Open Letter to U.S. Poets

LETTERS 1 73 OPEN LETTER TO U.S. POETS Garcia Lorca was shot by the fascists, Vallejo was expelled from F'rance, Mayakovsky wrote of the delicate nature of the poet in the workers' ranks. Neruda was a thorn in the side of the United Fruit Company. And when the Chilean generals, supported by U.S. "moderates" ran over Chile, poets either went underground with the MIR, got out of the country fast or were tortured and put to death. But poets of the United States, have no fear. When repression strikes again, beyond the ghettos and factories where it lives every day, it will root out the independent caucuses from the union halls, it will go after those who went on strike, its iron knuckles will knock on the doors of "aliens" and it will find a few of you, too. But most of you, poets of the United States, will have refuge in your circular workshops which you've locked outside of history. The ruling class will merely brush you off as a bothersome fly. U.S. poets, there are no bankers among you, no corporate bosses at your poetry readings, no lyrical imperialists in your magazines. Most of you are workers of a sort, in the post office, in schools or at any odd job. Or perhaps you are unemployed; not too many jobs around these days. And your work, who owns what you produce? Do you own the TV, the newspapers, the schools, the publishing houses, who could bring your work, poetry, to millions of people, millions of working people who were born poets but who were taught to forget about the beauty of the image. You say you've already made a revolution, you've hitchhiked 8,000 miles across the country, learned to survive on beans and coffee, given free readings, retired to a farm, refused to fight in the war. Well the war is not over. Take a ride on your tenspeed bikes outside ofthat demilitarized zone where you hang out, over to 63rd Street, 18th Street, the Racine Avenue Lock-Up, where Officer F'riendly is cracking a drunk's head against the corner of a desk, the Inland coke ovens, where the workers are breathing in the fumes which will kill them fifteen years before their body is ready to die, so that the bosses can add a few thousands to their millions. Visit the rotten schools where it is assured that the children of workers will never get the chance to appreciate your poetry. Whom are you writing for anyway? Not the bosses; they don't give a shit about your poetry. Not the majority of us, working people; the bosses hoard the arts and keep us out. F'or whom are you writing, then? F'or yourselves? That can't be; you'd get tired of scratching each other's back. We'd like a chance to appreciate your poems, love poems, abstract poems, nature poems. We'd like to share the sunset with you. And protest poems. Oh, you say it is impossible to write good protest poems. Where have I heard that line before, yes, it was somebody from the Rockefeller F'oundation. . . but didn't you say you had a mind of your own, a poet's mind, that you couldn't be dominated by the mind-conditioning that the ruling groups push through their TV, newspapers, schools. . . Oh yes, you "do your own thing." Even that idea comes from that minority, the corporate parasites who live off our work, our art. Wasn't it Pepsi who told us to do our own thing? Or was it Schlitz? If you really have a mind of your own and like to wrestle with the written word, then it should be a challenge to write a poem which does not deny that we are part of history and change. Not slogans, we workers are turned off by slogans just as you are. But Woodie Guthrie could do it without slogans, so could Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Brecht, Nicolas Guillen. And you too, for if your poetry is against dehumanization , then it is taking a political stand. Why not...