Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

Certain aspects of desire were regimented (often at great personal cost) in the
service of an organization devoted to greed. Communism proposes a greater
justice in dividing up the booty, but it too is profoundly progressivist. What
was repressed and is still effectively repressed is in fact obvious: the finitude of
the earth.
For a very long time in the West we tried to base knowledge on the notion of
infinitude. The critique of that notion has left art almost totally befuddled and
trivial.
Let us begin with the finitude of the earth. This seems fairly secure knowledge,
the grounds for a new epos. Over a century ago, John Ruskin wrote:
"The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished form
the bastard science, as medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from
astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that
lead to life, and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to
destruction."
How, Charles, do we get it all out of the poetry workshops?