Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago

#ClassicPoetry #NationalPoetryFoolMonth

Today's #poem is one of my best. Written 2010, it was just around when I was becoming an anarchist, and I think it benefits from that tension.

It's too long for me to do a close reading of any of it but I'll go into some of the reasons why it exists. Here it is:

https://rpuchalsky.blogspot.com/2010/06/ones-who.html

The Ones Who

for Michael Bérubé Hello in 2010 this is the poem       This is the poem       That argues (isn't that annoying?)       They were th...

Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago
At the top it's dedicated to It's dedicated to Michael Bérubé. Bérubé is a literature professor who was quite active on blogs at the time I wrote this: he has also written a good deal about his #disabled son. I also have a son that I am going to have to care for throughout my life. So this poem starts with the story of Omelas.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago
Omelas is a story that anyone reading this knows. But I don't really like the story, because it encourages the reader to think of themselves as a virtuous person who would walk away. But the world is Omelas. There is nowhere to go. "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" or state capitalism, just as a start.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝
Walking away from Omelas takes on a different valence when you are the one taking care of the disabled child, doing your best. Making omelets. Omelets are a great metaphor because people must be fed every day and to make that happen one must persevere in breaking eggs, the seeds of possibility, irreversibly.
Apr 3 at 2:19pmWeb
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago
The second part of the poem is very tactful (it was earlier, I'm not tactful now) attempt to confront what is now the Blue MAGA myth: that there once was a better America in which we did things properly. Of course there never was.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago
The third part returns to parenting and part of it is about my differently disabled daughter. Part of it is my conclusion, and here I think the "two column" style really works. I got into poems with two columns, as a dialogue or as an internal thought-stream while I'm thinking about two things at the same time or as a thought plus music playing.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago

At any rate there are 3 moments in this second hemisphere that stay with me a crystalized thoughts:

"the truth will never really set you free
it's what you do that matters, not what you see
see what you like as long as you're yoked
and speaking truth to power is a joke"

Yoked means yoked to a plow but it's also yolked, as a egg.

Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago

"no this is a lie too why not admit
there don't seem to be many chances at all
since no one knows what will make the thing fall
might as well not be lying when standing in shit
since none of us knows what the future will bring
I can still be attached to true naming of things"

Might as well not be lying when standing in shit -- that is how I treat being in the world currently. Again this is a double meaning with lying as telling a lie and lying as lying down.

Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝3d ago

"Did this poem work? Was my sense preserved?
America, you get the fucking poets you deserve
I don't have the time for any more tries
Even the best of us can only apologize
When my kids ask what I did in this time
I'll say that I laughed and made a stupid rhyme"

My children are now young adults and will not ask what I did in our time, because they are living it. But in the time of Trump I am still doing the same thing. Laughing and making a stupid rhyme.

/fin