Coincidance - Principia Discordia

THE POET AS
DEFENSE EARLY WARNING
RADAR SYSTEM
The following article is not just "about" Allen
Ginsberg, whom I regard as our major living
American poet. It is also "about" my concept of
what a writer should be doing with his or her
talent in a world like this.
Forty years ago, Ezra Pound made his celebrated boast of the social
function of art: "The artist is the antenna of the race, the barometer and
voltmeter." Allen Ginsberg* is nothing if not contemporary. He brings the
boast up to date with a stunning effectiveness:
I am the Defense Early Warning Radar System
I see nothing but bombs
These lines are typical of Ginsberg's unpolished-looking verse. He seems
to work in poetry the way Rouault worked in paint: hacking his way
savagely, with crude and sweeping strokes, toward an image of maximum
ferocity. Look at Rouault's "Three Judges," those faces of moronic evil
plastered on the canvas as if in rage and colored with the darkest, smeariest
*Kaddish and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg. City Lights Books, 1961,100 pages.
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