Well in the words of my cab driver, Happy Merry Christmas all! I am now back in New York, following a blink-and-you-missed it weekend in Omaha spent almost entirely with family. Naturally as we move closer to the end of the year, it means more than just that awkward transition period where both the 2006 and 2007 wall calendars are up (c'mon, you do this too), it also means year-in-review style posts! Who can wait to see all the thoughts and pictures assembled in one convenient place? Maybe a new page design will accompany this thing into the next year...
So, while I rock to the Join the Dots Cure set that Monica got me for Christmas, lets get really warm and philosophical and talk poetry. Lately I've been reading "Transbluency," which is a compilation spanning a couple decades worth of Amiri Baraka's work. I find Baraka particularly fascinating, because the evolution in his thought and politics seem evident as you track the years, moving from a rather straightforward (but still race conscious) Beat writer ala Ginsberg or to a lesser extent Burroughs, as he does show a brief fondness for the cut-up/fold-in method, to black nationalist to general Third World Marxist.
Anyway, as to where this is going--I have posted one of my absolute favorite poems of Baraka's below as a little holiday gift to all the artists out there, because I find it very thoughtful piece on the elitism/narcissism found in canon creation and the commercialism of art--both timeless topics. I have decided not to post all of it, mostly due to the feeling that this is probably going to show up as a complete source for the poem on Googlez, and I believe strongly this is one of the better books I have purchased recently and therefore encourage the same (or at least be old school and ask to borrow it). Also because I know whippersnappers these days hate reading, so I guess I should be glad that I didn't have to track down a YouTube of some girl reading it out loud. Also because I hate typing and transcribing.
some excerpts from...
The Politics of Rich Painters
is something like the rest
of our doubt, whatever slow thought
comes to rest, beneath the silence
of starving talk.
Just their fingers' prints
staining the cold glass, is sufficient
for commerce, and a proper ruling on
humanity. You know the pity
of democracy, that we must sit here
and listen to how he made his money.
Tho the catalogue of his possible ignorance
roars and extends through the room
like fire. "Love," becomes the pass,
the word taken intimately to combat
all the uses of language. So that learning
itself falls into disrepute.
[....]
They are more ignorant than the poor
tho they pride themselves with that accent. And
move easily in fake robes of egalitarianism. Meaning,
I will fuck you even if you don't like art. And are wounded
that you call their italian memories petit bourgeois.
[...]
The source of their art crumbles into legitimate history.
The whimpering pigment of a decadent economy, slashed into life
as Yeats' mad girl plummeting over the nut house wall, her broken
knee caps rattling in the weather, reminding us of lands
our antennae do not reach.
And there are people in these savage geographies
use your name in other contexts
think, perhaps, the title of your latest painting
another name for liar.
C'mon. "I will fuck you even if you don't like art"! That is a t-shirt or a MoMA slogan or something Web 2.0 just waiting to happen.
Speaking of Web 2.0, why not celebrate the holidays with A Very Webcam Christmas? Someday there's going to be something really good posted, and you'll be pissed if you miss the moment it finally arrives!
Posted by dave at December 25, 2006 11:16 PMI like what is inferred about the economics of art, a hush hush sort of topic. Especially interesting if what you say is true about his later development into a proletariat poet. I like Tom Moody's thoughts on this topic, debunking myths about the "fake robes of egalitarianism"
What I wonder, however, is that there isn't some resent here. Some of the lines make me feel like a poet resents with words what a painter expresses with paint—blaming it on illiteracy, images as reductionist? Not that there isn't some merit here (seems like a lot of critical thought has been devoted to how generation is image-retarded. is this even valid?), it really seems bitter, like from one source. I can think of a few modernist painters from that time he might be referring to......
maybe all poetry is dudes venting about assholes. this must be true, since all modern art is something I could have drawn in like 5 seconds.
long live NET.ART!!!!!
Dude, way to not be in Omaha for very long. I hope Baraka uses his long bladed hands on you.
Posted by: Rob at December 31, 2006 1:55 PM