Pablo Neruda called his autobiography 'I confess to have lived' as his especially his poetry about love contributed towards living consciously. But for love and life to go together, two things are required: to stay in touch with the world and being responsible what happens in reality not merely around the corner, but in the entire world.

In that sense, poetry can give for the future the syntax needed for world governance. It shall be the one in which the human voice can be heard and in which the individual counts, and this despite all global pressures and forces ready to overrun any local space.

Poetry gives orientation, but it is a matter of knowing how to come to terms with human pain caused by the loss of love and human relationships. Pain exists because too often life is being 'dealt' with in the most arbitrary way. Such a loss reveals the frailty of human relationships. It brings people dangerously close to the cutting edge of success and failure. Insofar poetry is like a drama of shadow and light to show what does make a difference between life and death, it reflects as well a decision to be honest.

If drama and theatre reveal a world of rhetorical skills which underline critical stances despite censorship and suppression, then artists do live permanently in danger zones as Mike van Graan would say. Thus only the courageous ones express what is not allowed. Yet poetry has no other choice but to overcome this censorship. In so doing, poetry becomes a counter-force to globalization by articulating what can prevail in all corners of the world, namely love and humour. It frees the individual and lifts human conscience to a level of language others can understand, and therefore begin to share meanings more common than what often people feel or think. That is why poetry is also linked to common sense.  It allows overcoming the long shadows cast by power and fear, the two forces of imitation.

Thus poetry as syntax of freedom shows what has been experienced but equally needs to be lived, before it can be articulated, and this without fear to have one's identity be annihilated by powerful forces.

Globalization itself does not pose a threat to poetry, only fear.

If anything, poetry is a kind of morality expressed in words and this free of any coercion. That makes the poem so powerful once free to seek lawfulness in life and in tune with the world. Such a lyrical expression leaves no doubt about true thoughts and emotions reflecting honestly the state of affairs in this world. If Michael D. Higgins can say every poet knows when a poem is 'made', then this applies to the world as well. For everyone knows when peace prevails.

Hatto Fischer

10.12.2012


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