Read Like a Poet Vol. 3
Featuring Tim Seibles & a performance by Saul Williams & Suheir Hammad
What is the point of poetry?
The first time I remember being asked this question was during a class visit with students at the University of Illinois-Chicago during the quarantine days of March or April 2020. I don’t remember the question verbatim, but it was something like, “What is the role of poetry during a time like this?”
Why write or read poetry at a time like this? Poetry can’t stop a bullet. A poem won’t feed a hungry child. What is the point of poetry?
Last week, I attended a performance by Saul Williams and Suheir Hammad accompanied by a jazz band consisting of Laraaji, Carlos Niño, Malick Koly, and Surya Botofasina. I went because Saul Williams is the reason I started writing poetry in the first place. And it had been years since I was able to attend a live performance by Saul.
The performance was incredible. It was mostly improv with the band backing a poetic conversation and meditation between Williams and Hammad. Williams began with a repetition of “600 days”—the number of days since Israel’s latest assault on Gaza. After about 10 minutes, when it became clear that this was the show—an interrogation of our own complicity and a reminder about the atrocities occurring every second of every day—a small number of audience members began to leave. Saul Williams saw this happening and replied, “You may leave, but there is no escape.”
“You may leave, but there is no escape.” That’s the truth.
In one movement of the performance, Saul Williams brings up the question that opens this post. He notes that he’s been asked What can art do?And he answers that by 1877 The Ku Klux Klan was finished as an organization. There were no more active chapters in the United States. Then, in 1915, the movie “Birth of a Nation” is released and not only does the movie mythologize the KKK, but it gives them their costume of white hoods and white robes. Before the movie, the KKK did not wear white robes and white hoods. That was an invention of the movie. Nor did they burn crosses. That was another invention of the movie. So the modern KKK was spurred in huge part by art. That was Williams’s answer. And unsaid, but present, I believe, is that if art can play a role in creating the KKK, if it can spur people to violence, then it can play a role in ending violence. It can spur peace. Art can move people.
At another point, Suheir Hammad quoted W.E.B. Du Bois as saying something akin to “I am not interested in art that is not propaganda. The other side makes nothing but propaganda.”
So, what is the point of poetry? Let me say it plainly here: I hope that poetry offers us an opportunity to wake up. To stop blindly complying. To use the weight of our language against empty consumption. Against imperialism. Against genocide. To insist that we matter to each other.
Thank you to Saul Williams and Suheir Hammad and the incredible musicians that backed their dialogue. Here is this week’s poem by Tim Seibles:
Ladder by Tim Seibles
But look! The churches keep opening
their mouths like trout left to dry in the grass.
And the corporations don’t fall down – see
how they run:
the blue suits, the black robes, and their President
whose brain is a bug rolling dung.
Of course, there’s blood on the money.
The vampires have always
walked among us.
But so have the trees!
The great stalker called commerce
and the Earth’s primordial solo
continue to be the windows
through which we arrive — one by one – naked,
splashing like birdless birds into the air,
almost blind, begging to be fed.
Why? To become this?
These workaday trolls scared of our newspapers,
revved up to buy bigger alarms?
Look how the world rolls around the sun’s gold belly,
how the ocean is so much stranger than its word.
Isn’t everybody still 3/5ths water?
How lonely does a truth have to be
before we bring its blues to our lips?
What we do not sing, what we drown in
not saying —
is already music. And still, we keep
turning from the sound
like two-legged animals all buttoned and zipped
unwilling to recognize this tall ladder of bones
to which we cling briefly with our small teeth.
And because we do not see well into the future
because we are busy taking as much as we can get because
money has infected these days with its prolific germ,
what surrounds us looks like forever
but its not —
just as today’s wind
with its grim whistle and bruise
is only the weather for a little while,
on past the dying edge of the usual
what they said could never be
begins.
I love this poem. I begin with the end.
“just as today’s wind/ with its grim whistle and bruise/ is only the weather for a little while,// on past the dying edge of the usual/ what they said could never be// begins.”
I love the music that begins this section. I love the assonance of “wind/ with its grim whistle.” It’s beautiful music for an ugly image. The end of the poem is a call to imagination. Beyond the every day. Beyond our routines. Everything they said is not possible is, in fact, possible. I love it. Reading the end of this poem feels like drinking a pre-workout. Have you ever had one of those? They make my heart vibrate. I don’t like them. This ending is like that, but in a good way. This poem renews my faith in people and in myself. It challenges me to do and say something and gives me the juice necessary to get into action.
“their President/ whose brain is a bug rolling dung.” LOL those lines were written about George W Bush, but they continue to apply. I love how biting and funny the image is. And more assonance, to boot. Read this poem out loud. See if you can do it without smiling. You can’t.
“What we do not sing, what we drown in/ not saying —// is already music. And still, we keep/ turning from the sound// like two-legged animals all buttoned and zipped”
The image of “two-legged animals all buttoned and zipped” is a classic Tim Seibles image. It is a descriptor for people, but he makes the language strange. The effect it has on me is it forces me to snap out of whatever reading zone I’m in and focus. It reminds me, that even when reading, we can fall asleep. The brain predicts what language is next. If we’re not careful, we can find we’re just looking at the words instead of really reading them.
What is it that we do not sing? What do we drown in not saying? I don’t know, but I know. I feel it. Even if I can’t put language to it. I understand the gesture. The feeling of wanting to express something beyond language and definitely beyond the language of commerce and surviving capitalism is why I sit down to write in the first place. I believe that is some of what is being alluded to here.
That’s all I have for you today. Thank you for spending some time with me. We hit 800 subscribers this weekend. That’s pretty cool. Please consider sharing this substack if you enjoyed it. Or if you hated it.
Next week, I’ll be in Tennessee teaching for Shakerag, but I’ll try to get a post done. Office hours will have to wait until June 18th since I don’t know how strong my internet will be while teaching.
"I understand the gesture. The feeling of wanting to express something beyond language and definitely beyond the language of commerce and surviving capitalism is why I sit down to write in the first place." Love this (whole post).
Hey there.
One thing I have been learning about poetry, within both my reading and writing practice:
.Poetry comes about from the deep and implicit parts of our perceptions. And as you complete the depiction of a theme you never knew you knew, you find that you're audience has related to your confession.
Just as the poem might make the audience uncomfortable to read. It also reminds the poet of the burden he needs to bear, or might have already bor- In order to speak it's truth.