Kristin Prevallet

I.

As an artist / writer I can’t stop producing (images, words, ideas). Producing is what keeps me alive, connected to other people, and present in the world. And yet if poetry is in tune with shifts of consciousness (the shift, for example, from impulse-consumerism to reflective consumerism that takes the environment into account), it’s reliance on the production of paper objects is worthy of analysis and critique.

In her essay “Poetry, Ecology, and the Production of Lived Space,” Laura Elrick begins the work of questioning poetry’s untouchable association with the production of books and objects. She quotes Charles Olson who wrote, “What we [poets] have suffered from, is manuscript, press, the removal of verse from its producer and it’s reproducer, the voice.” But like Olson Elrick is not proposing that poets and artists stop producing. Rather, she proposes a renewed focus and attention on “the spaces we inhabit” because poetry is not exclusively a “textual practice.”

But by this I don’t mean to propose a return to speech or a poetics of breath per se, but rather to suggest a possible grounding of poetics in spatial practices that challenge the “nature” of capitalist space, a practice that rejects the separation of our bodies from the spaces we inhabit…

… I would like to suggest here a further possibility for poetry—the exploration of what Henri Lefebvre has called “rhythm analysis,” which would investigate “spatio-temporal rhythms of nature as transformed by a social practice.” Such a poetry would not engage in descriptions of space, nor in the classical musicality of the individual breath or line. Rather, it would … develop the non-formal knowledge of the body, while becoming conscious that “the whole of (social) space proceeds from the body…”

Poetry, in other words, is not separated from the body of the poet who wrote a poem; nor is it separated from the pen, the paper, the binding, and the circuits of production that contributed to the production of those things. Poetry is therefore not exempt from the causal shifts that are happening in the world, in particular, what economist John Bellamy Foster calls the necessity of a “’moral revolution’ that would incorporate ecological values into our culture (44).”

Dale Smith has theorized “slow poetry“ as the momentum guiding poetic production as we face what Rick Doblin calls “the tipping point.”

Smith writes:

Production is not limited to texts, but is viewed as a socio-spiritual practice that helps prepare audiences for ways of looking at poetry and the context of the world(s) in which texts may eventually arrive. SP also stresses the necessity of slower consumer practices, preferring close readings to quantitative ones. SP values individuals as key motivating forces of poetic agency. That is, while systems or networks may influence how power is distributed, at each point, poets make rhetorical decisions about their work, determining the context and means of engagement.

I take this to mean the necessity for me to “show up” as a writer (not just on the page, but as a poet in the world). In other words, time to reflect on what I am doing and how I’m contributing to the “treadmill of production” that, Bellamy Foster acknowledges, mechanizes almost everyone. As John Tipton writes, “Time to stop and think for a minute before we pick up our pencils.”

Rather than a lame gesture, stopping to reflect is, I think, what Ethan Nichtern of the Interdependence Project calls “the psychology of ecology.”

There are the “outside” things we think we can do to save the world: recycle, eat raw food, build solar houses, renew energy, etc. But there is an internal shift that must happen as well …the internal landscape of consumption—the subtleties of our state of mind as we attempt to change our patterns.

… Interdependence invites us to expand our awareness and to bear witness to the complex network of conditioning that produces each of our habitual actions, as well as the larger context of outcomes produced by our lifestyle choices. As ignorant participants in complicated processes of global production and consumption, we have had precisely this contextual awareness stripped from us.

And just because we create texts and objects that critique the market economy (by not selling enough to make a profit) poets are not exempt from cycles of consumption and production. Is the work we produce and produce, publish and publish, linked to the same treadmills of production that are ruining the planet? As beings interested in language acts (productive and gestural), it’s important that we not be “ignorant participants in complicated processes of global production and consumption.” Important that we not consider ourselves exempt.

If, as Elrick suggests, “the whole of (social) space proceeds from the body” then interjecting my body (foregrounded over my voice) has the potential of opening up the poem to a larger discursive field. In other words: spatially inhabit the poem instead of reading it out loud. This means opening the space of the poetry reading to an experience that takes language off the page, into the body, and beyond the breath, and into the emotional presence of the audience (keeping in mind the possibility that disdain and aggravation are possible responses.)

II.

No Afterlife – Numbers was a week long performance / action enacted at Naropa University, July 4th weekend 2008. It continually shifted and changed throughout the week. Some shifts that occurred (for me in any case) were:

1) The context shift:  My book I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time is an elegiac essay about my father’s death and I wanted to read from it. Shift the expectations of an audience at a poetry reading by interrupting the reading to layout an American flag, carefully sculpt three mounds of dirt onto it, and finally place three blocks with numbers onto each mound. Kneel for a moment or two, and then scream. Shift poetic language into an action.

2) The shift of public space: On July 4^th the Great Lawn behind Naropa is where everyone comes to watch the fireworks. I
extended an invitation for anyone to join me in a procession. Slowly walk the periphery with the flag wrapped around the compost. Three people each holding one of the blocks of numbers. After walking the periphery, find under a tree  to set up a memorial.

3) The shift of idealism: Even in Boulder, CO, this didn’t last long. About 15 minutes later the police informed me that there were complaints about my use of the flag as “antiwar protest” and that they would confiscate it if I didn’t remove it immediately. So, another slow procession to collect the memorial and place it under a sycamore tree on the Naropa grounds where it remained for five days.

4. The shift into a Work of Art: In order for the memorial to not be confused with Naropa’s own position, they asked me to write an artist statement. I guess it’s safer when categorized as an “art” project. I wrote:

This is a memorial created by a citizen. It is a memorial to the dead, and a memorial to the flag which has been desecrated not by me, but by the war in Iraq. The flag is being buried along with the dead because I want the symbol of the flag to hold mourning as fiercely as it does patriotism.

The following week I was informed that people had complained and so Naropa confiscated the flag because it had been desecrated. (Note that I bought the flag from Boulder’s Goodwill — draped over a suitcase.) They turned it over to the local veteran of foreign wars post, who sent it off for ceremonial disposition. It makes me happy to think that the flag had such a remarkable journey through the many interpretations of its symbol.

So, was this a successful thought experiment? Did I, as Smith writes, “disrupt systems of thought, bring reflection to habitual patterns of action, and extend capacities in audiences to help show other modal perceptions of the world where ideological conflicts erupt?”  It’s bold to imagine that poetry can be integrated into system of cause and effect at this level. But certainly I can shift the interface through which my poetry is received. I found this to be a good exercise in putting theory into practice – not for the long term effects, but as preparation for the gradual mental shift we’re all confronting in different ways.

(This post is an edited version of “Practicing Slow Poetry” published in Big Bridge’s gallery of responses to Slow Poetry by Dale Smith.)