Poetry & the Art of the Institution

A lot can be said for the state of poetic thought in today’s world. Yes, it is true that we (the youth, the writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, truth-seekers) still remain optimistic about the power that our words and emotions contain. But it seems that a desensitization has begun, and our words are becoming obscured—writ in water, as Keats said—and the only clarity displayed on the film screen of our existence is the adherence to institutionalized paradigms, corporate dogma, the ideology of the majority. Poetry, music, art, fiction, or any other form of self-expression—forms that were once controlled in the hands of the individuals creating them—appear now to be hung on ventriloquist strings, and the ones controlling the strings, as is innate human nature, fashion and mold what they are holding to fit their own ideology.

Consider, for instance, poetry written at a University by students who attend the University. The poetry written is formulaic; it is conscious replications of antiquity, it is a nostralgic lust for the poetry of the past, and the only social self-reflection embedded in this prescribed poetry is that it reflects our generation’s inability to reinvent ourselves. If Hemingway was writing in the Lost Generation, Kerouac in the Beat Generation, what does that make us? Where are the voices of today’s world that are willing to combat the lies fed to us by Hollywood? Or the bullshit intended to hypnotize us and tie us to our chairs on the television screen?

If it is true that tides of history are constantly changing, then it must also be true that voices of those wading in the shifting tide must change. So I ask; where are the ones that are willing to put the air in the lungs of the poetry, music, art, and writing of today’s world? There are already a few, but I ask again…where is our Ginsberg? Where is our Shelley? We seem to forget that Walt Whitman said that he would always be with us, where does father greybeard rest his hat tonight?

The children today are being constituted with a belief system that brainwashes them into believing that money, beauty, Southern California, and clothing is what will make them happy. There is a reason why kids think that reading books is “stupid” or “gay” or for “nerds.” And that reason is not their fault. They have been succumbed to an institutional paradigm from an early age, for the youth know not what they do, forgive them. Power is controlled by institutions that allocate knowledge that will best fit those working for them and underneath them. A child born into a government housing project may be gifted with the ability to write a novel that would make the earth shake, yet it is quite possible that the child will never know it, for it is not in his/her nature.

I believe that there is enough poetry and writing about the antiquated kings & queens, there is enough copulation with the past, now I think it is time to write about the verities of the world today. There are people that we walk past on the street every single day of our existence but never really take the chance to look at—the walking dead, as Eliot said—let us tell these stories, for these stories about the real lives of the people that are embedded in the system will render the critical notions of thought that will, hopefully, enlighten others of how fucked up things truly are. To sign off with a final thought, I feel that Charles Wright said it best in the introduction to the quote-on-quote Best American Poetry Anthology of 2008:

“Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the younger generations are anxious to excise emotion its intensity out of their poems. But cleverness is not what endures. Only pain endures. And the rhythm of pain.”