Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Paul Hoover
Subject: politics
Glad to see Ron’s post re: Exile on Main Street. There certainly is no "out" and
you don’t have to be Marxist to see it. I had the pleasure to hear a lecture by
Amiri Baraka yesterday: "So that since the U.S. is an imperialist country, with
a monopoly capitalist economic base, the institutions raised on that base, as
well as the philosophies expressed within them, are in the main expressions of
imperialism." The only thing that matters is the economic base, and without the
moderating influence of a competing morality such as the church or local
community, our economic life is focused on selfishness. It is in the interest of
consumerism, therefore, to destroy traditional values including religious and/or
ethnic values ("peasant traditions" in WCW’s "For Elsie"). Relativism and
indeterminacy (and alas the well-meaning avant-garde) apparently collaborate
in this.
Like Lew Daly (apparently), I was raised in a German pietist tradition that
argued against material possession and chose separation from the world. This
separation worked primarily on the symbolic level, since inevitably one must
trade with "Das English" as the early Brethren & Amish called them. My
interest in poetry derives from that background. Good works, if not
transcendence, through writing. But the desire for fame and office brings
dominance back in, and we become little imperialists. Baraka was wonderful to
hear and full of satiric fire. But the talk was given in an institutional setting (my
working-class arts college in Chicago) on a grant from the Lilly Foundation and
his fee for the day was $5,000. We all work out of an economic base that
extends to poetic value. Inevitably, one poet is perceived to be "worth more"
than another. Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey rise; someone else falls. We
are currency, and what else is new?
It is possible to interpret multiculturalism as further ghettoization funded by the
MacArthur and other foundations; it is masked, however, as "community
building." Their goal is to bring enough marginal people into the high-tech
middle class that revolution will not seem necessary. Meanwhile, as Andrei
Codrescu wrote in a recent essay, the real revolution, the triumph of global
capitalism, continues apace.
The American peasant, Williams saw in horror, has no traditions. Except
perhaps his/her "television heritage."