When a poem is universal sentiment, the vagueness put out can be received with roughly the same vagueness. It floats over the culture. Maybe its done in doggeral, maybe in haiku, maybe in free verse or some concrete form. It doesn’t matter if the content is general, say, Mom sees child fall and then stand and laugh. She feels, my! child ages so fast. End of story. The story would be the same anywhere.
The particulars of identity or future potential or skin tone or day before or whether there is a remote war like Canada with Afghanistan or immediate war with armed guards around. None of that bears into a poem that is of abstracts of contentment or shift from sadness of lifespeed to hope of innocence and now, or what have you.
On the other hand a cultural reference point can be so immersive as a distinct lived experience, that to an outsider, it can’t be as rich. The writing can represent and carry as a subset of what it was created as and in.
When a piece of poetry is particularly embedded in a time and place, such as Spahr and the Iraq war it can’t travel with all its resonance. It can resonate. It can be heard. It can stand on its own, without someone’s direct knowledge of the event personally or in a broad social sense. The words can be an entry point and teacher to a social significance, a part of someone getting contact with the information.
At the same time it is incompletable without the shared direct experience and the reinforcing of people you actually know who actually care about the event in question. The reading will be shallower. There is data loss and data imposition, which there always is in communication. There is data gain and data reception which there is even if the writing was done over a millenium ago, with Li Po. We imagine we understand and can cross the bridge of words to another experience in the rhythm and choice of concepts presented whether contemporary or history-vetted writing. What works is what communicates, person to person, thru page of people ready to receive and the page, inert, but with capacity to give.
Is it more maddening to question a page for more elaboration or a face-to-face person who doesn’t know the answers either?
Well, I think the act of trying to put ourselves in others’ shoes is vital – and not much evident in global relations. I had a look at what I could find of Spahr online, and I think her work is important just because it details the stuff we can’t know if we’re not there. Our understanding may of necessity be imperfect, but at least she gives us a window to look through. And, if we can’t fully identify, our common humanity allows us to imagine ourselves into that situation. Does anyone know the answers? Spahr raises the questions in a new way and they are questions which are perhaps not being asked widely enough yet.
I realise you were not denigrating her work but raising questions of your own. I’m glad to have been made aware of her.
Rosemary Nissen-Wade
Thanks for your additions Rosemary.
Spahr and other anti-war agitators, are doing a consciousness raising that I appreciate too, yes.
Her audience is world, but also is centred on American literary people. Now that I think about it more, my question is centrally, how much of her transmission am I potentially missing because she, or others speaking about inherently culturally pivotal things, is assuming shared knowledge. I know I’m getting part of it but what pieces of the puzzle am I not sharing? Which resonances off other speakers and particulars am I missing? There the war news piles up, layer on layer. Here I’m not immersed.
Crafty Green Poet
our weather was particualrly wild yesterday, so this struck a chord with me!