10 October 2003

"He was a fucking whiny little BITCH!" I informed Jake angrily.

Jake grinned one of the biggest grins I've ever seen. Swore his undying love, and urged me to continue.

This guest lecturer had come to my class to speak. I'm taking a poetry class this quarter, in the hope that I'll finally be able to really appreciate poetry instead of just sort of hating and avoiding it. So, this guest speaker was quite an important poet, who had come to our class to speak about... well, poetry.

The man's name was Sam Hamill. If you've been following the news carefully, you'll probably remember his name. He was the guy who, upon being invited to the White House to some poetry conference shin-dig, threw a shit-fit, and started a website/organization called "POETS AGAINST THE WAR." It caught on pretty quickly. Apparently, thousands of people sent in poetry "against the war." I'd actually been to the website and poked through some of the poems prior to this lecture, and, knowing that this was the guy who'd started the whole thing, I was actually kind of excited about meeting the guy.

Oh, but he pissed me off...!

He introduced himself as a Zen Buddhist, an atheist, and a socialist. He repeated this introduction no fewer than four or five times. Gahd, was this man proud of being a Zen Buddhist, an atheist, and a socialist! Now, I don't know too many Zen Buddhists (okay, I don't think I know ANY), but I have known a few socialists and a few atheists, and based on those acquaintance-ships, I really don't think I much LIKE atheists or socialists. Particularly not those who happen to be extremely proud of being atheists and socialists. To clarify, I don't necessarily disagree with all socialist ideals -- as a matter of fact, I really don't. But I do disagree with people who CALL themselves socialists, loudly and perpetually. Likewise, I don't particularly like anarchists, capitalists, Republicans, Democrats, Green-Partiers, or anti-disestablishmentarians (and yes, I know what that means), who feel the need to yell and screech about their political affiliations ALL THE DAMNED TIME. I mean, this guy was in our class to talk about poetry, not socialism. Even if he'd wanted to talk politics, he probably should have stuck to talking about his "Poets Against the War" website, that being at least RELEVENT.

(...Oh yeah, and for what it's worth, I just don't like atheists... Atheists are people who refuse to consider the possibility that there may be a God, or a Divine Force, or Whatever... I don't tend to like people who refuse to at least CONSIDER things... ANY things... It's just bitchy and annoying...)

Okay, so, I was already mildly unimpressed with Mr. Hamill.

...But I was willing to hear him out. Really, I was. Since he was in the class to talk about poetry, and because I believe that a person's language represents at least a portion of his or her personality, I waited until Mr. Hamill actually read one of his poems...

I'm learning to like poetry. I don't like it YET, but I'm learning. I can see now, how it can be beautiful. I am learning how to understand it. I am learning about what is good and what isn't. I don't have a perfectly clear idea yet, but it IS coming clearer.

Good poetry, I think, employs the senses. Or at least one or two of the senses. The words ARE the experiences, not boring-ass recordings of the experience. So, if you're writing about the weather, for example, you don't write something like, "it was cold outside." You write something more along the lines of, "it was so cold outside that my nipples strained out of my jacket toward Hawaii." A reader can FEEL nipples straining. It's harder to feel plain old "cold." A good poem SOUNDS cool when somebody reads it out loud. A good poem is something you can SMELL. Something that makes you really feel good. Or bad. Something that makes you FEEL. Period.

(Pretty much, I feel the same way about prose. But that's really another entry.)

So, this guy, Mr. Hamill, read one of his poems. It was called "The New York Poem."

And guess what it was about?

Yep! Nine-fucking-eleven. The September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Mr. Hamill had written this poem, he said, in September or October (I wasn't listening very carefully, I regret), shortly after the event.

So, okay, I already have a huge problem with this poem. First of all, lest anybody FORGET (what about all those "we remember 9-11" bumper stickers!?), the events of 9-11 were not exclusive to New York City. Washington D.C. was also devastated, as was... well, a field, in the middle of Pennsylvania. But, okay, I'll even let that pass by... I STILL have a problem with this poem. That is: DOESN'T ANYBODY KNOW THAT NEW YORK IS MORE THAN A CITY? And furthermore, even if you don't know it's more than a city, DOESN'T ANYBODY KNOW THAT THE CITY IS MORE THAN THE SITE OF A TERRORIST ATTACK?

If *I* were to write a poem called "The New York Poem," MY poem would be about all of the water in New York. From Niagara Falls to Lake Erie out by Buffalo. From the Chenango River to the Finger Lakes to the Walton Reservoirs, to the East River. I would describe how each body of New York water smells. To reduce an entire state -- a fairly beautiful one, even if it is cold and the people are often bitchy -- to two collapsed buildings and 3,000 dead people is just fucking dumb. Even to reduce the CITY to that is just dumb. IGNORANT. I don't much like New York City, but when I think of it, I think of the grand, wonderful old library in Manhattan (the one in the "Ghostbusters" movie -- you know), and all the beautiful dresses in Saks, and the cute Irish guy in Battery Park who painted weird sci-fi landscapes with nothing but a couple bottles of spray-paint and an old magazine.

Okay, but whatever... I listened as Mr. Hamill read his poem, despite my mounting dread of the next hour and a half of listening to him.

"The New York Poem" was a prophesy. Mr. Hamill predicted that the United States would lash out, in war-like fashion, against other nations of the world, proceeding the September 11th attacks.

Yeah, well, fucking DUH.

Okay, *I* was so ignorant of world politics at the time of the attacks, that I thought the U.S. and Israel were arch-enemies. Call me dumb, call me ignorant, call me pathetic, whatever. But even *I*, dumb, ignorant, whatever ME, could have predicted that the U.S. would find SOMEBODY to blame, and would blame them with bombs. Some fucken prophesy. Mr. Hamill, at the end of his reading, had the nerve to say, "Well, I hate to say I told you so."

I hate it when people say "I hate to say I told you so," because it means they're really delighted to have an opportunity to tell you just that.

Worst of all, Mr. Hamill's poem contained the word "murder," at LEAST once, but it think it was more like several times.

The word "murder," like the word "terrorist," really doesn't mean very much. It means something BAD, but it isn't anything you can feel. It's a word that belongs in PROPAGANDA, not in POETRY. Now, if Mr. Hamill had described a war-scene, with charred bodies and people screaming and things like that, I wouldn't have been disgusted. It wasn't his anti-war stance that bothered me -- that wasn't it at all. What bothered me was that this guy was supposed to be a freaking poet, and here he was, standing in front of my eager class, spouting off crap that you can find in ANY OLD LEFT-WING PAMPHLET. It was just disgusting. And the WHOLE POEM was like that.

The class clapped politely. I clapped too, but I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from yelling "get off the stage!"

Mr. Hamill then started talking about how he was a socialist and an atheist and a Zen Buddhist. AGAIN.

He told a sob story about what a rough life he'd had, how he'd been a battered, abandonned child, and how he'd "overcome being a batterer myself." Blah. Who cares? What's poetry, sir? How do you write it? What's so great about it, anyway? Why did you tell us that Miles Davis is your current favorite poet, yet the website for the publishing house you run, says you will not accept manuscripts in any genre other than poetry? What IS poetry, then? It must be something having to do with words on paper -- a specific sort of words on paper, or your publishing house wouldn't have to be so particular. But, then, to the best of MY knowledge -- and Yahoo's knowledge -- Miles Davis didn't write much that would have been accepted by this publishing house. I didn't want to hear about how this guy had "overcome" beating up his kids. I wanted to hear about poetry. That's why I'm taking this class, right?

I raised my hand and asked, "Sir, I'm interested in how you would differentiate -- IF you would differentiate -- poetry from prose and other types of literature."

He interrupted me -- started speaking before I had a chance to finish. I forgave him for that; you could see a very small hearing aid in one of his ears. Although -- still, you ought not to begin speaking when you can see that a person's lips are still moving, particularly when they're genuinely interested in what you have to say. He said that "poetry isn't about the words... It's got nothing to do with the words. It's what's BEYOND the words! You can find poetry anywhere... In biology labs, for instance. Anywhere."

How... Zen.

Whatever.

I bet if I sent a biology lab to this guy's publishing house, they wouldn't publish it.

Okay, so I really didn't like this guy at all. He'd pretty much used up all his chances.

But what REALLY killed me was when he started spouting off about how to be a "revolutionary," or an "activist," or something. First off all, he said that, "if you're not part of the solution, you're the problem -- that's an old saying we used to have back in the 60's." Then, someone asked him "well, how do you propose that people BE part of the solution?" ("THE solution" -- as if there's only one!!! How fascist!) Mr. Hamill replied that, to be part of the solution, one must define one's own values, and live by them. Yeah, whatever. SOME people's values include STARTING WARS IN THE NAME OF PATRIOTISM. I'm really quite sure that Mr. Hamill, who announced that he was a pacifist almost as many times as he claimed to be an atheist and a socialist, wouldn't exactly buy THOSE values as "part of the solution."

Then, Mr. Hamill made his worst mistake. He used the phrase, "making a difference." Three times. He was talking about political activism, and the goal of this political activism was to MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

As far as Helena Thomas is concerned, no poet worth anything would ever seriously use the phrase "make a difference." It means NOTHING! By sitting at this computer and taking in oxygen, I am "making a difference." I'm changing the quantity of oxygen in the air. I'm very gradually wearing the plastic off the keys on my keyboard. I'm "making a difference" in the amount of tea in my mug every time I sip it. I'm "making a difference" in the quality of my slippers by sweating in them with stinky feet. Anybody who thinks that "making a difference" is a political GOAL is, a.) a shitty activist, b.) not very aware of the definition of his own values, c.) probably not a very good Zen Buddhist, and d.) one of those assholes who believes that the world is completely static, until he, or somebody like him, intervenes for the sake of changing things.

Yeah, yeah, it's just a phrase. I know. But it's RHETORIC. It's BAD rhetoric. It's propaganda. And it sure as fuck ain't poetry.

I wanted to kick Mr. Hamill. He would have declared that I was "part of the problem," though.

Some girl raised her hand. Asked: "What do you think are the most important languages to know as a student of poetry?"

Mr. Hamill replied: "Well, I would say ancient Chinese, and ancient Greek..." Then he said that knowing almost any language could be very useful as a student of poetry, and that ancient Chinese and ancient Greek were "just two of the -- what are there now? -- a hundred and twenty languages in the world?"

BLAH!

It should be noted, at this point, that there are over nine hundred languages... IN INDIA ALONE. In present-day India, people are speaking over 900 languages. There are, I believe, a number of different languages spoken by Northwest indigenous tribes. I'd guess there are maybe ten or so in Washington alone, although I'm completely making that up, and could very well be mistaken. (Okay, I'm looking it up... Okay, Yahoo counts at least twenty-five... That's twenty-five languages, not counting English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, etc., etc., that are currently spoken in THIS STATE.) Okay, so this guy just really shouldn't have been talking. He really shouldn't. Because he was just talking CRAP. Inaccurate crap. Stupid, moronic CRAP.

I slammed the door of Jake's truck when I got in. I was pissed off. Didn't help that I'd sat down at a nice, dry bus stop, and that it had started pouring, and my clothes got soaked by the largest puddle on campus. Jake looked sort of scared when I got in.

"I HATED the guest speaker today!" I said.

I told Jake all of the above. Jake grinned and called me a conservative for having such a violent reaction against a bleeding-heart liberal. I explained: no, it's not that I'm pro-war, and it's not that I'm pro-capitalism, and it's not that I'm pro- whatever else this guy was against... I just think THIS guy was a whiny little bitch.

...at which point Jake grinned and swore his undying love.

~Helena*