The Art of Stoning

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brianedwards
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Sun Sep 26, 2010 12:18 am

Denis Joe wrote:Though, personally, I find finger-wagging at other countries(especially those of the developing world) to be a bit of a cop out, it's hardly radical as western governments will all express the same sentiment.
.
I was going to make that very point Denis. That said, US poets have been attacked in recent years for their insularity and lack of world view.
Don't remember reading too many poems about their shameful health service and treatment of the homeless though . . . I'd say something about glass houses and stones, but I wouldn't want to be accused of trying to be punny . . .

B.
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Sun Sep 26, 2010 2:34 am

Well I am not sure I agree with all the comments. Is it the job of poetry to reach out and affect the reader with a thought, an idea or a line that they can carry away that gets to the heart of some issue and widens the world to some truth contained therein. For me this concentrates on the throwers rather than the poor woman on the receiving end. It lacks humanity but then the act lacks this so it is perhaps an interesting perspective. By showing the stone throwing is inhuman, and you have touched briefly on the deeper, complicated issues that surround punishment. For example burning witches at the stake was more to do with envy, greed (you got paid for denouncing a witch) and of course pure madness. I think poems on these subjects are important. We are not so far removed from the dark ages and the dark of the middle ages to sit back and not worry that such times are behind us. In fact in some parts of the world they are creeping over the enlightenment that we pride ourselves on. Can you imagine if Religions were also the political force we lived by. Would we go back to the days of the Inquisition? I think take on board the comments and perhaps come up with one or two other versions and see what works. But in the end it needs to reach out and draw the reader in.
Last edited by clarabow on Sun Sep 26, 2010 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ray miller
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Sun Sep 26, 2010 9:42 am

Interesting that there's almost a male-female divide in the reaction to this poem. Almost.I'd disagree about the preaching to the converted issue. The last verse, or so it appears to me, lifts it out of a single contemporary event and asks us to examine from a more universal, historical perspective. Scapegoating. Is that something poets can feel more comfortable writing about?
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Sun Sep 26, 2010 1:34 pm

I haven't examined the comments to really understand who thinks what but I definitely agree with Ray about the last verse! The whole point of the last verse is that it takes the time to think about what it is like to be part of this community, part of this structure, for everybody. And I think this takes to an interesting and yes, more universal, place - which is relevant to things like children being brutalised and turned into child soldiers or the recruitment of the SS or many more examples of how and why people are coerced into or bought up to do horrific things. The G Ewart poem mentioned by KJ is about something completely different- a murder, with a very clear perpetrator/victim,clearly illegal. Of course this is about murder too but I think the last verse, crucially, addresses how legalised murder impacts on a society. No?
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Sun Sep 26, 2010 1:54 pm

Hi e

Well you have stirred up some views with this one. And isn't that a good thing.

For what it's worth I think your intention is to address not just the barbarity of the stoning but the nature of individual responsibility and group action - maybe even the whole idea of obedience to authority. With that in mind I think the middle section is unnecessary and gives rise to the idea that the subject is better served by journalism. So if it were me I would strike out the descriptive mid section.

I thought the first stanza was very good in drawing me in.

The only other thought and it's the timing of this poem when in the same week we have a mentally deficient woman executed by injection in Virginia. I think I know you well enough to know you would not exercise double standards but wonder if there is some need to address this universality in the poem. What do you think?

Thoughts as always.

Elph
emuse
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Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:23 am

Ha! I return to see my poem has been stoned LOL!! Well it's great to get all these views -- the naysayers and those who see merit in persuing it as a poetic subject. You are all very helpful really and I shall take your thoughts with me as I continue to evolve this poem over time. It will be a very good one to workshop on a live basis as well to receive the impact of voice and nuance that can be felt in a reading. There are as many approaches to this subject as there are poets. Do you remember Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women? There are many forms of stoning.

"For me this concentrates on the throwers rather than the poor woman on the receiving end. It lacks humanity but then the act lacks this so it is perhaps an interesting perspective. By showing the stone throwing is inhuman, and you have touched briefly on the deeper, complicated issues that surround punishment."

Clara yes that's what I am aiming for.

What often happens with a poem like this is that you have so many differing views, some liking the opening, others the ending, some detesting the end and yet others who see nothing in it at all. I think what's important is that it helps the poet to stir up the senses and present the subgenres of poetry as possibility without end.

I understand that this is not a style that some of you are used to with my work and that you feel it falls short of the mark. I thank you for your honesty and say back in all candor, I feel that it is important as a poet to continue to expand out into the unknown realms rather than relying on certain safe subjects and styles. To grow and to learn is what I'm here for.

Thanks again all and cheers,

E
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Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:22 pm

" Denis Joe wrote:Though, personally, I find finger-wagging at other countries(especially those of the developing world) to be a bit of a cop out, it's hardly radical as western governments will all express the same sentiment.

"I was going to make that very point Denis. That said, US poets have been attacked in recent years for their insularity and lack of world view.
Don't remember reading too many poems about their shameful health service and treatment of the homeless though . . . I'd say something about glass houses and stones, but I wouldn't want to be accused of trying to be punny . . ."

There's that biblical saying...he who is without sin shall cast the first stone..

I think most countries have crimes they'd like to hide.

Poetry can bring to the fore conditions in need of change. This is not about being American or Middle Eastern or any other ethnic. It's about the brutalization of women where justice can depend on the intuition of a judge.

I write about what moves me. Don't we all?

Cheers and thanks!

E
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Sun Oct 17, 2010 5:05 pm

I liked everything about this poem except the assumption that the people doing the stoning are going to be questioning or examining their actions afterwards. (If they didn't believe it was the right thing to do, would they be doing it?) I'm not sure that's actually true, which made me feel skeptical throughout my reading of the poem- but of course, without that assumption there is no poem. To the extent that I can accept the core assumption, the poem has a strong emotional impact, but it achieves this by evoking an empathy I'm not sure is actually felt by the people in the scene.
emuse
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Mon Oct 18, 2010 12:56 am

CSThompson wrote:I liked everything about this poem except the assumption that the people doing the stoning are going to be questioning or examining their actions afterward. (If they didn't believe it was the right thing to do, would they be doing it?) I'm not sure that's actually true, which made me feel skeptical throughout my reading of the poem- but of course, without that assumption there is no poem. To the extent that I can accept the core assumption, the poem has a strong emotional impact, but it achieves this by evoking an empathy I'm not sure is actually felt by the people in the scene.
That's a very good point CS. And I take it further to say that there is an emotional detachment in the narrator's rendering of it which attempts to obviate the assumption of that viewpoint. The voice attempts to describe as if a third party is depicting the events. I think I need to take that even further and remove some of the middle which is too much in order to narrow the focus cleanly and clearly as possible.

I'm revising this now and taking all your ideas with me. Again, thanks to all who took the time to comment here.

Cheers,

E
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Denis Joe
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Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:22 pm

emuse wrote:"
Poetry can bring to the fore conditions in need of change. This is not about being American or Middle Eastern or any other ethnic. It's about the brutalization of women where justice can depend on the intuition of a judge.

I write about what moves me. Don't we all?

Cheers and thanks!

E
E,
Whilst I have to agree about writing what moves you and I have no opposition to using 'issues' as a narrative in poetry I have to say that that your idea about poetry's ability to change is . . well . . outrageous.

First off, poetry is least appreciated of the arts. Go to any reading and the audience will either be made up of other poets or they will make up a sizable proportion.

Most important though is the fact that art does not bring about social/political change. Like other disciplines, art can only develop within the restrictions that are laid down by society and that is determined by the level of personal liberty that exists with a society.

I remember going to a reading by a couple of American poets who were affiliated to a Native American tribe. After their readings they took questions from the audience. One member told them that she wanted to write poems that would change’ people’s mind about being racists ‘ (her words, which burnt into my memory). I would have liked to have inflicted unspeakable violence on her, for her arrogance, but I also am a firm believer in free speech.

The point is that art is about raising an audience from the everyday (not as a form of escapism, mind, that is the role of entertainment, I believe there is a demarcation) rather than create a feeling of the banal. Like many reasonable people, I don’t particularly enjoy the fact that a woman (or anyone for that matter) will be put to death. I also don’t see Iran as a beacon of enlightenment. that said is it any worse than sentencing someone to death as is the case in some western democracies?

If we are to view the arts as part of the propaganda machinery then we have a situation which is no different from the Zhdanov years of the Soviet Union or, indeed, the Blair years of Britain, when Carol Anne Duffy acting like some lackey, bowed to pressure from the Home Office over her poem Education for Leisure by swearing that it fitted with government policy.

Any artist should not be answerable to anyone when it come to their creation, but if the arts are seen as being ‘on-message’ then the artist is subservient to a political doctrine or public opinion.

That’s all I meant really: You’re fully within your rights to use poetry in whatever way you see fit and me,; I’m within my rights to disagree.
Last edited by Denis Joe on Mon Oct 25, 2010 3:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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brianedwards
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 3:23 pm

Denis Joe wrote:
emuse wrote:"
Poetry can bring to the fore conditions in need of change. This is not about being American or Middle Eastern or any other ethnic. It's about the brutalization of women where justice can depend on the intuition of a judge.

I write about what moves me. Don't we all?

Cheers and thanks!

E

Whilst I have to agree about writing what moves you and I have no opposition to using 'issues' as a narrative in poetry I have to say that that your idea about poetry's ability to change is . . well . . outrageous.

[...]poetry is least appreciated of the arts. [...]


art does not bring about social/political change[...]

Applause here Denis. The idea of internet poetry igniting social change is laughably pretentious at best!

B.
ray miller
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 4:06 pm

If art does not, cannot bring about social change one has to wonder what Zhdanov and so many others of that ilk were getting all excited about. I think there is some appreciable difference between stoning a woman to death as a punishment for adultery and sentencing someone to death as a punishment for murder, as happens in some western democracies. Not that I approve of the latter practice.
Denis Joe wrote:If we are to view the arts as part of the propaganda machinery then we have a situation which is no different from the Zhdanov years of the Soviet Union or, indeed, the Blair years of Britain, when Carol Anne Duffy acting like some lackey, bowed to pressure from the Home Office over her poem Education for Leisure by swearing that it fitted with government policy.


No different than the Zhdanov years or the Blair years? Or are you claiming equivalence?
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Denis Joe
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 4:34 pm

ray miller wrote: No different than the Zhdanov years or the Blair years? Or are you claiming equivalence?
Whilst Blair did not threaten Duffy with the gulag there was an expectation that the she should toe the line. Duffy, in essence, did a Gorky (though Duffy could never attain a fraction of that man's greatness).

Since the fall of the Berlin wall a noticeable feature of western democracies, especially in Europe, has been to practice the tactics of the Stalinist system, not just in the arts, but throughout social policy. But that is a discussion that lies elsewhere.

Suffice to say that the embarrassing Cool Britannia bore striking echoes of social realism. I think that Blair and the rest should have been a lot more honest about their appreciation of the arts and made Pam Ayers the Poet Laureate, as they were so hell bent of having a woman in order to fill the quota (another Stalinist practice).
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ray miller
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 10:45 pm

I think if at any time henceforth you were to google New Labour/lack of honesty, you'd have to dig very deep to find a mention of The Arts. I take it that the Stalinist tactics you cite are referring to the show trials of Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken. Cool Britannia as Social Realism! Takes all sorts. I never thought it were anything but a media bubble.
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emuse
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:52 am

Denis Joe wrote:
emuse wrote:"
Poetry can bring to the fore conditions in need of change. This is not about being American or Middle Eastern or any other ethnic. It's about the brutalization of women where justice can depend on the intuition of a judge.

I write about what moves me. Don't we all?

Cheers and thanks!

E
E,

Whilst I have to agree about writing what moves you and I have no opposition to using 'issues' as a narrative in poetry I have to say that that your idea about poetry's ability to change is . . well . . outrageous.

First off, poetry is least appreciated of the arts. Go to any reading and the audience will either be made up of other poets or they will make up a sizable proportion.

Most important though is the fact that art does not bring about social/political change. Like other disciplines, art can only develop within the restrictions that are laid down by society and that is determined by the level of personal liberty that exists with a society.

I remember going to a reading by a couple of American poets who were affiliated to a Native American tribe. After their readings they took questions from the audience. One member told them that she wanted to write poems that would change’ people’s mind about being racists ‘ (her words, which burnt into my memory). I would have liked to have inflicted unspeakable violence on her, for her arrogance, but I also am a firm believer in free speech.

The point is that art is about raising an audience from the everyday (not as a form of escapism, mind, that is the role of entertainment, I believe there is a demarcation) rather than create a feeling of the banal. Like many reasonable people, I don’t particularly enjoy the fact that a woman (or anyone for that matter) will be put to death. I also don’t see Iran as a beacon of enlightenment. that said is it any worse than sentencing someone to death as is the case in some western democracies?

If we are to view the arts as part of the propaganda machinery then we have a situation which is no different from the Zhdanov years of the Soviet Union or, indeed, the Blair years of Britain, when Carol Anne Duffy acting like some lackey, bowed to pressure from the Home Office over her poem Education for Leisure by swearing that it fitted with government policy.

Any artist should not be answerable to anyone when it come to their creation, but if the arts are seen as being ‘on-message’ then the artist is subservient to a political doctrine or public opinion.

That’s all I meant really: You’re fully within your rights to use poetry in whatever way you see fit and me,; I’m within my rights to disagree.
Denis thanks for your detailed response. I don't get notices in my email account for threads in PG any longer so I have to come back and periodically check on things. Glad I did. After reading your thread I can't really see where the disagreement lies. I'd say it's more a matter of semantics. If poetry has the ability to raise the awareness of a subject, change can certainly be a byproduct of that awarness. If we take this concept from micro to macro it's easy to see how change is possible. How many of us write at certain moments for the cathartic experience of it? I don't know how many friends have told me that they were feeling a certain way, wrote a poem and then their viewpoint shifted. It happens on a smaller scale all the time. Can it prevent war? I don't know but I would never prescribe against its possibilities. My first exposure to poetry was in Switzerland reading the poems of Paul Eluard. I remember the moment I encountered “Liberté”, and learned that thousands of copies of his poem were dropped over occupied France during 1942. How many read the poem and became a part of the French Resistance? How many lives might have been saved? We cannot know but we cannot discount that even if this poem saved one life that it did not make a change. I don't know how much Neruda you've read but he was the poet of the people. Neruda's poetic activism was part and parcel of his life. As Chile's poet he was also very politically active in his country eventually take the seat of Senator and becoming an ambassador to France. When I interviewed William O'Daly, the translator of the last 8 books of Neruda here in the states we talked about Neruda's activitsm. The poem he wrote after touring a complex of buildings where Pinochet interrogated and tortured political prisoners. And what of Picasso's Guernica? And Lorca's death by the Flangists is then in vain.

It goes on and on. During the cultural revolution in China, poetry was everywhere...written on pinheads where they could only be read with a magnifying glass. Poetry as a means to change has been with us for eons. Even if my poem does nothing but get us all talking about art as a vehicle for change, then it's accomplished something. We each have the power to do this. No one has to -- it's a choice. The arts need not be part of the propoganda machinery -- but they can be a rage against the machine. Or they can be a whisper spoken in the night. Call me an idealist! But call me a poet :)

I leave you with Eluard's poem and thanks kindly for taking the time to respond:

Liberté

On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees
On the sands of snow
I write your name

On the pages I have read
On all the white pages
Stone, blood, paper or ash
I write your name

On the images of gold
On the weapons of the warriors
On the crown of the king
I write your name

On the jungle and the desert
On the nest and on the brier
On the echo of my childhood
I write your name

On all my scarves of blue
On the moist sunlit swamps
On the living lake of moonlight
I write your name

On the fields, on the horizon
On the birds’ wings
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name

On each whiff of daybreak
On the sea, on the boats
On the demented mountaintop
I write your name

On the froth of the cloud
On the sweat of the storm
On the dense rain and the flat
I write your name

On the flickering figures
On the bells of colors
On the natural truth
I write your name

On the high paths
On the deployed routes
On the crowd-thronged square
I write your name

On the lamp which is lit
On the lamp which isn’t
On my reunited thoughts
I write your name

On a fruit cut in two
Of my mirror and my chamber
On my bed, an empty shell
I write your name

On my dog, greathearted and greedy
On his pricked-up ears
On his blundering paws
I write your name

On the latch of my door
On those familiar objects
On the torrents of a good fire
I write your name

On the harmony of the flesh
On the faces of my friends
On each outstretched hand
I write your name

On the window of surprises
On a pair of expectant lips
In a state far deeper than silence
I write your name

On my crumbled hiding-places
On my sunken lighthouses
On my walls and my ennui
I write your name

On abstraction without desire
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

And for the want of a word
I renew my life
For I was born to know you
To name you


E
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:59 am

brianedwards wrote:
Denis Joe wrote:
emuse wrote:"
Poetry can bring to the fore conditions in need of change. This is not about being American or Middle Eastern or any other ethnic. It's about the brutalization of women where justice can depend on the intuition of a judge.

I write about what moves me. Don't we all?

Cheers and thanks!

E

Whilst I have to agree about writing what moves you and I have no opposition to using 'issues' as a narrative in poetry I have to say that that your idea about poetry's ability to change is . . well . . outrageous.

[...]poetry is least appreciated of the arts. [...]


art does not bring about social/political change[...]

Applause here Denis. The idea of internet poetry igniting social change is laughably pretentious at best!

B.
Brian, I'm sorry to read your response. I hope you have more faith in your abilities. You're a fine poet.
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:01 am

ray miller wrote:If art does not, cannot bring about social change one has to wonder what Zhdanov and so many others of that ilk were getting all excited about. I think there is some appreciable difference between stoning a woman to death as a punishment for adultery and sentencing someone to death as a punishment for murder, as happens in some western democracies. Not that I approve of the latter practice.
Yes Ray, quite so. Thanks.
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 10:02 am

E,

Thanks for responding. You raise some interesting points . I’m not all that familiar with the work of Eluard but I do know of Locra and Neradu. Both showed some support for political causes and that would find its way into their works and there is nothing strange in that; life experience provides the framework for all works of art. However neither where political animals and Locra’s best work (IMHO) was his most reactionary and asocial (Poet In New York). A quick look at Eluard’s later background doesn’t portray a man concerned for a better worlds either: writing doggerel in praise of Stalin and even supporting the execution of Záviš Kalandra, Milada Horáková, Jan Buchal and Oldřich Pecl in 1950. Did that make him a bad poet? I don’t know. I have come across some of his surreal work and found it quite impressive.

The problem is that many people tie the creator to the creation, Victor Hugo was aware of this and recognised that whilst he had control over the meaning within his work, as he was writing it; when the work was published it was out of his hands as to how the reader would interpret his work.

By viewing the artist as the integral part of the work we do ourselves an injustice. We say that we are incapable of understanding a work if we do not understand the artist. We see ourselves as not fully functioning, autonomous beings, capable of independent thought, but as slaves to the views of others.

And it is this that makes poetry-to-change-the-world inartistic. At its best some art (or entertainment) can be used to give succour to a social movement. The poem you quote is a case in point. One need only look at the sickening, Red Nose campaign or Make Poverty History,, where pop singers and the like provide support to these issues by their participation through their art (then they start to see themselves as Messiahs, such as Bono or Geldof, for preaching something that only a convinced misanthrope would oppose). In effect what is being done is conservative rather than inventive.

The other major aspect to ‘issue’ poetry (or art in general) is that it shares much with the ideas behind censorship. The famous quote from the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial about letting one’s wife or servant read the book, or even the existence of bodies who categorise films into what they think is suitable viewing for certain age groups. The assumption is that we are incapable of rationalising and making our own decision on things and, so, we are to be content with what we know and live life unchallenged.

When I said about art raising the audience I was not eluding to social consciousness, that is the job of politics. What I mean is that it raises spiritual awareness: art reflects and proposes what is great in humanity. It allows us a discourse with ideas/images/ experiences we would otherwise not be aware of or something that doesn’t exist in our day-to-day lives. It should not be satisfied with the status quo. Out of this an individual may well become socially conscious but political awareness should not be seen as being motor of art.
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:04 am

Love the idea of the poem, but find it a bit didactic; too much explanation of what's going on. You've probably heard what Chekov has to say on the subject, but it is a mantra we all could live by: “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” - I frequently say it to myself, not neccessarily to good effect, but I try.
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 9:36 pm

Denis Joe wrote:E,

When I said about art raising the audience I was not eluding to social consciousness, that is the job of politics. What I mean is that it raises spiritual awareness: art reflects and proposes what is great in humanity. It allows us a discourse with ideas/images/ experiences we would otherwise not be aware of or something that doesn’t exist in our day-to-day lives. It should not be satisfied with the status quo. Out of this an individual may well become socially conscious but political awareness should not be seen as being motor of art.
Dear Denis,

I'm glad to know you're familiar with Neruda and Lorca. Two poets very close to my heart. Neruda's life was immersed in his country and his exile from Chile proves this. It's all there and in his poetry. I don't look at when a poet was political or nonpolitical. The point is that they involved themselves in some way as an expression through their art for social change. Just a quick hit here as I'm in a hurry but note that poetry on social issues is one of the oldest categories in Western literature. Old as the Iliad and Shakespeare. Yes it raises spiritual awareness and that is the first process in change. I would never limit the possibilities of poetry but if you feel strongly to exclude political consciousness raising, I acknowledge completely your view.

Thanks for a deeply stimulating conversation. And now back to my regularly scheduled program of stress and deadlines!! :)

E
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Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:00 pm

What exactly does "spiritual awareness" mean?
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Thu Oct 28, 2010 7:06 pm

brianedwards wrote:What exactly does "spiritual awareness" mean?
Spirituality is that which defines the individual's relationship to the rest of humankind. Some find the awareness through arts or science or religion of even sports. Some may well find it in the banality of the everyday. The awareness is simply that moment when the 'connection is recognised by the individual.

oh and:
ray miller wrote:If art does not, cannot bring about social change one has to wonder what Zhdanov and so many others of that ilk were getting all excited about.
The aim of the Stalanist regime (and many other totalitarian and/or paternalistic regimes)was to bring art in line with policy: to use art as propaganda. They do not treat art as a flowing and transforming experience but as something to prop up the status quo (not the band, I don't think anything could prop them up).
Last edited by Denis Joe on Thu Oct 28, 2010 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Thu Oct 28, 2010 7:28 pm

I have no objections to a poem of this type, I just feel that the main thrust should be the poem not the situation. The poet needs to do less telling and more showing, a cliché I know, but we need to be invited into the horror show in a manner which requires our conscience to read to the end, while our subconscious infers the images from the implications of the language.
brianedwards
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Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:15 am

Denis Joe wrote: Spirituality is that which defines the individual's relationship to the rest of humankind. Some find the awareness through arts or science or religion of even sports. Some may well find it in the banality of the everyday. The awareness is simply that moment when the 'connection is recognised by the individual.
Still not sure where "spirituality" comes into it Denis. What you've described sound like cognitive processes to me.
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Denis Joe
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Fri Oct 29, 2010 4:53 pm

You're right Brian. I guess that 'recognised' is a stupid word to use as people never 'recognise' their engagement with the arts as anything more than an involvement. I guess that the dialogue that I mention takes place with an abstraction that is mankind as a whole. That doesn't mean that all the world is actively involved, I mean that the work represents an aspect of humanity which people connect with as individuals.

The nearest analogy I can think of is the Marxist concept of class conciousness: Workers go out on strike for an improvement in their living standards (at least, they used to). That improvement is experienced as individual improvement but to achieve it the individual must partake in action that is of interest to the class as a whole.

Likewise the individual who experiences a work of art does so as an individual, without any consideration for the work's place in human collective (or abstract) experience.
Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.
[right]Vladimir Mayakovsky[/right]
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