Poet Laureates Again, and “Official Verse Culture”

This is the first time I am conscious of my use of the term, “Official Verse Culture,” and I am not sure I really know what it means. That said, François Luong has left this comment:

I find the Poet Laureateship very problematic in how it posits poetry. It’s also a very Anglo-Saxon thing to do (I believe early Renaissance poet John Skelton was one of the first poets to use it). So here we have a function inherited from a feudal society. The question becomes, of course, for what purpose? Because a function sponsored by a state power may be problematic, especially when said state is engaged in military activities. If anything, the laureateship might be the prime example of what Marx means when he writes of intellectuals being the producers of ideology.

The flipside of this is the figure of the poéte engagé who claims to be speaking for the masses. In doing so, I am not sure that s/he is really going against the situation. It is still a very romantic(ized) position to take, this positioning of poetry outside of a capitalistic system of exploitation. I am somewhat dubious of a self-righteous politico-moral position in regards to poetry in that it does not realize that the writing of poetry is still a form of production and therefore, maybe, still reaffirms the values of the current economic system.

To which I have responded:

François, I think you bring up very good and relevant points, in terms of manufacturers and/or producers of state sanctioned ideology. As well, I agree with you that poetry doesn’t necessarily exist outside of a/the capitalist system, that our current system of poetry reaffirms the dominant culture, even the poet who appears to represent the “masses.” Still, being poets, I think we do subscribe to the romanticism of the poet’s and artist’s symbolic importance in our society.

This is where I leave behind rational discussion and consider the artist as the “soul” of a culture. Or perhaps this is rational, and I can’t remember who said this, that the way the dominant culture regards art and artists is an indicator of the “well being” and integrity of the culture’s soul.

Ultimately I would just like some politicized multilingual visibility on a level larger than our small artist circles.

I would like to clarify my position on poets participating in the production and propagation of state sanctioned ideology, and poets existing and participating in a/the/our capitalist system: We do.

The romanticism I describe above, of poets and artists as the “soul” of a society does not preclude our participation in mainstream culture and economy, if only as consumers in our everyday lives, payers of mortgages and taxes. Our participation in this economy does not/should not negate our ability to be thinking people, critical of this economy, nor to live mindfully and to enact sustainability within it.

More pointedly, so many of us poets are invested in publication, in manuscript submissions to contests and awards (i.e. mediation and approval of/by editorial bodies). Many of us participate in the machine called the MFA, with no guarantees on our investment’s return. Many of us poets participate in this English and Western-centric system, knowledgeable and reminded constantly that we and our both radical and nuanced differences are unwelcome here. Even when we are directing our work towards independent publishers and DIY projects, we are acknowledging literary institution by positioning ourselves in relation to it. It is this totality I think of when I think of “Official Verse Culture.”

While I agree with François, I also believe that if I were to operate wholly on theory, then futility at any attempts to eschew “Official Verse Culture,” would set in, and I would do nothing. It is not even that I would take it “underground” to my “peeps”; I just wouldn’t seek publication, and more so, I wouldn’t write. And then I would have nothing to share with a community. Ultimately, I wouldn’t be a poet. I’d go live in the suburbs, drive a massive gasoline uber-consuming vehicle, and do something societally and gender respectable, like have no opinion.

So, does our nomination of Juan Felipe Herrera for California Poet Laureate mean anything within “Official Verse Culture”? I believe that it does. Similarly, [unnamed important literary person] has just told me s/he has nominated Al Robles for San Francisco Poet Laureate, and it’s clear to me this unnamed person also believes the visibility of this poet activist advocate is meaningful. It is not because we demand these figures to speak for us, but because they have enacted and continue to enact their poetics and politics. In doing so, they have provided us with very concrete blueprints for our own actions and activisms as poets with political consciousness. If we keep relying on poet activists like Herrera and Robles to be our “voice,” then we have missed the point entirely.

I am reminded of Nikki Giovanni’s recent Oakland Museum event. She read poetry and spoke much about her mother and sister, Sarah Vaughn, Rosa Parks, and what these women meant to her, to her community, to American history. During the Q&A, a young man asked her if she had any advice on how a young brother could address women’s issues and feminism not just in his poetic work, but in his life. Ms. Giovanni responded firmly: haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been talking about for the past couple of hours?