g emil reutter's stunning new collection from Alien Buddha Press, Distance to Infinity is a little red chapbook which will stir the imaginaion and start provoking thought and encouraging ameliorative change before you even open it. For the very subtitle on its cover visible on a table or shelf confronts the reader, citizen and scholar with a bold revelation: "Poets are the voice of the people in times of struggle, times of war, times of oppression", and isn't that the truth! Yet while a shill can be cheaply purchased, credible threats intercepted and turned into controlled opposition who confine their prescriptions to that narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion Chomsky contends debate in a lively manner is permitted exclusively within and relegated to not unlike a 'free speech zone', even so it is rare to locate in any medium or exhibition of creative expression which will be embraced or canonized by the masses or posterity content which does not endorse the causes of fellowship, justice, empathy and understanding, and exceptions to that rule, fluff which does not (looking at you CIA stage-managed abstract expressionism movement, Federal Writer's Project) further integral social and institutional correction should always be scrutinized as highly dubious and suspect.
There are two conflicting schools and viewpoints when it comes to the place of politics in poetry, and it's no great stretch or exaggeration to condemn one (in his principal poem g notes apropos 'the traitors are amongst us') as criminal collaboration, expressly supporting all manner of monstrosity and injustice encoded into our highly problematic status quo and the innumerable errors across history into our tremendously problematic and entrenched present it implicitly supports and condones. For, as national poet laureate Amanda Gorman reminds us, 'all art is political', and Kwame Dawes importantly explains, 'When a poet writes about trees, he is being political [too] both by what he chooses to write about and what he chooses not to write about'. Grace Paley further suggests quite plausibly that 'if a writer says 'this is not political,' it's probably the most political thing that they could be doing.'
Orwell additionally clarified that 'all art is propaganda', and I don't think we should take that necessarily as a criticism (unless it's Triumph of the Will), or in the pejorative sense. For to disrupt and agitate, education, organizing, and encouragement of grassroots, sweeping mobilization is first in order, and literature or its public, economical equivalents in public artworks, placards, trifold brochure (sagaciously Voltaire whispers an aside sotto voce: 'Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It's the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared'), whatever their available equivalents were they played crucial roles in every important social movement of reform and revolt, improvement and abolition throughout history from the dawn of recorded and remembered time.
Just as Pablo Picasso's Guernica tapped into a wellspring of public feelings and the zeitgeist of sentiments of shock and frustration with the horrors of fascism and imperial war, poets from Homer to Pablo Neruda have provided vivid lenses through which the laymen may understand and engage with the distinctive challenges of their day, and there find the seeds of a coarse charted for that long journey homeward towards a better, less fraught and combative future. And while the upper classes may offer more expensive tutelage, laurels and supposed formal accreditation (in the schools of bourgeois thought, philosophy, and praxis) one can always locate more honest, informed, insightful perspectives articulating the everyman and woman's difficulties and yearnings of their day from among their peers in the working classes.
Hence why it is always such a treasured treat and fortunate opportunity when someone from a less privileged background, representing the proletariat and public at large's interests at heart, emerges with great effort improbably to pass along their hard earned wisdom and knowledge. g emil reutter is just such a valuable font of credible subversive mana from below, unearthing troves of treasured constructive critique, and it is fortunate we have the opportunity to reflect upon his revelations thoughtfully as the long and arduous road to 'an endless end' is measured, navigated and by we poor wayfarers cautiously traversed.
I find it so interesting too how some of the keenest, most perceptive voices in the causes of peace and reform, compassion and institutional reimagining come from unexpected backgrounds which afford them unique glimpses into the evils which plague a society from the top trickling down, and the deeply troubling systemic flaws which are hindering their immediate, realistic and possible remedy. Tuskegee Airman put faces, dignity to the civil rights movement, just as Buffalo Soldiers and Navajo code talkers ennobled and vindicated the essential place of people of all colors and creeds within the patchwork of diverse and intersectional america. In the Vietnam war it was returning veterans who truly ratified and proved irrefutable the cries for disarmament, provided chilling testament and firsthand corroboration for the horrors of colonial oppression, and their practice of fragging effectually put an embarrassing end to the atrocity of involuntary conscription. More recently those who served in the middle eastern theater upon returning to ignominious treatment proved integral towards challenging assumptions and the narrative regarding issues of homelessness, addiction, mental health, (our 'flattened cousins' strewn in the gutter which g emil laments in his piece Sweep) and continue to be resounding figures looming large and contributing invaluably to the missions for peace, understanding, and harmony across borders of land and language, and on our own soil no less powerfully.
It's intriguing and highly productive to be gifted a glimpse into the minds and lives of those who spent careers serving and protecting the public as g emil did in his younger years, as that can truly challenge and cut through divisive rhetoric and promote the sort of rainbow coalition and bipartisan solidarity we desperately need as a species and civilization. Some of the best things I've read it recent years curiously originated from colleagues who were employed in law enforcement (Leon Tefft and Tim Roberts have phenomenal recent collections on the subject if you enjoy a haiku) and classical and contemporary poetry and literature both contain no shortage of compassionate progressive personages (from Byron to Archilochos, Camus to Hemingway to Edward Abbey) who draw from wealths of informative adventures to reach their weighty and meaningful conclusions. I have family who worked in uniform and/or served, and in reality you will find no group more frustrated with issues of corruption, desirous of completely reinventing (equitably in a form where they are viewed positively and have a friendly relationship, camaraderie with the public and can wear uniforms with pride, aren't perceived as representing private property alone, cannot be accused of overtly continuing traditions which sprung from practices of slave catching or lining pockets via asset forfeiture, filling informal plantations criminalizing and leasing to bidders marginalized populations) the entire concept, than they in our embattled day and age. Entering the era of increasing demands for divestment and abolition (it's heartening to see, in contrast, with wealthy european republics the state withering as it should, with less inequality and thus associated deviances not resulting prisons being closed and resources, personnel being redirected from chasing robbers to more fulfilling and pleasant activities), there is no demographic who we could better benefit from paying close attention to and including in the conversation (incidentally I highly recommend investigating "the People vs. Billie Holiday" and "Rustin") than they, and I can't recommend enough we take a page out of Fred Hampton's handbook and reject the biased mainstream media and politicians' push to both ostensible ideologic sides and realize we are all brothers and sisters and countrymen and neighbors, and the handful of plutocratic ne'er-do-well keeping us down are not we plebs or those struggling to keep civilization together with duct tape, and if like-minded activists and innovators could win a compassionate accord with the police and military nonviolent amicable inroads towards genuine revolutionary changes and reining in of nefarious abusers might become a legitimate possibility.
Particularly in our unprecedented nadir of the modern era, when free speech and dissent are labeled criminal formally, the news is delivered by thinly veiled state instigators and actors expressly to misinform and befuddle, pit against one another ('hate spew[ing] its volcanic power' as Reutter memorably describes it, which 'somebody is making money' from invariably) the conscientious, caring citizen, it is from the independent observer and advocate, the underground poet and gonzo provocateur or merry prankster whether via podcast (have you heard Super Awkward Funtime?) or self published online journal, you'll find no truth in commercially vetted copy (if you can't be bought and try to Gawker like heroic Hamilton Nolan they will shut you down, again and again and again, and bless the whack-a-moles of insurgency!), on the big screen scripts which were approved by billionaire investors (should you produce a program like Underground they will torpedo your entire network) and passed state and military censors' redacting pens. But from the mouths of plebs, and the pages direct printed via Kindle, a few sparse beacons of hope, sparks of possibility may be discerned.
"There comes a time when silence is not acceptable..." Reutter begins his compact treatise from the premise of. Let us salute him and tip our hats to the brave souls not cowed, subdued or muzzled by increasing pressures to desist and comply. You are the last line of defense against those innumerable wolves ('tricksters' and 'fraudsters' as the author describes them, who are no less prevalently to be found clothed in wool) at our gate, this generation and everyone are indebted to your commitments and sacrifices throughout history into the unfathomable future.
'Restoration will come' g ambitiously projects. Let us hope it does not dally!
