passion...

This is an email that I got from my girl leslieann a while back.. some wisdom from bino. He's talking about poetry.. but, from what I have learned this year, the institutionalization of expression and standardization of creativity applies to many of the arts. But really, the passion to get the truth/inspiration/beauty you see out into the world, to the people that are waiting for it, applies to any work, from music to physics, that you do. -rups

"why is fiction more appealing to the general public? why does poetry bring this image of a private club? what are poets thinking when they write? are they thinking someone will read their books and understand their work? or are they thinking, it doesnt matter, i write for myself?

the private club. more and more poetry are coming out of institutions, and more poets work in institutions as well. a poetry industrial complex. walls of higher learning. while learning should be encouraged, walls should not be built around it. i am not a big fan of this phenomenon, because i have always been afraid that institutional loyalty of poets may potentially veil the telling of the truth. the truth, the foundation of poetry. i also fear that poetry, being so academicized, stays inside the gates of institutions and not in the hands of the general reading public. poets read poets, and oftentimes these poets belong to the same academic circles. is there poetry for the people, poetry people can read and understand without feeling alienated by the text?

such a different life, being a fictionist and being a poet. i still cant, after all these years, profess that i am a poet without feeling self-righteous. i prefer to say, i also write poetry, after saying, im a writer, or a novelist. say, im a poet, and thats the end of conversation. poets seem to sit up on a pedestal somewhere, among the PhDs that no one could ever converse with. do poets dream of immortality such that they dont feel the urgency that their work must be shared and understood now? are they rembrandts who will not be understood in their lifetime but rediscovered as posthumous classics? do poets at all find the need to touch?

what is the truth?

fictionists and the reading public are two things that seem to be inseparable in publishing. poetry and the reading public are two things that dont belong in the same sentence. does poetry being of a gift economy mean that there is no need to find an audience? or is the joke-myth of 1000 poets reading each other true?

i think of the times of sappho of the island of lesbos, a woman poet in a ring of male dominated world. when poetry was a song. a song recited, a story told. that people gathered in their backyard and recited each other poems, young and old alike. nowadays, the poet stands at a podium and recites from up there, far from his audience. he is first introduced, with a bio as long as a poem itself. it is a bio that nobody really listens to, full of publications in journals nobody in the audience (but the fellow poets) know of. it is a list of accomplishments. because without such list, the poet is naked.

it brings me images of freires teacher-god. the poet-god. the one nobody understands. the dictator-poet, whose only connection is to himself. but perhaps the poet doesnt care so much about whether he is understood, because in fact, there is no need to be understood? it is poetry. and poetry does that to people.

in the classroom, the teacher is in the position of power. the power to change. to be understood. if the teacher doesnt want to be understood and continue in his act of dictation, students are disempowered. for this reason, i believe that the poet also possesses this power. i cant leave the responsibility to the people to reach out to poetry. it should be the poet reaching out.

which brings me to fiction. bad fiction is work that nobody understands. if a story cannot communicate on the gut-level, it is bad work, very simple. fiction is someone sitting next to you on a long subway ride trying to tell you a story that hopefully you will grasp without feeling the need to get off at the next stop. if a work of fiction cannot do the fundamentals of storytelling, it is bad work.

is there bad poetry these days?

i want to sit in a circle, with a poet among us, a poet who will read us a few of his poems, a poet who will try very hard to make sure we are with him through the process of sharing, a poet who is sitting on the ground with us. i want this circle to be many circles in the world. i want to see poetry shared this way. i want it given out, in pieces of paper, pasted on walls. i want it on the subway so the morning workers can be inspired by a few beautiful lyrical lines. i want it outside the academia so that it wont collect webs in their libraries. i want it to be free, and distributed. i want it on coffee cups. i want it on tshirts. i want poetry to be turned into music so people can sing, sing, sing poems.

i want publishing poetry not to be a competition among poets. i want it out of the contest venue. i want poetry to be written because it has to be written, not because a book needs to be finished. i want it to be written because it has to be written not because a promotion is needed.

i want it to be written because people are waiting and patiently waiting to read them. i want poetry to be all about the truth, and nothing, oh nothing but the truth.

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Oh, and I have decided to stay back in India for a few more months....