The Revolution of Poetry
The Revolution of Poetry
By Amir Or
Why ask a poet to write about saving the world? Seemingly it's a job rather fit for a statesman, a philosopher or perhaps a priest. Statesmen are people of action, whereas philosophers, prophets and poets are visionaries. What is it then, that poetry can say about human existence that we don't already have in our philosophy, religion and history books?
Philosophy, the famous authorized professional about wisdom in our culture, becomes less convincing when one seriously considers "wisdom". Philosophy is speaking about wisdom and insight, but it holds thought with thick pliers. Plenty of heavy slow words that clumsily catch hold of ideas that wisdom grasps in the blink of an eye. Only rare philosophers like Heraclitus, Plato or Nietzsche, who had poetic talent, could deal with this electric intensity of thought. It seems only poetry does to words what thought is doing to them, in their full power and scope: hears them, tastes them, understands and mis-understands them, combines them in strange ways, gets carried away by them, beats them against each other, tells. Poetry truly tells through words everything they can grasp and more. Poetry holds words alive in the moment they're formed.
We don’t say it out loud but often it seems the poet is the only one who can serve in this modern world as some metaphysical messenger, a representative of the subconscious, a martyr or as a prophet. If you interviewed people in our globalized culture, hardly anybody would explicitly confess he thought poets occupy any of these roles in the traditional sense, and if you ask poets they'll probably make clear that in reality a poet has other tasks to attend to such as writing his works, and earning a living. The roles we poet are enlisted to – the rebuking social prophet, the “artiste maudit” as the martyr, the amusing jester or troubadour – are all reductive or at least create an unhealthy model. But perhaps we can still admit there’s some truth in these feelings: somehow a poet seems to create with the most primal materials, in the mental mass of life and its possible realities. His works serve to mentally enhance and reshape the world in which we live. A poetic insight can serve as a renewed perception of reality, and draw new sketches or blue prints for its future development. A writer at work seems just dreaming, but his are no ordinary dreams. He “dreams” the world anew, and in this very action he gives validity and meaning to this reality we live. Whether he is conscious of it or not, by his creative adventure the poet goes on creating the mental future from which our civilization of tomorrow will grow.
Poetry reshuffles and recreates social reality. Even the most low-keyed poet is a rebel and a revolutionary, who by his very creativity threatens the prevalent order of reality we are familiar with.
In the end of the day, history of human evolution is the history of creative ideas: every achievement of humanity is an achievement of the human mind. A society's attitude towards artistic creativity is therefore an important factor in widening or narrowing its spiritual capacities, and enhancing or weakening its creative imagination and vital powers. That's why a society that fails in the field of art and literature is a society that has become mentally fossilized and harmed its own capacity for self-renewal and rejuvenation.
Poetry is an on going mental revolution.
March 18th, 2011
