MARCH 1997
Deborah A. Miranda
JODY ALIESAN
DEBORAH A.
MIRANDA
ROY D. WILSON
CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
I've given the title of this panel a lot
of thought. "Lunatic or Lover/Madman or Shaman: the Role of the Poet
in Contemporary Culture(s)".
One of the reasons
I've only been thinking about it is because it's kind of hard to write
my brilliant insights down while cleaning houses, and that's what I do for
a living: I'm a housecleaner. I'm also a poet. This gives you some idea
of where I fit into this culture!
Here are some
of the things I remembered while mopping floors, cleaning toilets and folding
clothes.
First, the role
of the poet is all tied up in the definition of what a poet is. Kurt Vonnegut
has this nifty thing he calls his "Canary in the Coal Mine Theory".
Canaries, as you might already know, were used in the bad old days to test
the air quality in coal mines. If the air got bad, contaminated with gases
that would affect the miners, their convenient little early warning devicescanarieswould
keel over before the air was toxic enough to affect the humans, and give
the humans that extra edge of lead time to get out.
Graphic, but
maybe accurate. Vonnegut proposed that poets and artists fill the same role
in society: when writers start getting censored, persecuted, jailed, or
blocked from earning a living because of what they produce, our society
has reached a level of crisis that demands some kind of immediate action
to save not only the artistic segment of culture, but every one else too.
Then there's
what Adrienne Rich says in What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and
Politics. She says that a poet's job is to "name the nameless",
and she muses on the power of names and the incredible chutzpah of naming,
the act of naming, itself. No one gives us this power, she says: we are
driven to name, to define, and to revealpoetry is almost an entity
that won't stop harassing the poet! Rich warns, however, that "much
of what you need has been lost,"our cultural inheritance gouged out
by genocide, massacre, intellectual blacklisting. We have to accept that
loss as an integral part of what we can use to create with.
At a workshop last summer, Grace Paley
told me that every writer is obsessed. They have one or two focal points
in their lives to which all of their work refers over and over again. I
was having a rough time producing any work at this workshop, struggling
with personal demons that said, "You're never going to move on to new
ground, you are going to bore everyone to death with the details of your
loss!" But a good writer, Grace said, is one who finds that obsession
and milks it for all it's worth, in as many ways as she can. And the way
to find your obsession? "Tell the story you are most afraid to tell,"
she said. "Not the one you don't want to tell, but do. Not the one
you think you are afraid of telling. The REAL story, the one that scares the shit out of you."
I went on to produce a piece of writing that not only told my story honestly
and well, but which brought a response from my listeners.
People told
me that this was their story too, that I had said things the way they had
felt them. I realized that Grace was right: by addressing my deepest fears,
I could best reach other people. It could have been selfish or gratuitous,
but because I was honest, it wasn't.
I also like
what the poet Chrystos says: "Poets are slow motion Mad Maxx movies...making
poems is about walking into the firing range...that loss is not loss if
we write about it. You may be gone but I have these words I've strung together
like beadwork and you, yourself, have been captured...." She's telling
us that poets can use their craft as a way to not only define loss, but
alleviate it as well.
Then there's
Frederick. Frederick is a little gray mouse in the children's book of that
name, written and illustrated by Leo Leonni. While all the other mice gather
seeds and grasses, Frederick lolls about breathing in the rich air, watching
dragonflies' rainbow wings, listening to birds. Then, in the winter, each
mouse contributes food for all to survive. They have enough. But winter
goes on and on, and the little mouse society becomes bored and depressed.
That's when they remember what Frederick gathered, and they ask him, Frederick,
what about YOUR supplies?? And he tells them what he gathered: colors, warmth,
red poppies in yellowheat words. When he's done, the mice are
transformed. They have found a sustenance beyond that which their bodies
demand. "Why Frederick," they say, "you're a poet!"
Is he? What
IS
a poet's role? Why do we do what we do, and for what cause?
Are we canaries
whose role is to keel over when society becomes too rigid and conservative?
Are we keepers of the names, creating and defining by the power of language?
Are we responsible for brute truthfulness, for facing fear without shirking?
Are we a form of container, a basket, the material on which we write that
which cannot be forgotten? Are we, as Frederick tells us, an anti-depressant
in the form of memory?
Poetry, maybe,
is the process of survival. In order to survive we need those who can do
all of these things: warn, name, tell the truth, preserve, and inspire.
As a poet, I can tell you that I have revealed myself to be both lunatic
AND
lover, definitely a madwoman, and possibly some mutant form of Shaman as
well. I don't know. I'm still evolving.
Perhaps there's
a clue to be had in the significance of dreams. Poet Joy Harjo says the
work she's accomplished through dreams is some of the most powerful and
important work she's ever done. I'll leave you with two dreams I've had
that have given me direction as a poet.
The first dream
came about when I was wrestling with the concept of being, or not being,
a witness to the destruction of California Indian tribes. As a fifth generation
survivor of the mission system, what am I "allowed" to be witness
to? What can I contribute? In the dream, I have volunteered to be part of
a memory experiment in which scientists lock up a bunch of Indians in a
mission and record our responses. As soon as the huge mission doors slammed
shut, each of the people presentfrom many tribes, all ages, men
and womensimultaneously and without volition, opened their mouths
and began to scream. I myself felt my throat open, and a scream came up
from the deepest parts of meand yet, it wasn't my voice. It wasn't my scream.
It was somebody
else's scream. What this dream did for me was open me up to the possibility
of being a voice for others, of accepting that my own pain was at once personal
and universal, and that yes, I had a right to be a survivor, to be a witness.
The second dream
was very simple. I was in my car, driving down a highway fresh and green,
just after a rain. I was following a small pick-up truck very closely, because
the driver of this truck knew our destination, and I didn't. So I took care
to follow every turn and weave of the truck.
This was my
entire dream, except for one detail: across the back of the truck, on the
tailgate, was the usual logo: TOYOTA. But the first letter had been changed to C, and
the last letter to E. I was following
COYOTE.
© The Raven Chronicles 1997