If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?
Shelly wrote hundreds of thousands of years ago that the poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Well, we sure know that poets are unacknowledged, that's for sure. How many blank stares have you poets fielded when you've told some hot guy who's hitting on you that you write words followed by line breaks (not to be precious about defining what a poem is..... ) But what's a legislator? A legislator is someone who makes laws and supposedly ensure sthat the laws are carried out.
If a poet is busy "legislating" -- e.g., talking about current events, writing poems about the soul, nature walking, creating fake laws about "how things are and should be done," bullshitting about the war, is anyone, ANYONE--besides friends--paying attention anyway? I don't know. The poet has an important job here in human society. I think a lot of members of the media are [bad] poets. OH ho ho ho, I'm not saying they ARE poets. Right? I'm saying they're like [bad] poets. They gather around the tree like Charlie Brown and friends wave their hands and make whatever topic they're discussing beautiful or at minimum MEANINGFUL. [See this amazing video below. For the reference to the joke I'm referring to, please go to 2:44 seconds and onward. thanks Robert Smigel!http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/6125/Peanuts-Christmas-SNL-Real-Audio/
I may have inserted that video twice. I'm not sure. The media used to be in the trenches, respecting authority of the agencies, companies, baseball teams they were covering. Now a reporter has hung up his press hat for a CNN uniform or a lonely laptop and a real big, broad [holding my hands out on either side of my body as if i'm measureing a fish] internet bandwidth connection. Who knows if any of this makes sense. I don't know anymore. ... I don't know about ANYTHING anymore! [gentle sob] Corey Haim is dead, hundreds of Americans are losing their healthcare everyday, and iFart is no longer the top iPhone App. I feel the America I learned to love in has gone away, is turning into dust in my hands and I just want to show you so much....[gentle sob, rocking body back and forth back and forth, cough, look at tissue, there is blood in it]
Yeah Amy, stop acting like such a itty-baby Keats all the sudden. You're 33 years old. Don't be precious about a country that you pay as much attention to as you do to your own stool samples half the time [the other time i pay close attention to my stool samples by the way...]. Oh but I want to change! I can change! I swear I'll be better for you, Girl! I will be there every day, sweating my self silly until you see how much you mean to me!
See how serious I am? This isn't me -- this is a graphic internet interpretation of what I am like now, I consider the world we live in to be like a baby I've carried to the 3rd trimester.
So, see how hard it is to be a poet? You have to think and worry about everything all the time! And if you stop for a few months and make sure to dot all your T's and cross all your I's, it becomes harder to write these beauty babies down. I'm being purposefully precious. But I encourage all of us to bullshit about the wars our country is in. I encourage all of us to engage in heady discussions about the healthcare debate. If you're an unappreciated adjunct professor somewhere, go ahead and work our current events into the discussion of the class.
Some asshole once said "Those who can't, teach." And that's just it. He -- he had to be a man -- was a total asshole. He was probably also a shitty teacher. Most students I've encountered have open enough minds that they want to at minimum know more about their world. And poets are perfect people to be plying these minds!
PS, sorry that yesterday I told you to set the clocks the wrong way. I never said I was 100% accurate. It turns out someone was 2 hours early for work in Barcelona yesterday because of me and I apologize half-heartedly for that.
Good night!
Love,
Amy Lawless
