a dark unacceptable

Add to that list the poet who
rambles on in stolen dark    a
dark prepared in stark solemnity

a dark unacceptable to the lavish
word    the poem struggles to
breathe    it crosses over and

touches void    and here it
speaks attaches belongs    the
proverbial becoming adversary
—

We live of course in a world not only of commodities but also of representation, and representations—their production, circulation, history, and interpretation—are the very element of culture. In much recent theory the problem of representation is deemed to be central, yet rarely is it put in its full political context, a context that is primarily imperial. Instead we have on the one hand an isolated cultural sphere, believed to be freely and unconditionally available to weightless theoretical speculation and investigation, and, on the other, a debased political sphere, where the real struggle between interests is supposed to occur. To the professional student of culture—the humanist, the critic, the scholar—only one sphere is relevant, and, more to the point, it is accepted that the two spheres are separated, whereas the two are not only connected but ultimately the same.

– Edward Said, “Culture and Imperialism”

 

Why stop the goddess in her tracks?

There is a void in the effluence of
A metaphor broken, a folktale eulogized, a
Myth taken for fact; the earth-yearning
Goddess balks in her tracks – not good.

“Fie then,” it follows. Fie then upon the
Track-stopperers, the metaphor-brokerers.
Refill the jars now, make them reek of
Praise, scream out “the goddess is thus and

Also thus.” You need a thousand and one tales
Of forgiveness for one insolence, you blasphemous
Lout, you un-carer of myth, you track stopperer
You. Counterpoint needs point, dialogue ogue.

Context: This started off as a somewhat serious commentary on the darker aspects of the fallout of the modern quest for identity: when the stories, folktales and songs that have been informing us for millennia have been stultified or forgotten. But then as the poem progresses, it acquires an irreverent tone (in line with one of the functions of folklore as explained by A.K Ramanujan).

Poetics of dissent

Sloughing off inner form,
          The grammar of dissent accedes
          To the howl in the vowel
          But only so much.

Tending to the tender build
          Up of an umptious velocity
          Of will, the preposition
          Proposes the act

Of severing the shill, the
          Bond of a trembling fever
          Of anxious relief; the
          Cymbals can sound 

Out now, the empire stands
          Naked. O root of the
          Predicate, take barbs
          At the conjugal noun!

“Empire follows art and not vice versa” – William Blake