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Chapter 13: The Dynamic Now---A Poet's Counsel
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CHAPTER 13 THE DYNAMIC Now-A POET'S COUNSEL Allison W. Phinney Sometimes I feel ashamed that I've written so few poems on political themes, on the causes that agitate me. But then I remind myself that to choose to live as a poet in the modem super state is in itself a political action. Stanley Kunitz This moment, just past the edge of a new millennium, has startling urgency for issues of social progress. Moral outrages continue with tireless re-invention in many parts of the world. Ethnic cleansing and rape, ever subtler modes of racial and class oppression , the withering of human rights justified by supposed economic and national interest, disquiet comfortable assumptions about "progress." But, in the Western world, another specter has arisen that is more unusual and ultimately more threatening to humankind than any natural regime. Deepening doubt and intellectual distrust of the very existence of the human spirit, like some suffocating stratospheric smog, now drifts across the surface of the globe. World historian, Arnold Toynbee, commented in 1975 on "an increasing number of Westerners living in a spiritual vacuum ."! To suppose that people can live in a spiritual vacuum is as reasonable as saying they breathe without air. The economic and 237 ALLISON W. PHINNEY technological changes producing wealth and leisure in a homogenous world culture by no means have had the promised effect of liberating the human spirit. Moreover, the traditional narrow focus of most leaders in seeking primarily outward economic and social improvements offers little hope of stirring human beings increasingly dispirited by pervasive materialism. And without humanity's morale or will to sustain outward social improvements, they are negated by shifting circumstances and deteriorating attitudes. On the level of popular polls much is sometimes made in the United States of a resurgence of faith. The issue, of course, is not really how many are affirming belief in divinity, but whether this acculturated belief any longer has effect on the way society is conducted . In The Wonder of Being Human, neurobiologist Sir John Eccles, and psychologist Daniel Robinson point to the more elemental ebbing of humanity's faith: We think science has gone too far in breaking down man's belief in his spiritual greatness, (...) and has given him the belief that he is merely an insignificant animal that has arisen by chance and necessity. We can have hope as we recognize and appreciate the wonder and mystery of our existence as experiencing selves. Mankind would be cured of its alienation if that message could be expressed with all the authority of scientists and philosophers as well as with the imaginative insights of artists.2 A Poet's Passion and the Human Spirit Poets are not usually assumed to have very much to do with social engineering. But the underlying crisis of the human spirit that has so rapidly weakened idealism may engender a new necessity for looking pragmatically not only to poets, but also to filmmakers, dramatists, artists, musicians and composers, philosophers, and theologians . If humanity is to be fulfilled, rather than enslaved by continuous acquiescence in finitude, we desperately need reminders of who we are. We need whatever articulates the core "humanness" of which we must become sharply conscious in order to make choices that do not oppress. 238 [18.215.15.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:01 GMT) THE DYNAMIC Now-A POET'S COUNSEL Poets and playwrights have often supplied the voices for revolution-in Poland; Czechoslovakia, Nigeria, and Russia, for example. The reason may lie in poets' peculiar senses of urgency and immediacy. Theory, logical debate, dogmatics, they believe, can come later; for centuries the greatest issues have been sufficiently clear! What issues? Issues of the human spirit denigrated, violated , oppressed, starved, unfulfilled, or destroyed. As Primo Levi, the twentieth century Italian poet and author put it in his "Song ofThose Who Died in Vain:" (...) outside in the cold we will be waiting for you, The anny of those who died in vain, We of the Marne, of Montecassino, Treblinka, Dresden and Hiroshima. (...) The Disappeared Ones of Buenos Aires, Dead Cambodians and dying Ethiopians, The Prague negotiators, The bled-dry of Calcutta, The innocents slaughtered in Bologna. (...)3 Nazim Hikmet, a Turkish poet of the 1920's and 1930's, writes of a passion that is willing to die for the sake of more life and freedom for the living: Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to...