The Cepia Club  Strategy Gazette
Newspaper of The Cepia Club	Summer 2006

 

Why Poetry is Important

                    to “Community”

Free Market Failures

The Untold Genocide

        Of Christians

Summer 2006

Vol. I, No. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertiser Disclaimer: The views, opinions, ideas and positions of The Cepia Club where noted and the views, opinions, ideas or positions of the author(s)contained herein are neither endorsed nor opposed by posted non-Club advertisers within this newspaper.

Copyright © 2006 The Cepia Club

All rights to material herein reserved to The Cepia Club or as noted.

Table of Contents

P. 2–Strategos Procurator

                                                                                        The Future Strategy for S.G.

P. 4 –Politics

                                                                                        Palestinian Christians:

                                                                                                               The Ignored Genocide

 

                                                                                                                   by Abe Saleh

P. 6–Economics

                                                                                        Where the Free-Market Fails

 

                                                                                                                   by Charles M. Barnard

P. 8 –Culture                                                                Whatever Happened To John Keats?

Ten Paragraphs On the Art of Poetry

                                                                                                                   by LaMoine MacLaughlin

P. 14–Review

Book Review of: The Battle for Peace by General Tony Zinni, U.S.M.C. (Ret.)

                                                                                                                   by Tim Krenz

                                                                                                       

Strategos Procurator

The Future Strategy For S.G.

W ith this, our second issue of Strategy Gazette, the format, concept, style-guide, editorial policy, and distribution plan for this newspaper have become more clear.

After the first issue in May, we accepted subscriptions to help support this publication. We have also begun building a list of advertisers. Our plan for subscriptions is to pro-rate them for Vol. 1, Nos. 2-4, and then phase out the “paid” subscription program.

Beginning with Vol. 2, No. 1, the operation of this newspaper will be entirely supported by advertising. The advertising base should be large enough by then to help sustain our development, production and distribution cost.

With the second volume in April 2007, S.G. will be published six times a volume, with one volume constituting a 12-month calendar from April 1^st to March 31^st. Our advertising rates at the moment are introductory. While we have some subscribers, we s- and email sample copies to potential readers. The limited distribution at present will grow into a “free” subscription basis where people can sign up to have S.G. sent to them at no cost. As our “subscription” list grows, the advertising rates will go up commensurably.

At this moment, Vol. 1, Nos. 2-3 will be posted on the Club website one month after publication. This will protect our early “paid” subscription program. With No. 4, there will be same day posting of S.G. on www.cepiaclub.com as a free .pdf download.

While we call this a newspaper, it is more of a newsletter at present. We contain more features of a journal of opinion rather than breaking news. The S.G. will grow according to its own logic and need. Eventually, we plan to evolve into a newsprint tabloid. Then we will have attained our intention of a gazette in the free speech spirit of post-Independence America, but with stricter standards than those early political publications.

In this current issue, we have four other contributors. Erik Bobzin, a good personal friend and illustrator for Club publications, has been named The Cepia Club’s “Cartoonist-in-Residence.” Charles M. Barnard, a frequent contributor to the old SCV Liberty Beacon, has been named to the staff of S.G. as “Contributing Editor.” Also in this issue, we have two guest columnists. Abe Saleh has provided his own (not S.G.’s or The Cepia Club’s) views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Finally, Club favorite LaMoine MacLaughlin provides the capstone essay for this issue. L.M.’s credentials as a nationally recognized expert on community arts development are outstanding and we are very pleased to republish his essay on modern poetry.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Strategy Gazette.

Politics

Palestinian Christians:

The Ignored Genocide

by Abe Saleh

   Very few people on this side of the Atlantic know that Palestinian Christians exist. They are the oldest Christian community in the world who received Christ’s sermons directly.

   At the inception of Israel, Palestinian Christians numbered roughly 400,000. Fifty thousand were among the 750,000 who were expelled from Palestine in 1948. The Zionist Doctrine that Palestine was a land without people for a people without land is untrue.

   At present, Palestinian Christians make up 17% of the Palestinian population, around 1,150,000 people professing the Gospel. They belong to 15 churches and theymostly live in urban areas such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour and Ramallah. Many Christians reside in Israel proper and the West Bank and a few live in Gaza.

   I would like to mention the sources for all of my research on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. The research includes personal testimonies of both Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East. Western people will be surprised to learn that Israeli human rights organizations like Gush Shalom, Bet Salaam, Jews for Justice, and Jews for Peace seek justice for Palestinians. Other information on the situation in the occupied territories can be gained from tthe Palestinian Red Cross, UNICEF, Amnesty International, and multiple American organizations. Finally, and oddly, the atrocities against Palestinian men, women, and children is openly discussed in two prominent Israeli newspapers, The left wing Haretz is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The right wing Mir’av boasts about Israeli oppression that legally comes under the international law definition of genocide (forcible relocation and murder of minorities)

   Palestinian Christians are subjected to the same injustices as their Muslim and Cesarean counterparts. There are 187 Christian-sponsored schools in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Of these, 106 have been subjected to Israeli shelling and bombing over the past five years since the beginning of the Second Infatada. More times than not, Christian students and faculty have been killed or seriously injured

   Israel has also shelled and bombarded Christian neighborhoods with artillery, tanks, rockets, and air strikes. Around 366 Christian homes have been damaged or destroyed by indiscriminate rocket fire in Beit Sahour alone. More than 95 houses of practicing Christians in Beit Jala have been hit by gunfire. Israeli soldiers occupy other Christian homes and these soldiers confine residents at gunpoint. The inhabitants are humiliated while their personal belongings are destroyed and their homes are used for strategic observation out posts and strong points. Till this day, helicopters, tanks, and snipers fill the streets and skies with gunfire, missiles, and bombs. Instead of taking out a few so-called “militants” these incursions punish an entire group, targeting Palestinians and killing innocent Palestinian Christian by-standers.

   Another area not discussed in the mainstream media is the Israeli settler violence and harassment of Palestinians. Fanatic members of Israeli groups within the settlement communities have rampaged through Arab areas, vandalized buildings, torched cars, beaten, shot, and in many cases killed Palestinians. They have harassed olive pickers, stoned vehicles, set fields on fire, and fired on farm workers (I have seen this with my own eyes). Israeli settlers are rarely called to account for their actions or subjected to punishment since law enforcement agencies turn a blind eye or treat them with leniency.

   In 2003, a church in the village of Aboud (where I spent most of my child hood) called Saint Barbara has been around for more then 1200 years, far longer than any church in the Americas. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and monks regularly flock to her for prayer. This ancient church’s only fault is that it fell on Palestinian territory. In 2003 Saint Barbara was bombed for no sins of her own in order to provoke a Palestinian response, thereby justifying more Israeli aggression and seizure of land. During my visits to Palestine in 2004 and 2005 it was common to hear from the pastors and priests of our village that during their exhausting journey from Jerusalem to Aboud on Sundays they were fired upon by Israeli troops. The Israeli Defense Forces soldiers knew very well who they were; the cars had Christian insignias and had driven the same roads for years in preaching the faith.

    Palestinian Christians are an integral part of the struggle that is resisting the occupation of the only place on earth the Palestinians can call their own: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They resist alongside their Muslim friends. Palestinian Christians played, and still play, a big role in the resistance to the occupation. The DFLP, the Democratic Front For The Liberation of Palestine, was established by a Christian medical named doctor Naïf Hawatmeh. George Habash, also, a Christian medical doctor, founded the PFLP--Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine. As a matter of fact, many of the rank and file members among the secular nationalist groups of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) have been, and still are Christians. The U.S. Stata Department designates the PLO Islamists terrorist group.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are Palestinian Christian views on Western media? I’ll tell you because I am one of them.

   American politicians and media, along with most of the West, talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a nation (Israel) fighting for it’s survival by repelling attacks from fanatical and crazy Islamists bent on destroying it. The politicians and media in the U.S. deceive audiences by emphasizing rocket attacks and suicide bombings against Israel. That is not the context of the conflict. However, the media fails to cover the aggression, and the internationally legally defined genocide of Palestinians, the theft of their land, their humiliation, and the harassment they receive on a daily basis at the hands of Israelis. If the American evangelical Christians did not make support of Israel a requirement for political office, the Palestinians—Christian and Muslim—would be seen as freedom fighters struggling to save their liberty, their independence, their free speech, their free assembly, and their freedom of religion. Palestinians are fighting for no less than freedom from fear and want, freedom of speech and conscience. Furthermore, Palestinian Christians, which are almost 1 in 5 of all Palestinians, also are disgusted with an American media establishment that denies them their identify as followers of Jesus by associating them with Islamists and with terrorists.

   For Palestinian Christians, the conflict is obviously not about Islam. It is simply about resistance against genocide. Palestinians along with Lebanese Christians favor dealing with Hamas and especially Hezbollah, a nonsectarian organization that cooperates with people of all faiths. Anders Strindberg, a journalist for the American Conservative magazine was told by a Palestinian Christian, “We have received far more support and comfort from the Hezbollah in Lebanon than from our fellow Christians in the West.” He asked, “I want to know: why don’t the Christians in the West do anything to help us? Are the teachings of Jesus nothing but empty slogans to them?”

   Christians to no less extent than Muslims are under the hammer of the Israeli occupation. Yet we in America, a Christian country, stand idle as Palestinian Christians are being beaten and killed and having their churches destroyed and desecrated. “To be a Christian from the land of Christ is an honor,” says Abbas, a Palestinian Christian whose family lived in Jerusalem for many generations until the purge of 1948. “To be expelled from that land is an injury, and these Zionist Christians in America add insult.”

How do Palestinian Christians feel about Western Christians?

   The Palestinian Christian feeling of Western Christianity is one of abandonment, isolation, and alienation. Western Christians generally are ignorant of the situation of fellow Christians in the Holy Land. The support Israel receives from Western Christians has been devastating for Palestinian Christians. They continue to suffer. They believe that Western Christians should recognize and take a proactive stance against the injustice the Holy Land Christians endure because of the Israeli occupation.

Abe Saleh, 35, is a Palestinian-American and a Christian. He was born in Kuwait, emigrated to the United States, and visits family on occasion in Gaza and the West Bank. He is a 10-year veteran of the Amery, WI, Police Department.

Economics

Where the Free-Market Fails

by Charles M. Barnard

    First, remember that while the economic system in these United States has been ostensibly capitalism since our founding, the Constitution and other founding documents are completely silent as to the economic system. The founding fathers restricted themselves to determining the political system—representative democracy.

 Free-Market Capitalism, we are taught, is supposed to allow the best products and services rise over inferiors. Does this actually happen in real life?

     Not always, and perhaps not often. This premise is based upon the purchasing public recognizing and preferentially purchasing superior goods and services—a premise which is demonstrably false. Here are a few examples:

     Television broadcast standards. When color TV was first introduced there were two standards for transmission, the NTSC version eventually adopted in the US (because it had sold the most units) is demonstrably inferior to its competition.

     Videocassette recording standards. Again, VHS, the default standard in the US, is demonstrably inferior in quality to the Beta standard.

   Cellular telephone standards. Despite the fact that cellular phones are designed to be readily transferable between providers, the vast majority of providers provide phones that have been modified so that they will work only with that provider’s network. Thus forcing anyone who wants to change network providers to purchase a new phone. This results in millions of discarded functional phones each year, and has effectively reduced the number of features and quality of the phones available in the US. One need only look at the superior features and quality of the phones available in Europe, where early adoption of a single network technology and requirement that phones be transferable between providers has permitted users to retain the investment in their equipment.

   Automobiles. The lack of standardization of controls between manufacturers and even between models results in people having to ‘learn’ each car individually—increasing reaction time in emergencies and resulting in much frustration on the part of motorists, a situation that is particularly dangerous for the elderly. The reluctance of the industry to aggressively attack such issues as pollution, fuel efficiency, safety and recyclability has resulted in an unknown but large number of unnecessary injuries and deaths over the history of the automobile. (For instance, air bags were invented in the early 1950’s along with restraint systems. Neither became standard equipment for decades—until government requirements were created. Nor were they available as options during much of that time.) Catalytic pollution controls and high efficiency engines were likewise available decades before adoption—and in both cases the industry fought their required introduction with the argument that better controls and higher efficiency were ‘impossible’ to achieve.

 

Housing. The housing industry has resisted factory built modular housing for many decades, arguing that such buildings were ‘inferior’ to stick-built homes. This despite the proven quality and efficiency of building modules and entire buildings in a controlled environment with the high precision, cost and material savings possible with assembly line methods. Due to industry lobbying, factory build housing still faces built-in prejudice in many building codes.

   There are, of course, many other instances in which Free-market Capitalism has failed consumers, although to be fair, not all such failures lie with the economic system. Many lie within the political process that permits laws to be made which reflect protectionism for particular manufacturers and systems at the expense of the consumer.

   Consumers, it seems, are often not very good at choosing the better alternatives available—often consumers chose the lowest initial cost item rather than considering such issues as long-term cost of ownership, quality or even ease of use. This is complicated by industry that routinely uses fear and half-truths to sell products.

   Before 1950 the vast majority of hot water systems in the LA basin were solar, by 1960 the vast majority were natural gas. This was the result of a massive program by the gas utility to ‘give away’ gas water heaters, reducing the initial system cost at the expense of long term operating costs. This despite the fact that LA is a near perfect environment for solar water heating and the fact that such systems have a life-time cost far below that of gas or electric systems. In fact, solar water heaters are practical and economically superior throughout most of the United States.

    One change that might help eliminate some of the false advertising claims would be to change the government ‘Consumer Protection’ agencies from reactive to proactive. Currently the routine is to investigate consumer complaints—an improved system would be to actively search for false and misleading advertising and aggressively prosecute offenders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Culture

Whatever Happened to John Keats?

Ten Paragraphs on the

Art of Poetry

by LaMoine MacLaughlin

1. In the Beginning

    My father was a high school drop-out who loved to read poetry. I remember as a very, very small child sitting on his lap while he read me “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Highwayman” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” He made those pieces come alive and passed his love for them on to me. In elementary school we received a large dose of poetry read aloud and I can still remember our classroom resounding to “New shoes, new shoes, Red and pink and blue shoes….” By seventh grade I had begun to take the writing of poetry very seriously and I first noticed how my writing could move my classmates. In high school I wrote reams and reams of poetry and became known as the class poet. I read all of the poetry of John Keats, including his long poems and his letters. I also read everything I could by Whitman. It was obvious in his method as well as in his message that Whitman was suggesting a direction different from what had come before him. Dickinson, Yeats and Frost were continuing down more traditional roads, but the really great contemporary poets, Pound, Eliot, Williams and cummings and their followers were charging into new, exciting territory. And we young people all championed that charge. Along the way I studied much Latin, French, Greek and Russian, reading poetry in those languages. Those were the days of the Beatnik poetry readings, fun titles such as “Howl” and “A Coney Island of the Mind,” and the opening of doors into exotic foreign cultures through rediscovery of such collections as Arthur Waley’s Translations From the Chinese. We were right there in the midst of a new cultural renaissance and a social revolution! Those were all thrilling, stimulating times – while we were still in school. As an English major focusing upon writing, when I graduated from the university, I looked around and hardly anyone outside of academia was reading poetry. I seem to remember someone saying that a book of poems which sold two thousand copies was a best seller. Family members alone would buy half that many copies! The common person had no interest whatsoever in poetry. Americans still seemed to read a bit of prose, but how had we painted ourselves into this non-poetry-reading corner?

2. Continuing the Journey

   I went on to teach literature and poetry for several years. I think I may have been successful in spreading the importance of reading and writing poetry among certain individuals here and there. I satisfied myself that we could only turn the entire country around one person at a time. Although the really great poets were Pound, Eliot and Williams, I had always secretly loved Dickinson and Yeats and Frost, and I had always made time with my students for Thomas and Roethke and Wright. I also remember how my own children would laugh and love to have me sit and read to them the usual, traditional nursery rhymes and selections from Roethke’s work: “O what’s the weather in a beard? It’s windy there and rather weird….” I came to wonder if the problem lay, not within the ignorance of the common people, but within the material itself. Why did someone have to attend the university to learn about poetry? And just think about it for a moment. As far back as we have recorded literature with The Iliad and The Odyssey, we have had great literature which was composed for and kept alive by the common people. No university stood between the work and the listener/reader. We know that Shakespeare’s audience sitting in the dirt at the foot of his stage in the Globe Theater and watching King Lear, Hamlet and The Tempest represented neither the educated elite nor the nobility of his day. They were there, nearly as active participants in the drama, because they loved what they saw; they hung on every word because every word spoke deeply to their experience, and that was important to them in their daily lives. In our time the multitude gets its news from network television, goes to see “Titanic” and reads whatever Oprah tells them to read. What passes for contemporary poetry often conducts readers along strange, obscure, incoherent paths which lead only to the questions, “What is going on here? What is this all about?” No key unlocks a door into the poem and so the reader turns to Harry Potter. It seems that contemporary poets let all concepts of clarity in writing blow out the window. When is the last time you read a contemporary poem which actually crawled into the quiet corners of your daily life and remained there? One which you find yourself repeating from memory now and then? One whose images you actually see while walking down the street or down some country road in October?

 3. Chanting the Abracadabra

     Poetry has always stretched its readers beyond their original conceptions and expectations and to make this happen poets exercise two skills practiced in many of the arts: magic and music. We can imagine ancient audiences sitting rapt, carried away while listening to a singer recounting the epic heroism of Achilles and Odysseus, and retelling the exploits of El Cid and of Roland and of Beowulf and of Igor’s Campaign. The heart of any poem – the heart of any great writing, prose or poetry – is its magic, its intangible something beyond description, its fleeting glimpse into some wonderful, secret place. Poetry’s magic flares from the fires of metaphor and cools in the ice of obscurity. The problem, of course, is that our society no longer believes in magic. We see in its place a trick which must be exposed. We find ourselves in Oz, always wanting to look behind the curtain and expecting to find the wizard. With any real poem, however, looking behind the curtain reveals no wizard, but instead discloses only another curtain moving slightly in the wind, suggesting something just beyond us, something we cannot box within the narrow confines of our intellect. The music of poetry should be more obvious. From Homer’s probable literalness in “Sing in me, Muse…,” and Virgil’s “Arms and the man I sing…,” to Whitman’s more figurative “I sing the body electric…,” poets have always described what they do as music. We usually think of music as consisting of two basic components: rhythm and melody. Rhythm, perhaps the most primitive aspect, is pulse or beat, recalling our ancestors drumming on logs with clubs. In English speech rhythm refers to arrangements of accented or stressed and unaccented or unstressed syllables. Unlike certain other languages, French for example, English hits accents hard. We use accents in our daily speech for emphasis and as part of the normal way we link words together. Melody relates to pitch and inflection and in speech is a bit more difficult than rhythm to define or describe. We can recognize the difficulty people deaf from birth encounter while trying to speak. Often they get the accents correct, but their vocal patterns emerge as flat monotones. All languages have their unique vocal inflections and even within languages, differing dialects carry within them differing patterns of pitch modulation. We grow up and into them as part of learning our mother tongue. Think for a moment – what does Italian sound like? Or Gaelic? Or Swedish? Or Chinese?

4. Dancing to the Beat

  There are different kinds of rhythm. The recycling of the seasons can be described as a kind of rhythm. People even speak of a kind of rhythm within personal relationships. In poetry we speak of rhythmic patterns. Without a great deal of work two English syllables cannot be placed together by themselves with both remaining unaccented. One of the differences between poetry and prose might be that in prose there is no consistent rhythmic pattern among the words. There may be none in the poetry either, but that raises the question: how does poetry differ from prose? I would suggest that one way poetry and prose differ relates to the way rhythm is used as part of the composition, even in free verse. Writing English prose requires little or no attention to the rhythms created by word placement. A poet is usually more concerned about rhythm than is a writer of prose. At least traditionally this has always been so. Our traditional English poetry can be metered into iambic, or trochaic, or anapestic, or dactylic, or spondaic patterns, the traditional choreography within which English poets have danced for centuries. Nursery rhymes show that we are very comfortable with repetitive word accents and recurring rhythmic structures. It appears on the page that Walt Whitman freed us from the straight-jacket of traditional rhythms, but clearly he could employ the old patterns when necessary, as in “O Captain! My Captain!” and elsewhere as in “I Hear America Singing” (“…the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck….” – a perfect sailor’s hornpipe!) Within Whitman’s long lines the rhythms are subtle and carefully composed. The rhythmic intensity and elevation of Whitman’s language result in a magic and a music which move much of Leaves of Grass from prose into poetry. Whitman’s freedom notwithstanding, Robert Frost later described writing poetry as “moving easy in harness.” But isn’t there still a general distinction to be made between poetry and prose? And isn’t there still a line, however fine it may be, between poetic prose and poetry?

5. Humming the Tune

   While considering the answers to these questions, we need to reflect upon melody as the other part of poetry’s music. Melody at once creates and mirrors mood and intent. Melody can also be part of the structural pattern of the sound, as in rhyme or rhyme scheme. Coupled with the rhythmic pattern, it can create the tonal design of the poem. Rhyme has traditionally been an important aspect of the music and word play which spark part of the delight of traditional nursery rhymes and conventional poetry. We seem to love the recurrence of those patterns. They provide a certain kind of closure to the lines as well as to the thought. A traditional ballad expects a certain form and structure provided within an anticipated line format, rhythmic pattern and rhyme scheme. A sonnet carries similar expectations. Part of the delight we all find in reading poetry results from experiencing the realization and fulfillment of our expectations. Poets have always used the alliterative aspects of their language, its assonance and consonance, as part of their poetry’s melody. I am not suggesting “sing-song” here and I do not want to be interpreted that all poetry must rhyme. The melody within a poem goes beyond rhyme. But now and then I hear it suggested that English is a “rhyme poor” language. I suspect that this declaration comes from rhyme poor writers who blame the language for their own short-comings. We hear many aspiring poets who appear to be tone-deaf and unable to sing, who apply no skill or imagination or innovation or creativity within time-tested structures. Emily Dickinson gave us all brilliant possibilities within the English language. Although poetry does not have to rhyme – blank verse is unrhymed and there is great free verse – one test I often apply is: could you actually sing what is written here on the page? And beyond speaking figuratively or metaphorically, considering its etymology as coming from lyra, a song, is this not where lyric poetry was born? Way back when I was a beginning writer, we studied the use of all these tools and we studied the great poets of our past who employed them so brilliantly. Whatever happened to John Keats?

6. Examining the Evidence

    I would suggest that contemporary poetry took a wrong turn engineered by Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, reinforced by a host of others such as e. e. cummings. The basic problem has been created by writers thinking they could compose poetry simply by making it look like a poem on the page. I believe the heartbeat of any poem resides within the poem’s lines, revealing the poet’s concept of line, and the best test of their success is hearing them read aloud. In the old days when listening to a poem, the audience could tell when a line of poetry ended. Rhyme brings closure to a couplet or a quatrain. Traditional lines of English poetry are commonly measured as trimeters, tetrameters or pentameters; longer lines often sink under their own weight. Much of what calls itself contemporary poetry sounds like prose, looks like prose (broken into short lines), smells like prose, tastes like prose and feels like prose. If it has feathers, webbed feet, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck – or prose. It might be poetic prose, but it is still prose. And there is nothing wrong with prose, but why should it pretend to be something else? When read aloud, unless delivered in some strange, affected manner, Williams’ “So much depends upon a red wheel barrow….” sounds in every respect like prose. So does cummings’ “Two old once upon a (no more) time men….” The listener can never really hear a sense of the line because, in fact, all concept of line has disappeared. Poetry is not created by simply dividing statements into short word clusters, especially when their essence is lost without seeing what is printed on the page. They may be interesting statements, but to try to argue that they are poems is specious; they are prose. To anyone who persists in believing that they are poetry, I have a bridge to sell. I think we can still recognize real poetry when we hear it; it is just that we hear so little of the real stuff nowadays. The general public knows when it is being snookered. All too frequently what tries to pass for poetry in our time literally attempts to impose a visual aspect onto the experience of the page and to move poetry beyond its oral/aural milieu as if that tradition needs something more for it to speak successfully to the twentieth century and beyond. Nice try. We need experimentation, but we also need to be able to distinguish success from lack of success. Some experiments work; some experiments fail. We mindlessly accept as truth the popular dictum: “Art (and I would substitute poetry) is anything you can get away with.” But what is the harm in trying? Isn’t it time for something new?

7. Assessing the Damage

    Whereas the monasteries assumed the task of preserving what was best of our civilization during the Middle Ages, it seems that no one has assumed the task of preserving what is best of poetry during the twentieth century and onward. Young writers somehow learn that there are no real rules or standards with respect to writing poetry. What is best? What is worst? It is all subjective. Anything goes. I remember an astute young student planning to do some extra credit work for a high school English teacher stating that he would do some pages of poetry. He said he could place absolutely any words on the page, in any order, and his teacher would accept them as poetry. His teacher had graduated from a major midwestern university. Furthermore, contemporary critics, teachers and readers seem ready to endorse whatever pseudo-poetic fad might be in vogue for the moment, from “beat” poetry to “confessional” poetry to “concrete” poetry to “rap” poetry to “slam” poetry and to who knows what might be bouncing around the corner in future shadows. We are unable or unwilling to recognize standards. We are afraid that standards will stifle originality and creativity and imagination. But the most disappointing aspect exhibited by the writing of many aspiring poets is what it evidences about their reading – they don’t. They read no one. And that is the real tragedy: so few people, not even beginning poets, read poetry anymore. At the very least the life of poetry in our time is hanging by an extremely thin thread indeed. I remember remarking about this to a writer and he indicated that he did not read poetry because he did not want to be influenced into imitating other poets. He was correct: his writing did not look like that of any poet of the past, but it did mirror exactly the poorly written material of other writers with whom he associated. His writing, which he called poetry, consisted of weak verbs lightly linking rambling lists of active participles. When your eye left his page, no images remained still hanging in the mind, no part of a poem still clinging to memory. But he was so confident: aren’t my insights profound and my style unique and original?

8. Whistling In the Dark

    Well…no. Not really. And this is the paradox: the more one tries to be unique and original, the more one sounds like everyone else. Remember the old cliché carrying more than an element of truth: there is nothing new under the sun. Read the best and work to find your honest, true voice. It will be you: unique and original. In the dimness of human memory, while we huddled together around the fire on cold winter nights, we listened to those stories which celebrated our cultural heritage and were passed down to us, sung by our poets. The act of listening to poetry and the act of poetic composition were communal acts. The singer was performing his part of a group, communal experience, providing an important role in the preservation of the traditions, the social customs, the spirituality, the glue which held the community together. And that ancient singer was communicating with that audience, unconcerned about originality or individual voice, instead focusing upon the retelling of the story. And we are still hearing his voice thousands of years later. Today aspiring poets whisper to themselves in the privacy of their rooms, with only themselves as audience, with no one to speak to or to connect to in their local communities in the real world outside. They develop a personal vocabulary with their own individual syntax and self-centered metaphors producing little with which other human beings might identify. They focus upon self-expression and share no universal experience. Their attitude reminds me of the old 7-Up commercial – remember the one with the little person shouting far off in the distance: “Wet…! Wild…! Wonderful…!”?

 

9. Is Anyone Out There?

    Part of our problem is that authentic experience of community is increasingly rare in American society during the beginning of the twenty-first century. Philosopher Baker Brownell has told us that many of our contemporary social problems spring from the disintegration of community in our time. Certainly any contemporary definition of community is very complex, but all too often that definition degenerates into a feel-good fuzzy to describe any social group and to mean all things positive with the result that community has come to mean nothing tangible or specific to anyone. The danger, of course, is that it will eventually drop from our vocabulary and the concept will altogether vanish from our consciousness. Moreover recent disasters have shown the extreme fragility of the fabric of community in urban areas. As human beings we all need community, real community, and it is far too important a concept to be allowed to disappear. As writers, we all need community, real community, to keep us honest and to keep us truly communicating with other authentic human beings. Sometimes we refer to virtual (almost, but not quite) reality and at times seem unable to distinguish it from genuine reality. We have come to view the norm of artistic creation to be the solitary artist working within a deep privacy where, alone, the creative spark is enkindled and flashes into flame. The artist emerges like Prometheus to illuminate the rest of the community with his torch of truth. The arts used to be shared, communal experiences. What happened? Perhaps as poets we have also failed in our responsibility to keep the foundation of community strong. But how can poetry help? And is any of this really that important?

10. Putting Humpty Back Together Again

    To improve the general condition of poetry in our society, I would recommend ten courses of action for poets to take: 

            1. Read.  

            2. Read.  

            3. Read. And not just anything. You don’t have time to read everything, so pick the very best you can find. Whatever you can find by Emily Dickinson, William    Butler Yeats and Robert Frost would do for starters. They present an unfathomable universe. If you have already read them, reread them, perhaps a couple more times. Frost apparently learned to write poetry by immersing himself in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury – one could do worse.  

            4. Write a poem that sounds like Dickinson. Then like Yeats. Then like Frost. Then do it again. Don’t think of them as imitations; Pound called them masks or personae.

            5. Talk with your Mayor about establishing the position of Poet Laureate in your village or city. Visit your local schools and help teachers spread poetry throughout their classes. Shamelessly proselytize for poetry. Become your town’s wild poetry prophet

         6. Memorize a poem by Dickinson, or by Yeats, or by Frost. Recite it aloud, paying special attention to the music within the lines.

            7. Run for school board or city council. I might even accept church council. You might not win, but try it anyhow. Do something to enter deeply into the life of your local community. Read Vachel Lindsay’s “The Gospel of Beauty.”

            8. Read some more poetry. Maybe Vachel Lindsay or Dylan Thomas or Theodore Roethke this time. Memorize one of their poems.                   9. Write your own poem. Get a group of friends together and share it with them. Or perhaps read it aloud in a local park or coffee shop. Has any friend (besides your wife, husband or lover) ever memorized one of your poems? If pressed, I suppose I would accept anyone, including a wife, husband or lover.

            10. Take some music lessons. We can always learn more about rhythm and melody. Literally try singing one of your poems. It doesn’t have to rhyme; free verse can also be sung. How satisfied are you with the way it sounds – the poem, not your voice? Maybe take some voice lessons. In his 1949 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, William Faulkner eloquently states the reasons why poetry is so important: 

 

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

   But Faulkner is speaking of the real thing, not pretense. He is referring to authentic poetic experience. The real stuff. He is exhorting us to advance our art with humility, mindful of the blood, sweat and tears we will experience in the process. This is the poet’s responsibility, and it is hard work – but it is also a sublime task! Let us all roll up our shirt-sleeves, take pen in hand, and proceed!

LaMoine MacLaughlin is co-founder and Executive Director of the Northern Lakes Center for the Arts located in northwestern Wisconsin. An active musician, he is also Director of the Northern Lakes Chamber Orchestra and an instructor at the Northern Lakes School of the Arts. Since 2000 Mr. MacLaughlin has been Director of the AMICI (Arts Management in Community Institutions) Institute. In 2003, Mr. MacLaughlin was appointed the first Poet Laureate for the City of Amery, Wisconsin.

Review

 

Zinni, Tony, General; & Tony Koltz. The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

    On the same level as Colin Powell, there is probably no other American military officer in the 21^st Century more qualified to comment on the politics of war and peace than General of the Marine Corps Tony Zinni, U.S.M.C. (Ret.). Reaching four-star rank and holding the most important overseas command as commander-in-chief (C-in-C, pronounced “sink”) of U.S. Central Command, Zinni served on the front line of the war on terror before America knew it was at war. U.S. Central Command, expanded during Zinni’s tour, includes Eastern Africa, Southwest Asia, the Middle East (though excluding the Levant), and Central Asia.

    Overseeing the Iraqi no-fly zones and directing the 1998 Desert Fox bombing of Iraq, Zinni was in charge of all military planning and operations as C-in-C/CentCom from 1997-2000. He was first introduced to the wider public in one installment of Tom Clancy’s “Commander Series,” Battle Ready, Tony Zinni’s semi-autobiography, also co-written by Tony Koltz. As a Marine infantry officer, Zinni served as both an advisor and Marine company commander in Vietnam. He rose from post to post, slated for one of the top jobs as commanding officer of the First Marine Expeditionary Force. With his appointment by President Clinton to Central Command, Zinni had earned all the credentials possible as a capable and inspiring leader in the elite Marine tradition.

     Having also been President Bush’s envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after retirement, Zinni will best be remember for his astuteness for diplomacy and understanding of the politics of war AND peace. As C-in-C of CentCom, Zinni built on his experience with peace-keeping and humanitarian interventions in Kurdistan, East Africa, and East Asia to build a philosophy of conflict resolution and prevention. In those missions as a top military representative to those “joint” military-civil actions, Zinni implemented processes, from which he drew rules, whereby international efforts of different countries’ governments, militaries, civil agencies, private charities and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) could cooperate to do a mission of mercy.

    It is not only as a benevolent, humane act to intervene in civil war, famine, genocide, or inter-state conflict around which Zinni formed his philosophy. As someone who has seen conflict both in the trenches and from the cabinet-level view, Zinni believes that failure to prevent natural or manmade disaster, or failure to terminate local conflict in its infancy, will only cause the sneeze to turn into a cold, or worse. In other words, when the nations of the world ignore problems, when problems can still be easily solved, the problem grows into a monster of poverty, extermination, dictatorship, violence, failed states, regional war and, of course, terrorism.

    As Commander-in-Chief of Central Command, Zinni was what modern historians refer to as a “proconsul,” a governmental representative with undivided authority given by his or her head of government over an area of responsibility (AOR) in all matters affecting policy. Zinni negotiated personally with heads of government, military chiefs, ministers, and diplomats serving the vital United States national interest of security and cooperation in the Indian Ocean Basin. As a “warrior-diplomat,” Zinni was skilled in synergizing all elements of power–military, political, economic, cultural, and social–into a coherent international “coalition of interest” to prevent war or other conflict from becoming international upheaval. Near the end of his term at Central Command, Zinni directed the first-ever American security-relief-reform-and-reconstruction planning for a post-Saddam Iraq.

The planning included scenarios in which Saddam Hussein either died in or was removed from power, from within or without. Zinni’s successor as C-in-C/CentCom General Tommy Franks, discontinued the planning. (Note: The title of “C-in-C” for all unified commands was changed to “Combatant Commander” by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). In 2003, after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces, there was no plan to win the peace.

    Battle for Peace is an accumulation of Zinni’s experiences, formatted into a coherent policy for the future. He sees the need for a multi-dimensional policy and a full-spectrum response of America and other nations to act, and to act before the sneeze becomes a cold, or even worse pneumonia. The solution, according to Zinni, is coordination in the U.S. Government by a dedicated organization and personnel system, involving every agency and with a “reserve” system of part-time civilians. He believes the result of this could be two-fold: an orderly system of decision-making and a focus on priorities in a multi-national response. Zinni sees the current dysfunction of the “wars after the wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan as a disconnect between proper planning and efficient execution. The problem with Zinni’s recommendations, however, is that he gives no clear direction on how to avoid the same bureaucratic glacier that America currently has when something urgent needs to be done.

    Zinni’s views are the basis for a newer, smarter approach to dealing with the inevitable problems that happen when America ignores important problems. America can no longer pursue the wrong objectives, at the wrong place, and at the wrong time. Zinni’s approaches to conflict resolution and true international stability need to be considered. At the very least, it will not hurt to look at it. America’s recent history clearly indicates that we need some idea–some way–newer and smarter, to protect our national interests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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