FREE (OR HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL USAPO PART 2)
It seems amazing to me that in the 400 plus pages
of Brecht's Collected Poetry, the English translation edition entitled
"Poems 1913-1956" (Methuen, 1976), religion is so infrequently
addressed or barely even mentioned in passing. "The Tailor of
Ulm, 1592" (from '5 Childrens Songs', 1934, is the only pure example
I could find poring through its pages— I may have missed some things, but
obviously for the Marxist Brecht, or at least in his verse, exposing the
oppressive policies of the Church was not a priority. Poems protesting against the Fascist takeover
of his own country and all of Europe, yes, there are many of those. But the Vatican's political and financial
support of those Fascist coups, with Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain,
its Concordat with Hitler, its refusal during WWII to condemn the Holocaust,
and after the war its concealing and convoying of Nazi war criminals to safety?
Not a word.
Sadly, this seems the same with many other
Socialist poets of the 20th Century. Look
at "The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse": there's almost no overtly
anti-religious poetry in it. I could only find 2 or at the most 3
examples—
or take "Red
Sky at Night: an anthology of British socialist poetry"—editors Andy
Croft/Adrian Mitchell, published in 2003 by Five Leaves Publications— again, I
can't find a single anti-religious poem in its 300 bloody pages. Lots of admirable agita about dictators and
plutocrats and war and Hiroshima and Warsaw Ghetto and Chile Allende and Mrs Thatcher
and fascist sprats in general and specific, but not a peep raised in protest
against the Church which supports all these Hitlers and Pinochets and Thatchers
and militaryindustrial oligarchies, the Church which justifies every pogrom of
oppression the Uberstate seeks to impose on its slave populations. The Church which, as Marx summarized religion,
is a dope pusher, forcing its opiates of ignorance and prejudice down the
throats of the common people, drugging them into obscene stupors of 'savage
servility' (Robert Lowell's phrase) and suicidal submission.
Fascism, Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, et al:—
poets seem to be willing to protest those evils and their
representatives. But the clergy, religion, no. Church and State:
poets will write poems against the iniquities of the latter, but the former
gets a free pass.
*
And contemporary USA poets, USAPO?—
In theory USA public officials are free to be
nonreligionist, but in practice almost none are; and USA poets, are they
similarly "free"?
Don't take my word for it, take Amazon's: the last time I looked there for "religious poetry" I got 21, 915 listing; "atheist
poetry" brought 44 results:
Almost 22 thousand versus less than fifty.
Roughly 500 to 1.
Those are your odds, contemporary USAPO: 500 to
1.
A democracy in theory, a theocracy in practice:
USA public officials are free to be atheist, but none choose to be, which is
their democratic right, they freely choose to not be atheist,
just as USAPO freely choose to not write atheist
verse 500 to 1.
Everybody's free! USA!
In theory poets are free to write what they want, but in practice they are 500 times more likely to be published if they write religious verse than atheist verse.
500 to 1. You're free to write what you want,
poet, but you know that if you write atheist verse the odds are 500 to one
against you. You're free.
Just as USA public officials are free in theory
to be atheists but none are, so you are free to write what you want, USApoet.
So if you choose (500 to one) to write religious
poems (500 to one) you're making a free (500 to one) choice, aren't
you? You're free to write religious verse 500 to one, aren't you?
Of course you are. Free. You're making a free choice in a free
society, aren't you? Just like those
politicians.
And all those poets in the 02/12 issue of
Po(Chi)Mag, they're all freely choosing to pontificate their 'spiritual' poetry
theories, they're all freely choosing to not write atheist verse, aren't
they? Free.
They're free, I'm free, you're free.
The fact that it's 500 times easier to get
religious (antihumanist) verse published than atheist verse, surely in a free
society such as ours, the fact that we have a 500 times better chance of
getting published if we write 'spiritual' poems rather than atheist
verse,
surely that doesn't influence our choice in the
matter, does it? —
A 500 times better chance of having our poems
published doesn't effect our esthetic choices, does it?—
Especially if getting published means we'll have
a better chance at obtaining a teaching job or a grant or indeed any chance of
a career in PoBiz?
/
So, obviously, the lesson to be learned here is,
if you are a USAPO who wants to become or stay a successful poet, you must
never risk jeopardizing your career by writing pro-atheist anti-religious
verse—
And Po(Chi)Mag will print your justifications for
having freely 500 to one chosen to write 'spiritually', because Po(Chi)Mag is
500 to one free to make its choices in our free society.
Free, just free, that's all.
///
