My Dear Fellow Poets:
In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.
-- Toni Morrison, "No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear"
Poetry is insurrection, resurrection, and insubordination -- against amnesia of every sort, against every form of oppression, dispossession and indifference. And against the drowning noise of other words.
-- Anne Michaels, "Infinite Gradation"
And
Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident. Read between the lives, and write between the lines. "Be committed to something outside yourself."
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Poetry as Insurgent Art"
Share with you the following tanka sequence, the first entry of my new writing project, "Between Heaven and Hell," a sequel to "Game Show, 2024."
Two Americas
the White House
surrounded by a metal fence
ten feet high ...
this is America, and yet
the other America
this chilly night
stretches thousands of miles
behind the day
November 6th, the veil thinnest
between Heaven and Hell
Not Going Back
painted in large blue letters
on the billboard
in autumn morning chill
Not crossed out with red paint
raindrops stream
down Lady Liberty's face
in my mind's eye
the convicted felon stands
on top of the White House
NeverEnding Story, November 6 2024
Look forward to reading your "biting NOT barking " poetry
Chen-ou
FYI: "The other America" first appeared in Martin Luther King Jr's "March 14, 1968" speech (where he was interrupted over and over by hecklers calling him a traitor), describing the differences in what life is like for Black/African-Americans. And Former U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate John Edwards used the "Two Americas" concept in a 2004 speech, making it into a catch phrase referring to social stratification.
And Haaretz, Nov. 6: Trump's Win Reveals the Inconvenient Truths About America
These two Americas are generally divided by two fault lines – education and gender – and are underlined by two very different political-social-cultural coalitions. Political scholar and journalist Ron Brownstein encapsulated them astutely and incisively as "transformative" and "restorative."
The "transformative" Democratic coalition is a diverse grouping made up of women, non-white Americans, voters with college degrees, urbanites and big metropolitan suburbanites, liberals and younger voters.
The "restorative" Republican electoral coalition is predominantly white, male, lower-middle class or working class, rural or living in a town of less than 100,000, without a college degree (mostly), earning less than $100,000 and angry that the America they know is "being taken away from them" by those liberal coastal elites who control the government.
Added: Between Heaven and Hell, II
windy post election
oak leaves tossed into
the sound of gray
FYI: The oak, the official national tree of the United States, was chosen through a nationwide vote, and it was selected because it symbolizes the strength of the nation.
Added: Between Heaven and Hell, III
first visual magical realist tanka
USADecides:
TheSecondDumbing
theredhotheadline
morphsintomarching
phalanxafterphalanx
FYI: For more examples, see "To the Lighthouse: Magical Realism in Times of Crises"
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