What Kind of Times Are These

Was sind das für Zeiten, wo

Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist

Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!

(Bertolt Brecht, "An die Nachgeborenen"; Brecht reads it here)

What kind of times are these, when

A conversation about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many atrocities!

(Bertolt Brecht, "To Those Born Later," my translation)

The "conversation about trees" that Brecht refers to in this poem from the 1930s has often been associated with poets who were then writing about nature rather than about the "atrocities" taking place even before the Second World War began. In this (entirely justified) reading, Brecht is setting up an apparently exclusive alternative: write about nature, or write about politics.

Adrienne Rich's 1991 poem "What Kind of Times Are These" (video here) takes up Brecht's imagery directly both in its title (a translation of "Was sind das für Zeiten") and in its concluding lines:

… why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

Brecht addresses "those born later"; in contrast, Rich addresses her contemporaries: those readers or listeners who "still listen." This first phrase seems like praise of the addressee, but what follows has a critical edge: "talking about trees" is a lure that is "necessary" to get "you" to listen at all. In a reading of these lines in terms of the reading of Brecht sketched above, a "conversation about trees" becomes a way for a poet to trick someone into thinking about "atrocities" rather than a way of avoiding doing so. Writing poetry about nature, here, does not exclude writing poetry about politics; in fact, "in times like these," only poetry about nature can engage the listener in such a way as to get poetry about politics heard at all.

Unlike Brecht, who mentions trees only once, and only indirectly ("a conversation about trees" and not the trees themselves), Rich actually does write about trees. In keeping with the poem's conclusion, the first stanza already makes a move from trees to politics:

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

Rather than politics in general, this is a history of a "revolutionary" politics engaged in by "the persecuted." It is also a history of failure: the path of the revolution "breaks off into shadows"; the "meeting-house" for the revolutionaries was "abandoned." In this light, the odd formulation that "the grass grows uphill" makes sense: the revolution is an uphill battle with many setbacks and many obstacles.

The obstacles to revolution include the atrocities referred to by Brecht. The "disappearance" of South American leftists during the 1970s and 1980s may only hover in the shadows of Rich's first stanza, but the idea of someone "being disappeared" by the authorities appears explicitly at the end of her second stanza:

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

The reference to a "Russian poem" comes quite unexpectedly; is it the "mushrooms" or "the edge of dread" that is supposed to make it necessary to insist that we "not be fooled"? Along with her use of Brecht's poem for her title, Rich's note to the poem includes another reference: the juxtaposition of "truth" and "dread" echoes the conclusion of W.S. Merwin's translation of a poem by Osip Mandelstam: "the earth’s moving nearer to truth and to dread." It's not the mushrooms that might have been "Russian," then, but the "dread." 

So this is not Russia, where Mandelstam was "disappeared"; nor is it a South American military dictatorship whose actions led to the coining of the transitive sense of "disappear" (usually in the passive voice as "Jorge was disappeared last week"). For some American readers, all the words describing this "place between two stands of trees" might well have pointed to such an "elsewhere," a country whose distance from the reader's own makes it easy to condemn. But this is "not somewhere else but here"; this is "our country," which we readers cannot distance ourselves from.

Still, the poem does not name the country in question. The author's name and biography tell us to think of it as the United States, and that specificity is very important to her work. At the same time, the lack of specificity is important to the poem itself, because it does not allow non-American readers to distance themselves from their own countries' atrocities, their own societies' "ways of making people disappear."

In the third stanza, Rich makes her lack of specificity explicit by refusing to identify the place in question:

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

If Rich told us where this "paradise" is, the specificity would relieve anyone from "somewhere else" of responsibility for the "disappearances" the poem refers to. But this refusal to identify the place also protects it from capitalist exploitation, even if the attempt to do so has already failed, just like the revolutions that left the "ghosts" behind at the "crossroads." After all, if she knows who is going to "buy it, sell it, [and] make it disappear," then her concealment of the location of this place will not actually protect it from "development."

For Brecht, a poem "about trees" is a poem that is explicitly not about politics and "atrocities." Rich implies that a nature poem can be a way to draw people into a consideration of politics. But in this third stanza, she makes clear that a poem "about trees" can also be quite explicitly political. The first two stanzas understand politics in terms of revolution and political history; this third stanza criticizes how capitalism aims to turn everything into a commodity to be bought and sold; in the process, the small "paradises" that can be found in out-of-the-way places are "disappeared."

This reading of the last line of the stanza in terms of political economy can be complemented by an "environmentalist" reading. By the late 20th century, after all, it had become clear that "a conversation about trees" might well involve speaking about "atrocities," as landscapes all over the world are destroyed in the name of economic progress. In this light, Rich's poem completely overturns Brecht's stark distinction between nature poetry and political poetry. Nature is not just a tool to get people to think about politics, as the final stanza implies with its variation on Brecht. In fact, nature itself, commodified and potentially "disappeared," is already as much a site of politics as any "revolutionary road" or "meeting-house" for "the persecuted." 

Feminists in the 1970s insisted that "the personal is the political," and much of Rich's most famous poetry explores the implications of that claim, which challenged the idea of the private sphere as an apolitical space. "What Kind of Times Are These" extends this challenge by implying that "the environmental is also the political." And it demonstrates how a "political poetry" can address the full range of politics while still being a poem "about trees."

Electing the Assassin-in-Chief

Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.

(Tom Englehardt)

As far as drone attacks and civil liberties are concerned, it does not matter who wins the election in November: Obama's policies have either continued or extended those of his predecessor (which means he explicitly broke promises he made while campaigning), and neither he nor Romney will reassert the civil liberties that the "war on terror" has at best limited and at worst eliminated. If you're looking for a way to choose between the two, you'll have to look somewhere else.

For me, this means voting for Obama (health care and same-sex marriage being two issues where the choice is clear). I don't see this as a "lesser of two evils" approach to voting. That rhetoric only applies if you expect one of the two candidates to be "good" rather than "evil," but the point is not a moral issue to be seen in black-and-white terms. Rather, it is a consideration of which candidate supports which policies that you support, and then weighing them in the balance. Since Obama and Romney are part of the "war on terror" consensus of American politics, there's nothing to weigh when it comes to that issue.

But supporting Obama in general does not mean I will stop criticizing him on civil-liberties issues and drones. He deserves to be condemned for the policies he has implemented  in these areas, even if I am under no illusion that anything will change along those lines in 2013 ... I wish I had the slightest reason to be optimistic, but significant numbers of "my fellow Americans" (oh no, I sound like Reagan) will have to begin to challenge the government on these issues. Despite the 99% idea, that's not going to happen soon.


UPDATE: Garry Wills provides good reasons for thinking there's more to this election than I've suggested. It would be more convincing if his argument at least addressed the fact that Obama's war footing also serves the "plutocracy" that he is justifiably critical of.

Gullible Dolts?

The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit, writes Charles Simic in "Age of Ignorance."

But I wonder about how his discourse comes across to those who hold the beliefs he condemns as examples of ignorance (see the list at the end of the article, including "Global warming is a hoax"). They will most likely see him as yet another liberal elitist (like me, presumably) who is talking down to them and not treating them with respect.

As an American living abroad who has little contact with the kinds of people who hold such opinions, I wonder about how I would talk to them if I did have contact with them. Simic tries so hard to say "we" throughout the essay when he talks about who is being "ignorant." But at the end of the essay, even that approach breaks down: "Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest." I know for myself that I react very negatively when people suggest that I am being duped in some way (say, by acting like I am a fool for not agreeing with them that vaccination is a bad thing); I can imagine that such a remark will simply end any chance of conversation.

Still, Simic is right: the ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state is a gullible dolt. But the real problem here is not the production of gullible dolts; it is the cycle of political corruption.

Cleanse Song

See the new pyramids down in old Manhattan
From the roof of a friend's I watched an empire ending

Bright Eyes, "Cleanse Song"

A few months ago, I was listening to Bright Eyes, as I was obsessively doing at the time, and up came "Cleanse Song," a beautiful ballad from their album Cassadaga. While I love the song, I had to differ with Conor Oberst about the above lines: it was not the end of an empire. Nor was it the beginning, of course. It was an opportunity for the leaders of the empire to reassert and even vastly expand their empire's reach, both abroad and, especially, at home.

No Need for Due Process

In this column on October 3, 2011, Glenn Greenwald included a link to a White House Press Conference with Press Secretary Jay Carney, which I recommend that you watch:



Kudos to Jake Tapper of ABC News for asking the important questions. I would say "non-kudos to Carney," but he's just doing his job. The real "non-kudos" have to go to the President.

As Tapper asks, what would "Constitutional Law Professor Barack Obama" say about how President Barack Obama is handling the Constitution? And all American citizens and residents should be asking themselves, "Do we want to live in a country where the President can order people to be executed without trial?" If even a large minority, let alone a majority, answers that question with "Yes," that is a very sad state of affairs.

One thing that I think should be made as clear as possible about this sad state of affairs: in the end, it's not about ordering the assassination of an American citizen. That's just an extra turn of the screw. The real problem is the President reserving the right to order the assassination of anybody anywhere.

UPDATE: Here's a more recent Greenwald column about how people get put on the list for assassination. As Greenwald puts it:

Seriously: if you’re willing to endorse having White House functionaries meet in secret — with no known guidelines, no oversight, no transparency — and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support?

Theories of the Mainstream

No mainstream, whether literary, artistic, or political, has any need to come up with a theory to explain itself. Theory is necessary to explain things that do not go without saying, and mainstreams cannot even see that they have assumed that they go without saying.

From the inside of the political mainstream, radicals appear in need of explanation, but the inside is that which does not need to be explained. A generation later, the old mainstream does require explanation, and hence theory and historical analysis. As a result, the contemporary mainstream can be quite critical of its historical antecedents, but the idea of turning such critiques upon itself remains unthinkable.

This can also be applied to poetry: the contemporary mainstream reads the Modernists, not the poets who were the mainstream back then.

[Revised version of comments on this post by John Gallaher.]

Claudia Roth Pierpont's "Black, Brown, and Beige" is a review of several recent books about Duke Ellington, but it concludes with an image of Charles Mingus that brought tears to my eyes:

Two years before Ellington died, in 1972, Yale University held a gathering of leading black jazz musicians in order to raise money for a department of African-American music. Aside from Ellington, the musicians who came for three days of concerts, jam sessions, and workshops included Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams, and Willie (the Lion) Smith. During a performance by a Gillespie-led sextet, someone evidently unhappy with this presence on campus called in a bomb threat. The police attempted to clear the building, but Mingus refused to leave, urging the officers to get all the others out but adamantly remaining onstage with his bass. “Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain’t strong enough to kill this music,” he was heard telling the police captain. (And very few people successfully argued with Mingus.) “If I’m going to die, I’m ready. But I’m going out playing ‘Sophisticated Lady.’ ” Once outside, Gillespie and his group set up again. But coming from inside was the sound of Mingus intently playing Ellington’s dreamy thirties hit, which, that day, became a protest song, as the performance just kept going on and on and getting hotter. In the street, Ellington stood in the waiting crowd just beyond the theatre’s open doors, smiling.

Who else but Mingus would have come up with an act like that? Well, maybe Charlie Haden, who dedicated "Song for Che" to freedom fighters in Angola and Mozambique while performing in Lisbon in 1971. See here for his version of the story.

Astonishing Confidence in the Self

In Mark Lilla's recent article on the Tea Partiers in the New York Review of Books, he comes up with one of his wonderful summations of a situation:

The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing—and unwarranted—confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers.

But I would add that these "new Jacobins" are not just American, as I have seen the same combination of public pessimism and private optimism in Switzerland as well. Many Swiss are just as skeptical of public institutions as Americans are (especially of what they call "Schulmedizin," that is, mainstream medicine) and just as optimistic about their own perceptions of the world ("the homeopathic treatment worked for me"). So while Lilla has perhaps correctly diagnosed the Tea Partiers here, he has limited the scope of his observation too much: what he identifies as "classic American traits" may once have been uniquely or at least especially American, but they have gone global as well—or at least Swiss. (Or does this have something to do with democracy?)

Perhaps someone will say, "Well, Andrew, what about your own 'astonishing confidence' in yourself?" But I am not skeptical about public institutions, and I try to understand my own experience as anecdotal (no matter how fun or funny the anecdotes are) and not representative of how people are and how the world is.

The Rule of Law at work

Here's how Glenn Greenwald summarizes this case:

Najibullah Zazi was charged in a civilian court with plotting to blow up subways in New York City, was given a lawyer, was Mirandized, was not sent to Guantanamo, was not subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques," and was not put before a military commission. Today, he pled guilty, ensuring he will spend much of the rest of his life in prison, and is fully cooperating in an attempt to secure leniency in sentencing.

Too bad about all those guys who can't be tried because the rule of law was NOT followed.

Krugman on right-wing terror

Paul Krugman's op-ed is worth taking seriously:

Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.

If we're going to have laws that define certain crimes as terrorism and hence worthy of more serious punishment, then we should apply them to American terrorists of the right. As Lindsay Beyerstein suggests, Operation Rescue might well be a terrorist organization according to the terms of the Patriot Act and other recent laws:

The feds will probably stop short of investigating Tiller's murder as a terrorist attack. That designation would unleash vast federal powers to investigate large swathes of the radical anti-choice movement and hold accountable anyone who gives them the slightest aid and comfort. The feds are simply not prepared for the political fallout that would ensue if, say, Operation Rescue were officially designated as a terrorist organization.

Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama

This picture was in the International Herald Tribune this morning and it almost made me cry. There's Obama, and he's really going to be President in 12 days. It was the first time since election night that the full impact of that fact hit home again. I felt like Jesse Jackson, moved by the whole thing once again.

The truth about teens and sex

That's the title of this article by Ellen Goodman, whose narrow focus is the effect (or lack thereof) of abstinence pledges on the sexual activity of teenagers, but whose broader point is that politically-motivated programs that are demonstrably ineffective should be discontinued!

I also like the amusing way she connects New Year's resolutions and abstinence pledges by pointing out that the latter are about as likely to be successful as the former.

She also mentions that Sarah Palin is for abstinence pledges—which did not keep her daughter from getting pregnant, of course.

All this reminds me of this article from a recent New Yorker, "Blue Sex, Red Sex," which develops similar points in greater depth. One point I had meant to quote from the article but forgot to is this:

Symbolic commitment to the institution of marriage remains strong there, and politically motivating—hence the drive to outlaw gay marriage—but the actual practice of it is scattershot.

Dead people voting

This cartoon from the New Yorker in November made me wonder how many people who voted early were dead by Election Day. Shouldn't the Republicans have been up in arms about that? Did Obama's grandmother vote for him before she died the day before the election?

*

Some people are disappointed by Obama already, and he's not even in office yet! I'd rather be disappointed by Obama than surprised by McCain any day.

National Disaster

From TPM:

Obama's poll numbers are up to 79/18 approve/disapprove, prompting CNN's Bill Schneider to quip: "That's the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush Administration was a national disaster."

More Obama photos

Here's a great set of photos of Obama during the campaign, from the Boston Globe website.

Not enough marriages in CA now

I would have been amused by the irony of this article in the Herald Tribune this morning (from the Times), if I weren't so upset about the passage of Prop. 8 in California: "Demise of Same-Sex Weddings Disheartens Business."

Obama's Slideshow

Anyone excited about Obama's election should check out the slideshow that has been posted on the Obama Flickr page!

Le Roi des Cons

I wanted to find Georges Brassens doing this himself, but I couldn't find one on Youtube of an original performance by him. But this is close enough for this week (the Tonton Georges Trio): Obama proved that you can "dethrone the king of fools"!

Election Poetry

The Times published five poems for the election, on the opinion page. The McClatchy poem was in the International Herald Tribune. I hope they continue to publish poems!

I've only skimmed the poems, but their different approaches made me wonder about how they might be received by those who do not otherwise read poetry. Since I do read poetry regularly, the poems are all in styles that are relatively familiar to me, but I can imagine that August Kleinzahler's poem will leave a lot of people who do not read contemporary poetry shaking their heads!

Inside Straight

On Tuesday morning, William Kristol wrote in the Times about McCain's chances: "It’s an inside straight. But I’ve seen gamblers draw them."

The metaphor was not quite right, though. Drawing an inside straight means you've got AKJ10 and you cut the Q, say. But McCain was only holding the Ace and the Ten, and he would have to draw the Jack, the Queen, and the King.

I can't help quoting the Dead here:

Everybody's bragging and drinking that wine
I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines
Come to daddy on an inside straight
Well I got no chance of losing this time

And that song is called ... "Loser."