Poetry and the American; Social protest

This is poetry and the American a series of broadcasts on American poets and poetry produced and recorded by radio station KPFA in Berkeley California. Under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters this program is entitled social protest and is a discussion with readings of a number of representative American poems dealing with the theme or subject of social protest. The participants in the discussion are Mr. Robert Bellew of the speech department of the University of California at Berkeley and Miss Eleanor McKinney a member of the staff of station KPFA here is Mr. Bellew. Since we're going to talk about and read from social protest poetry. I suppose poetry of social protest would be a more felicitous way of putting it. Don't you think Eleanor that this is a problem that presents the poet with a rather difficult thing to synthesize emotionally.

Well I think that we usually associate poems of social protest with the poet in a sense standing aside and painting a picture for us or pointing a finger of scorn demonstrating various aspects of the society that he think are corrupt or in need of metamorphosis. But no I think in the past we primarily associate it with. He was removed from the problem. Yes I see. Would would you for think of Hood's famous song of the shirt the sort of thing is that the kind of thing you had in mind I had not very good examining that. I think that's sort of a standard type. We might start the program by just looking at a couple of very brief ones of that straightforward kind of social protest this first one the first two in fact are the golf links by Sara Cleghorne and factory song by HL Inzi. The golf links the golf links lie so near the mail that

almost every day the working children can look out and see the man play. Then the other poem by the Children's a factory windows are always broken is perhaps less pointed to a specific narrow EVO but primarily toward the same evil that the Cleghorne poem is about factory windows are always broken. Somebody is always throwing bricks somebody is always heaving cinders playing ugly Yahoo tricks factory windows are always broken other windows are let alone no one throws to the chapel window the better snarling derisive stone factory windows are always broken something or other is going wrong something is rotten I think. In Denmark and of the factory windows song. You know there's a curious dated quality in these isn't there. Yes the

class struggle the ideological stance it seems to me that in searching through poetry for. Poems of social protest there's a curious if you look through an anthology particularly as a curious historic sequence where the whole issue was so clear so black and white at one time and then so you come to a poem like Ezra pounds the rest he brings in perhaps for the first time in the historical sequence. The sense of the poet exiled from his society but with a possibility of contributing to that society somehow a positive note in it. I think that perhaps you could say the other kind of poem the golf links the song of the shirt factory windows are always broken really are dated because they are.

Really related to the efforts of the world to adjust to the early part of the Industrial Revolution when poverty was so clear and the evils were so obvious now you know when the children of a laborer are as well dressed as the white collar worker by and large and so whether it's it's pretty hard to make this kind of clear devil and God distinction isn't it. And maybe this poses in other words. I guess what I'm saying is that this throws the put back on other resources which are involved in that. LB I think so I imagine a curious thing is that evils are not so clear they probably exist but are much more obscured. They are not a topic say for very simple ideological poetry. This poem that I'm going to read of Ezra Pound's is certainly not that typical pound poem but it does indicate for example somewhat 20 years ago the cry of the poet toward his society. It's called the rest. Oh helpless few in my country

a remnant enslaved artist broken against her a stray lost in the villages mistrusted spoken against lovers of beauty Star Wars had with systems helpless against the control you who cannot wear yourselves out by persisting to successes you who can only speak who cannot steel yourselves into reiteration. You have the finer sense broken against false knowledge. You who can know it first hand hated shuttin mistrusted. Take thought I have weathered this storm. I have beaten out my exile. Perhaps what really lies behind that is the true nature of the social dilemma for the poet that the industrial revolution now has proceeded to the point where he faces a mechanized world and that is his problem.

A mechanized world which has values which are very anti poetry Yabsley and eye individual and high. Since poetry is somehow the essence of individuality. That poem by Jeffers that you were interested in Seems to me to point perhaps to the to the kind of historical cause and so forth. Yes it does seem as if this is a very contemporary poem Jeffers poem called science man. Introverted man. Having crossed in passage and but a little with the nature of things this latter century has begun. Giants. But being taken up like a maniac with self-love and inward conflicts cannot manage his hybrids being used to deal with the edge less dreams. Now he's bred knives on nature turns them also in would they have thirsty points though

his mind for abodes his own destruction. Acting on who saw the goddess naked among leaves and his hounds tore him a little knowledge a pebble from the shingle. A drop from the ocean. Who would have dreamed this in the middle a little too much. That's a powerful last line the whole poem seems to me to. Evoke the inward dilemma that the poet sees as the cause of outward disharmony. I think probably one of the most wonderful examples in the English language is that poem Marianne Moore. Yes that's an interesting poem I mentioned at the beginning. That one perhaps sees in these social poems a particular dilemma for the poet the poet lives in his society always and there's always a desire to correct that outward condition by outward means. And yet because the poet is an individual because he is essentially

a person of the spirit if you will or his poems come out of the spirit the inward man. He has a suspicion always that the causes are really inward somehow and this is a very interesting point along that line I feel because she does just exactly that she takes perhaps our largest social problem now war and in the end comes to the conclusion that there is was never a war that is not in work. In distrust of meringues strength and to live strength and to die for medals and position victories. They're fighting fighting fighting the blind man who thinks he sees who cannot see that the enslaver is an slave to the hater harmed shining all firm star over to most US ocean lash.

Two small things go as they will the mountainous wave makes us who look no damn lost at sea before they fart or Star of David Star of Bethlehem all black get imperial lion of the large emblem of a risen world to be joined at last be joined. There is hates crown beneath which all is death. There is a lot of those without which none is king. The blasted deeds the last the hail. As contagion of sickness makes sickness contagion of trust can make trust they're fighting in desert sun caves one by one in but talian and squadrons they're fighting that I may yet recover from the diseases my

self so I have it lightly. Some will die man's Wolf to man and we devour ourselves. The enemy could not have made a greater breach in our defenses. One piloting a blind man can escape him. But Job disheartened by false comfort knew that nothing is so defeating as a blind man who can see all our lives who are dead who are proud not to see those small dust of the earth that walks so arrogantly. Trust begets power and faith is an affectionate thing. We vow we make this promise to the fighting it's a promise we'll never hate black white red yellow Jew Gentile untouchable.

We're not competent to make our vows with set jaw they are fighting fighting fighting some we love whom we know some we love but know not. Their hearts may feel and not be known. It killers me or am I what I can't believe in some instance know some and cry these some in Quicksands little by little much by much they are fighting fighting fighting that where there was death. There may be life when a man is prayed to anger or he is moved by outside things. When he holds his ground in patients Haitian patients. That is action or beauty.

The soldiers defense and the hardest arm for the fight. The world's an orphan's home. Shall we never have peace without sorrow without pleas of the dying for help that won't come. All quiet form upon the dust I cannot look and yet I must. If these great patient dying all of these Eigen AIDS and wound bearings under the blood shed can teach us how to live. These dying were not wasted. Hate hardened heart or heart of iron. Iron is iron. Tell it Ross. There never was a war that was not in words. I must fight till I have conquered in myself. What causes war.

But I would not believe it. I inwardly did nothing. Oh Iscariot like crime. Beauty is everlasting and dice is for a time. Marianne Moore certainly performs the function of the poet as prophet in that poem this year she said to me. And the thing is that it's so fundamental to the teachings of every single religion a very simple thing. Love one another. Well it's it's simple to say but I think what the poem demonstrates is the agony of trying to work it out in some kind of personal or practical way you know the tossing that goes back and forth at that point. It cures me suddenly the hope you know the vision of the sacrifice it cures me and then she

knows it really doesn't it. Well it's certainly a perpetual thing I think she says. What is a very fundamental truth that these changes occur like changes in cellular structure one cell at a time through hard work and bitter experience. Certainly history demonstrates that. It is not a sudden transformation. That's true. You know I think this change in the nature of the social protest has had its effect don't you Eleanor. On a literal technique in poem in the way a poem about society sounds and behaves that is in the great poets the poets who created something new. You have that feeling at all very much so I think contemporary poetry particularly does not come out with a crude specific statements kind of cauterizing process of an evil but usually describes it far more emotionally say through the image making through the

sensual. Yes this is the poem by William Carlos Williams called a yacht's ism. I think a very good example of this stating of it symbolically it's almost in a way medieval don't you think very much the way it like the tapestry. You can see it like a tapestry or a painting. Yes I often think of that kind of thing if you don't know what the unicorn means and so whether those tapestries it's all rather a loss. And I think equally here that it's almost like a tapestry the picture is of a bay with yachts contesting in it in a very and all described in very specific and detailed terms in a safe harbor area near to the shore. That's right. Where they don't have to face the blows of the open sea which even the greatest of man's constructs can not withstand at times. If you see them and the yachts as let's say the upper class which it seems to me is what they really are here they're describing all

kinds of terms of I think one of the greatness of the poem he gives the arts everything they deserve they're beautiful they're lovely They're fragile they they're skillful magnificently skillful things and yet I think that the water of the bay is the lower class the people on whom they ride if you will and the horror of a nightmare the end of the poem comes from this terrible and inconclusive grasping at the yobs by this water and their being submerged in the thing which supports them their being dislocated and and scattered in the confusion. Yes. And in the end with the image of the yacht's knifing through the water you get the essential cruelty of one class exploiting another. In short it seems to me an extremely vivid symbolic picture of class struggle. Well I'll see to read this one. The arts By William Carlos

Williams. The yachts contained in the sea which the land partly encloses shielding them from the two heavy blows of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses tortures the biggest holes the best man knows to put against its beating and sinks them piteously moth like in mist has sent a lump in the Minuit brilliance of cloudless days with broad of bellying sails they glide to the when tossing green water from their shark Prowse while over them the crew crawls and like solicitously grooming them releasing and making fast as they turn lean far over and having caught the wind again side by side to head for the mark. In a well-guarded arena of open water surrounded by lesser and greater craft which circle found lumbering and glittering follow

them they appear youthful rare as the light of a happy hour. I live with the grace of all that in the mind is fact less free are naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them is moody lapping their glossy sides as if feeling for some the slightest flaw but fails completely. Today no race then the wind comes again. The arts move jockeying for a start the signal is set and they are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too well made. They slip through though they take in canvas arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows bodies thrown recklessly in the way Arcot aside it is a sea of faces about them and I get me in despair until the harder of the race dawns diagramming the mine the whole see the

common entanglement of watery bodies lost to the world bearing what they cannot. Oh. Broken beaten desolate reaching from the dead to be taken up they cry out failing failing. Their cries rising in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over. Wow. I think we come to a very different kind of poetry when we study the social protest in Wallace Stevens for example. I was fascinated at the subtlety and the contrast between the kind of poetry that we could call social protest but would you really have to dig out to view in this light. I first discovered as I was searching for poems like this a curious series of words describing the society in various poems that could not be described in this way. But every time society contemporary Western society was

described there were such words as flat listless discord and discontent bare monotony and so on. Words in the color spectrum or the actions spectrum of what you might call indifference. I said do you feel all of that in their repetition. They begin to have. Symbolic quality so that again we get what we are talking about in the William Carlos Williams poem a new mode which is perhaps largely symbolic very much so but the thing that's so curious to me Stevens is a very intellectual poet and yet the way he communicates is through the emotion of these words which are like colorizing you look at them and you feel that he did reiterate on your personal objects subjective reactionary much so. So instead of in a sense being an intellectual but he pulls a trick on you a paradox in which you experience emotionally these criticisms of the culture.

For example one of the most I think subtle and delightful ones is in the poem called disillusionment of 10 o'clock every word in this poem including its title is intensely important. This illusion of 10 o'clock. Gives an image of houses all over the country in which there's simply nothing to do but give it all up and go to bed. The vacancy the lack of color the emptiness all of these are demonstrated by contrast of the words that he uses. They also indicates a complete absence of surprise of the unexpected of the strange and only the old sailor comes anywhere close in the society to these various absences that he points out exist. He was the pawn disillusionment of ten o'clock the houses are haunted by a white nightgown

none are green or purple with green rings or green with yellow rings or yellow with a blue ring. None of them are strange with socks of lace and beaded sand. The people are not going to dream of baboons and Perry Winkle only here and there. And old sailor drunk and asleep in his boots catches tigers in red weather. That he said that even the rhythm somehow manages to convey that that sense of. It's really an explosive point you know I'm reminded of that by a couple of lines of Stevens called nudity at the Capitol. One can only assume that there'd been some argument in Washington perhaps some speech by a senator about

some matter of nudity. The person he addresses he calls while in mass which would be excellent for a senator I suppose a woman headed master with all the implications of slavery. Yes and all that. Well the lines simply are but nakedness while in mass are concerns and innermost atoms. If that remains concealed what does the bottom matter. That's a delightful very gently you know Eleanor I'd like to hear you read that Steven's poem called Dr. Love that seems to me to involve so many specifically modern things images of war and so forth and yet it does move into the personal into the eternal problem of man faced with the disharmony of society. Yes that's a very good point. I read that Dr. Love. It is equal to living in a tragic land to live in a tragic time.

Regard now the sloping mountainous rocks and the river that batters its way over stones regard the hovels of those that live in this land. That was what I painted behind the low the rocks not even touched by snow. The pines along the river and the dry men blown Brown is the bread thinking of birds flying from burning countries and brown sand shores birds that came like dirty water and waves flowing above the rocks flowing over the sky as if the sky was a current that bore them along. Spreading them as waves spread flat on the shore one after another washing the mountains bare. It was the battering of drums I heard. It was hunger. It was the hunger that cried in the waves the waves were soldiers moving marching

and marching in a tragic time below me on the asphalt under the trees. It was soldiers went marching over the rocks and still all the birds came came and watery flocks because it was spring and the birds had to come. No doubt that soldiers had to be marching and that drums had to be rolling rolling rolling. And I think there's one more that we might talk about very briefly. Wallace Stevens idiom of the hero. I think this somewhat summarizes of the two things that we've talked about it sort of takes us full turn to the beginning where the poet spoke of aspects of the society against which he protested. He says roughly what the poem by Marianne Moore said in

other terms don't you think. I think so very much. And one line I know that I cannot be mended. I think these latter poems do particularly depend upon and stress the personal responsibility of the individual the poet in this case but really the individual man whom they had dress she'll read it you know a Wallace Stevens idiom of the hero. I heard two workers say this chaos will soon be ended. This chaos will not be ended. The red and the blue house blended. Not ended never and never ended the week and mended the man that is poor at night attended. Like the man that is rich and right the great man will not be blended. I am the poorest of all. I know that I cannot be mended out of the clouds pump of the air by which at least I

am de-friended. You have heard social protest another programme in the series poetry on the American which was produced and recorded by radio station KPFA in Berkeley California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the NEA EBV Radio Network.