The Poet As Diplomat -Section Two by Dave Jaffe
In his book 'The Labyrinth of Solitude' the Mexican poet Octavio Paz pointed out that the history of Mexico was a violent one. There's no doubt that the story of Mexico is full of bloodshed. When Cortes the Spanish conquistador invaded Mexico in the early 16th century, he and his troops killed thousands of Aztecs as well as their ruler Montezuma.
In the last half dozen years or so, at least 40,000 Mexicans have died in the country's drug wars. In between Cortes' conquests and today, lie the Mexican War of Independence against the Mexicans' Spanish overlords, the French invasion of Mexico in the 1850's, wars with the United States of America, and the Mexican Revolution that lasted from 1910 to 1920.
What are now most of the western and southwestern states in the U.S. of A., were seized by the United States from Mexico in the nineteenth century. "We never gave California to the U.S.," an angry Mexican official told this author in 1970. "They grabbed it from us and a whole lot more of besides."
In 1968 rebellions shook the four corners of the world. In that year Mexico held the Olympic Games in and outside Mexico City. At about the same time Mexican troops shot and killed hundreds of Mexican students who were protesting against the Mexican government. This erupted in the Plaza of the Three Cultures near Mexico City.
Octavio Paz resigned from his diplomatic post in protest against this massacre. He then spent time teaching at Cambridge University in Great Britain and then taught at Harvard University in the U.S. As he aged Paz definitely became more conservative. He turned against Fidel Castro's communist rule in Cuba, and against the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.
"Revolution begins as a promise," Paz wrote. "But it is squandered in violent agitation and then freezes into bloody dictatorship." The history of 20th century revolutions including the Mexican, the Russian., the Chinese, the Iranian and the Cambodian revolutions, do prove Paz's statement. Yet many of these revolutions do start against terrible social injustices.
Because of Paz's new attitudes towards social change, Mexican novelists like Carlos Fuentes ended his friend ship with Paz. Some other younger artists also kept their distance from the ageing poet.
Still, above all, Paz was a poet and a great one. In 1957 he published his greatest poem called 'Sandstone' or 'Piedra de Sol'. In 1990 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"More than our air," he wrote in his poem called "Passages'
"More than water,
More than lips
Your body is the trace of your body."
Paz was married twice and had a daughter named 'Helena'. He died in 1998.
Thursday 31 March 2016
Tuesday 29 March 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Seventeen: The Poet as Diplomat by Dave Jaffe
The Poet As Diplomat : by Dave Jaffe: Part One
"Poor Mexico," one high level Mexican government official is supposed to have said. "So far from God. So close to the United States of America." Octavio Paz, a great Mexican poet, might have said the same at least in his youth. Yet as he grew older, most of his political disputes were tangles with left wing opponents who supported anti-America revolutions.
Paz started out as a left-winger. One of his grandfathers was a progressive and his father was a supporter of the Mexican Revolution that erupted in 1910 and ended in 1920. In 1937 following in his family's progressive foot steps, he dropped out of law school to work on a school for the sons of peasants and workers.
By his teens Paz was writing poetry and was influenced at first by the poetry of American-born Thomas Stearns Eliot, known as 'T.S. Eliot'. Eliot was a conservative, at least in his politics. Under the influence of Eliot's poetry, Paz wrote a long poem whose title in English translates as 'Between The Stone and The Flower'. Still, in the late 1930's Paz went to Spain to support the Spanish Republic in its war with Franco's right-wing armed forces.
In 1943, by now a married man, Paz went to the United States on a Guggenheim Scholarship. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley.
Two years later he joined the Mexican diplomatic service. He was posted to many places including New York City, France Tokyo, India and Switzerland. He rose in the diplomatic ranks but still kept writing. While in Paris he wrote one of the great books on Mexico called in English 'The Labyrinth of Solitude'.
"Mexicans are not a gay (meaning 'happy) race but a tragic one," wrote the great Mexican painter Rufino Tamaya.. This is because "of their long history of foreign domination." Octavio Paz, whose life overlapped with Tamayo, would have agreed. Paz in this book, saw Mexicans as people who kept their feeling hidden through solitude and ceremonies.
End of Part One: (To be Continued).
"Poor Mexico," one high level Mexican government official is supposed to have said. "So far from God. So close to the United States of America." Octavio Paz, a great Mexican poet, might have said the same at least in his youth. Yet as he grew older, most of his political disputes were tangles with left wing opponents who supported anti-America revolutions.
Paz started out as a left-winger. One of his grandfathers was a progressive and his father was a supporter of the Mexican Revolution that erupted in 1910 and ended in 1920. In 1937 following in his family's progressive foot steps, he dropped out of law school to work on a school for the sons of peasants and workers.
By his teens Paz was writing poetry and was influenced at first by the poetry of American-born Thomas Stearns Eliot, known as 'T.S. Eliot'. Eliot was a conservative, at least in his politics. Under the influence of Eliot's poetry, Paz wrote a long poem whose title in English translates as 'Between The Stone and The Flower'. Still, in the late 1930's Paz went to Spain to support the Spanish Republic in its war with Franco's right-wing armed forces.
In 1943, by now a married man, Paz went to the United States on a Guggenheim Scholarship. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley.
Two years later he joined the Mexican diplomatic service. He was posted to many places including New York City, France Tokyo, India and Switzerland. He rose in the diplomatic ranks but still kept writing. While in Paris he wrote one of the great books on Mexico called in English 'The Labyrinth of Solitude'.
"Mexicans are not a gay (meaning 'happy) race but a tragic one," wrote the great Mexican painter Rufino Tamaya.. This is because "of their long history of foreign domination." Octavio Paz, whose life overlapped with Tamayo, would have agreed. Paz in this book, saw Mexicans as people who kept their feeling hidden through solitude and ceremonies.
End of Part One: (To be Continued).
Thursday 24 March 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Sixteen by Dave Jaffe : The Poet as Lesbian.
Amber Dawn - The Poet As Lesbian
She has been a prostitute and a substance abuser. She was and is a lesbian. To-day she is an acclaimed poet who has won many prizes. Amber Dawn grew up in the border town of Fort Erie, Ontario. It was right near Niagara Falls.
"In some border towns anything goes," one former resident of an Ontario border town told me. In any case Amber Dawn had some adventures before she got out of Fort Erie, by signing up with a carnival.
Through one means or another, she ended up in Vancouver's downtown eastside. "It's the poorest postal code in Canada," the media always say about this district. Still, these days, the rising tide of condos, hip bars and upscale restaurants are slowly wiping out this district's past. Many of its former residents are scattering eastward up the Fraser Valley to cities like Abbotsford and Chilliwack.
When Dawn arrived in the area illegal drugs, alcohol, and rough times mixed together in what was sometimes a dangerous zone of life. For this was the place where serial killers like Robert Pickton hung out, stalking and then killing prostitutes.
Dawn worked the streets of the downtown eastside looking for male clients. At times she found customers from escort companies that hired out prostitutes, as she was for a time. Her poetry is full of her experiences. The words she uses can sometimes shock the innocent, if that is, there's any innocent people left around. Yet Amber Dawn hides little about her life and times. Of course, lesbians aren't anything new in the world of poetry.
The Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos wrote poetry over 2600 years ago, and her poems were often directed to women.
"The moon has set ... Middle of the night," wrote Sappho
Time passes
And I lie here alone."
The word 'lesbian' comes from the island of Lesbos where Sappho lived for a time.
Then there was Edna St. Vincent Millay, an American poet who wrote love poetry to women. Yet Amber Dawn is something new in the world of poetry. Her rough and sometimes frank poetry hides nothing about her life on the streets or in between the sheets.
Four letter words abound in her verses as does sometimes a joy focused on her life. You can get a good sample of her verse and her thoughts in her book 'Where the Words End, And My Body Begins'.
Amber Dawn is another game changer in the world of poetry.
She has been a prostitute and a substance abuser. She was and is a lesbian. To-day she is an acclaimed poet who has won many prizes. Amber Dawn grew up in the border town of Fort Erie, Ontario. It was right near Niagara Falls.
"In some border towns anything goes," one former resident of an Ontario border town told me. In any case Amber Dawn had some adventures before she got out of Fort Erie, by signing up with a carnival.
Through one means or another, she ended up in Vancouver's downtown eastside. "It's the poorest postal code in Canada," the media always say about this district. Still, these days, the rising tide of condos, hip bars and upscale restaurants are slowly wiping out this district's past. Many of its former residents are scattering eastward up the Fraser Valley to cities like Abbotsford and Chilliwack.
When Dawn arrived in the area illegal drugs, alcohol, and rough times mixed together in what was sometimes a dangerous zone of life. For this was the place where serial killers like Robert Pickton hung out, stalking and then killing prostitutes.
Dawn worked the streets of the downtown eastside looking for male clients. At times she found customers from escort companies that hired out prostitutes, as she was for a time. Her poetry is full of her experiences. The words she uses can sometimes shock the innocent, if that is, there's any innocent people left around. Yet Amber Dawn hides little about her life and times. Of course, lesbians aren't anything new in the world of poetry.
The Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos wrote poetry over 2600 years ago, and her poems were often directed to women.
"The moon has set ... Middle of the night," wrote Sappho
Time passes
And I lie here alone."
The word 'lesbian' comes from the island of Lesbos where Sappho lived for a time.
Then there was Edna St. Vincent Millay, an American poet who wrote love poetry to women. Yet Amber Dawn is something new in the world of poetry. Her rough and sometimes frank poetry hides nothing about her life on the streets or in between the sheets.
Four letter words abound in her verses as does sometimes a joy focused on her life. You can get a good sample of her verse and her thoughts in her book 'Where the Words End, And My Body Begins'.
Amber Dawn is another game changer in the world of poetry.
Thursday 17 March 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health. Part Fifteen Section Two of 'The Poet As Surrealist'
The Poet as Surrealist - Section Two by Dave Jaffe
The 1920's were a time of disruptions in France and the surrealists and their leader Andre Breton led disruptive lives.
Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927 but then left it in 1935. He had a quarrel with the Soviet Communist writer Ilya Ehrenburg. At a Soviet-sponsored conference of writers, Breton read a pamphlet written by Ehrenburg. It accused the surrealists of being 'pederasts' or gays. Breton slapped Ehrenburg and the surrealists were then expelled from the Communist movement.
Breton was a bit of an autocrat who sometimes ran the movement with an iron hand. He threw quite a few people out of the movement he helped found. He expelled Salvador Dali from the movement after Dali starting making lots of money, Breton used an anagram of Dali's name and called him 'Avida Dollars'. Also the Surrealists worshipped Sigmund Freud but Freud didn't worship them. "Until now," Freud wrote to his friend Stefan Zweig after Salvador Dali visited him in England, "I have been inclined to regard the surrealists as complete fools."
Though he had been kicked out of the French Communist Party, Breton remained a progressive. He visited Leon Trotsky in Mexico, and worked with Trotsky on an artistic manifesto. "Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world," said Breton after he arrived in Mexico and couldn't find his way to a destination.
In 1941, Breton escaped France, for the German Nazis who would have killed him had they got hold of him. Like many other artists, he was helped by Varian Fry, who is now called 'The Artists's Schindler'. Breton ended up in New York City where he and many of his compatriots kept their distance from many Americans. Still, Breton organized a great exhibition of surrealist art at Yale University. Breton's presence in New York City along with other surrealists, definitely helped trigger the rise of the Abstract Impressionist movement
in the U.S.A. at the end of the Second World War.. By war's end, surrealism had spread around the world. It influenced fashion, theatre, film, poetry, novels and drama.
After the war, Breton went back to live in Paris. By now he had written many books, including
a fine novel called 'Nadja'. He also wrote other books and many poems. He helped the anarchists in their struggles with the French government and later he hid anarchist fugitives who supported the Algerian rebels in the Algerian War.
Did Surrealism die in 1966 when Breton passed away? Impossible to say. Yet by the late 1960's, surrealistic-type writings surfaced again in Paris during the massive revolt that swept France in 1968. "Take your dreams for reality," students wrote on city walls during their rebellion against Charles De Gaulle's government.
"I attach no importance to life," Breton wrote in his poem 'The Spectral Attitudes'
I pin not the least of life's
butterflies to importance.
I do not matter to life."
Breton was married three times, and fathered a daughter with one of his wives, Jacqueline Lamba. Breton also helped father surrealism. He was one of the most significant French artistic figures of the 20th century.
The 1920's were a time of disruptions in France and the surrealists and their leader Andre Breton led disruptive lives.
Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927 but then left it in 1935. He had a quarrel with the Soviet Communist writer Ilya Ehrenburg. At a Soviet-sponsored conference of writers, Breton read a pamphlet written by Ehrenburg. It accused the surrealists of being 'pederasts' or gays. Breton slapped Ehrenburg and the surrealists were then expelled from the Communist movement.
Breton was a bit of an autocrat who sometimes ran the movement with an iron hand. He threw quite a few people out of the movement he helped found. He expelled Salvador Dali from the movement after Dali starting making lots of money, Breton used an anagram of Dali's name and called him 'Avida Dollars'. Also the Surrealists worshipped Sigmund Freud but Freud didn't worship them. "Until now," Freud wrote to his friend Stefan Zweig after Salvador Dali visited him in England, "I have been inclined to regard the surrealists as complete fools."
Though he had been kicked out of the French Communist Party, Breton remained a progressive. He visited Leon Trotsky in Mexico, and worked with Trotsky on an artistic manifesto. "Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world," said Breton after he arrived in Mexico and couldn't find his way to a destination.
In 1941, Breton escaped France, for the German Nazis who would have killed him had they got hold of him. Like many other artists, he was helped by Varian Fry, who is now called 'The Artists's Schindler'. Breton ended up in New York City where he and many of his compatriots kept their distance from many Americans. Still, Breton organized a great exhibition of surrealist art at Yale University. Breton's presence in New York City along with other surrealists, definitely helped trigger the rise of the Abstract Impressionist movement
in the U.S.A. at the end of the Second World War.. By war's end, surrealism had spread around the world. It influenced fashion, theatre, film, poetry, novels and drama.
After the war, Breton went back to live in Paris. By now he had written many books, including
a fine novel called 'Nadja'. He also wrote other books and many poems. He helped the anarchists in their struggles with the French government and later he hid anarchist fugitives who supported the Algerian rebels in the Algerian War.
Did Surrealism die in 1966 when Breton passed away? Impossible to say. Yet by the late 1960's, surrealistic-type writings surfaced again in Paris during the massive revolt that swept France in 1968. "Take your dreams for reality," students wrote on city walls during their rebellion against Charles De Gaulle's government.
"I attach no importance to life," Breton wrote in his poem 'The Spectral Attitudes'
I pin not the least of life's
butterflies to importance.
I do not matter to life."
Breton was married three times, and fathered a daughter with one of his wives, Jacqueline Lamba. Breton also helped father surrealism. He was one of the most significant French artistic figures of the 20th century.
Thursday 3 March 2016
Writing Poetry can Endanger Your Health - Part Fifteen: The Poet As Surrealist by Dave Jaffe
The Poet as Surrealist by Dave Jaffe Section One
` "I believe in the future resolution of the two states, dream and reality," wrote the poet and co-founder of the Surrealist movement Andre Breton. "They are seemingly so contradictory. (Yet they merge) into a kind of reality, a surreality."
Breton was born in France in 1896. He started out his career as a medical student. Yet along came the First World War in 1914 and Breton ended up working in psychiatric wards of medical hospitals. He helped treat people who had what to-day we would call 'post-traumatic stress disorders.' They were recovering from the things they endured in battles. 14 million people died in World War One. In the war France lost one million of its citizens.
The war that ended in 1918 turned things in Europe upside down. At war's end Breton went back to Paris. At first he joined the Dada movement that tried to destroy the old visual arts world's practices and beliefs. Yet Breton didn't stay with the Dadaists. By now, Breton had read modern French poetry by Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire. He also had read works by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, the by now well known psychiatrist.
,
At war's end Breton and some other intellectuals started a new art movement. They called their movement, 'Surrealism'. In 1924 Breton published a work called 'The Manifesto of Surrealism' . Breton had now helped create one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century. Surrealists stressed the fine line that hung between reason and unreason. They were interested, some would say, "obsessed" with dreams, erotica, and mental neuroses and psychoses.
But how could you get into these states of mind? Here surrealists drew on the works of Sigmund Freud. All artists had to use free association and streams of consciousness. This was somewhat similar to Freud's work with his psychiatric patients, who were advised by Freud to say whatever came up in their minds. The surrealists called what they were doing 'Automatism'.
Poets and writers, said Breton, should write down whatever they were thinking. They should censor nothing. Soon works of art should emerge from this process. "It was pure psychic automatism," Breton said of surrealism.
Many talented writers like Antonin Artaud, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Michel Leiris and Rene Crevel joined the surrealists. Later on, talented visual artists, like Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Paul Eluard, Roberto Matta and Meret Oppenheim joined the movement or were influenced by it. Even Pablo Picasso felt the influence of surrealism. The surrealists wanted him to join their movement. But he never did
Still ,by about 1930, surrealism's influence was being felt in many artistic circles. More triumphs and challenges lay ahead for Breton and his disciples..
(To be continued).
` "I believe in the future resolution of the two states, dream and reality," wrote the poet and co-founder of the Surrealist movement Andre Breton. "They are seemingly so contradictory. (Yet they merge) into a kind of reality, a surreality."
Breton was born in France in 1896. He started out his career as a medical student. Yet along came the First World War in 1914 and Breton ended up working in psychiatric wards of medical hospitals. He helped treat people who had what to-day we would call 'post-traumatic stress disorders.' They were recovering from the things they endured in battles. 14 million people died in World War One. In the war France lost one million of its citizens.
The war that ended in 1918 turned things in Europe upside down. At war's end Breton went back to Paris. At first he joined the Dada movement that tried to destroy the old visual arts world's practices and beliefs. Yet Breton didn't stay with the Dadaists. By now, Breton had read modern French poetry by Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire. He also had read works by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, the by now well known psychiatrist.
,
At war's end Breton and some other intellectuals started a new art movement. They called their movement, 'Surrealism'. In 1924 Breton published a work called 'The Manifesto of Surrealism' . Breton had now helped create one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century. Surrealists stressed the fine line that hung between reason and unreason. They were interested, some would say, "obsessed" with dreams, erotica, and mental neuroses and psychoses.
But how could you get into these states of mind? Here surrealists drew on the works of Sigmund Freud. All artists had to use free association and streams of consciousness. This was somewhat similar to Freud's work with his psychiatric patients, who were advised by Freud to say whatever came up in their minds. The surrealists called what they were doing 'Automatism'.
Poets and writers, said Breton, should write down whatever they were thinking. They should censor nothing. Soon works of art should emerge from this process. "It was pure psychic automatism," Breton said of surrealism.
Many talented writers like Antonin Artaud, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Michel Leiris and Rene Crevel joined the surrealists. Later on, talented visual artists, like Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Paul Eluard, Roberto Matta and Meret Oppenheim joined the movement or were influenced by it. Even Pablo Picasso felt the influence of surrealism. The surrealists wanted him to join their movement. But he never did
Still ,by about 1930, surrealism's influence was being felt in many artistic circles. More triumphs and challenges lay ahead for Breton and his disciples..
(To be continued).
Tuesday 1 March 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Fourteen, Section Two by Dave Jaffe
The Poet As Anti-Semite; Ezra Pund - Section Two
The First World war skewed Ezra Pound's politics to the far right. In the aftermath of the war he started to write long history poems that he called 'Cantos'. These poems were full of quotations from history, the sayings of historical figures and quotes from Japanese and Chinese poems.
Pound zeroed on what he called 'usura' or usury. Jews, he claimed, who loaned out money, were responsible for the ills of the modern world. At this time Pound was reading the works of the Social Credit leader Major Douglas. Soon, Pound, who moved to Italy, ended up supporting the fascist dictator and ruler of post war Italy, namely Benito Mussolini. On the radio he denounced the U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and preached a virulent form of anti-semitism.
Alas, Pound wasn't alone in denouncing Jews. Some of the great early modern writers were anti-semitic too. These included T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, George Orwell, maybe Virginia Woolf, (although she married a Jew), Ernest Hemingway, e.e. cummings, and the famous French novelist, Louis Ferdinand Celine. Celine and the writer and visual artist Wyndham Lewis were pro-Adolf Hitler. Lewis wrote a book praising Hitler.
Anti-Semitism ran rampant in many countries before the Second World War, and was part and parcel of the belief systems of millions of people.
Still, Pound was a great poet. "The best of Pound's writings," said Ernest Hemingway "will last as long as there is literature." Hemingway also said that the Cantos of Pound were Pound's greatest writings.
After the Second World War ended, Pound was captured by the Allies and was charged with treason. He could have been shot as a traitor. His defense pleaded that Pound had been mentally ill when he made his broadcasts over Italian radio. Quite a few scholars of literature also came to his defense. Pound was then imprisoned in a hospital in Washington, D.C. He was released in 1958 and went back to Italy where he died in 1972.
"There died a myriad," wrote Pound in his post world war one poem 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'
"And of the best among them
For an old bitch gone in the teeth
For a botched civilization."
This was Pound's vertdict on the First World War.
Pound married once and he and his wife had one child. Then he hooked up with Olga Rudge and they had a child together. Rudge stayed with Pound until he died. Pound's life and work shows us that artistic geniuses can also be bigots, racists and traitors.
The First World war skewed Ezra Pound's politics to the far right. In the aftermath of the war he started to write long history poems that he called 'Cantos'. These poems were full of quotations from history, the sayings of historical figures and quotes from Japanese and Chinese poems.
Pound zeroed on what he called 'usura' or usury. Jews, he claimed, who loaned out money, were responsible for the ills of the modern world. At this time Pound was reading the works of the Social Credit leader Major Douglas. Soon, Pound, who moved to Italy, ended up supporting the fascist dictator and ruler of post war Italy, namely Benito Mussolini. On the radio he denounced the U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and preached a virulent form of anti-semitism.
Alas, Pound wasn't alone in denouncing Jews. Some of the great early modern writers were anti-semitic too. These included T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, George Orwell, maybe Virginia Woolf, (although she married a Jew), Ernest Hemingway, e.e. cummings, and the famous French novelist, Louis Ferdinand Celine. Celine and the writer and visual artist Wyndham Lewis were pro-Adolf Hitler. Lewis wrote a book praising Hitler.
Anti-Semitism ran rampant in many countries before the Second World War, and was part and parcel of the belief systems of millions of people.
Still, Pound was a great poet. "The best of Pound's writings," said Ernest Hemingway "will last as long as there is literature." Hemingway also said that the Cantos of Pound were Pound's greatest writings.
After the Second World War ended, Pound was captured by the Allies and was charged with treason. He could have been shot as a traitor. His defense pleaded that Pound had been mentally ill when he made his broadcasts over Italian radio. Quite a few scholars of literature also came to his defense. Pound was then imprisoned in a hospital in Washington, D.C. He was released in 1958 and went back to Italy where he died in 1972.
"There died a myriad," wrote Pound in his post world war one poem 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'
"And of the best among them
For an old bitch gone in the teeth
For a botched civilization."
This was Pound's vertdict on the First World War.
Pound married once and he and his wife had one child. Then he hooked up with Olga Rudge and they had a child together. Rudge stayed with Pound until he died. Pound's life and work shows us that artistic geniuses can also be bigots, racists and traitors.
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