The basic savagery of the White Poets Society
[to be solemnly chanted with heavy accent]:
Then they had Aesthetics, then they had a Canon.
They could not Stop from their Ethos of Oppression.
Then I saw America, dressing in all White,
Settling through the West with a Blinding Light.
[end with a philosophic pause]
Harriet Monroe, in her Introduction to Vachel Lindsay's 1915 volume The Congo and Other Poems wrote: "They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and audience, which may make possible once more the assertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art."
The "They" in my revision of the chorus of Lindsay's "The Congo" (a poem that you need to listen to to fully experience) and in the above passage from Monroe, refers to the White Poets Society, a not so secret multi-national society of white poets who aim to assert primitive and occult creative powers. Different branches of this society are also known as Whitman, New Criticism, Modernism, Postmodernism, Confessionalism, and many many more. You can watch them perform here.
While a present day White Poets Society member like Tony Hoagland is quite different than Vachel Lindsay, it's not surprising that Lindsay's "Fat black bucks" pounding the table and stamping their feet become re-articulated in Hoagland's Vondella Aphrodite. And clearly, Hoagland's poem tries to elicit "primitive sympathies" between white artist and white audience (remember, he said he writes for "his tribe") by trafficking in dirty stereotypes. And no doubt he exhibits "primitive creative power" because his poem sounds like it was written by Early White Man.
Then they had Aesthetics, then they had a Canon.
They could not Stop from their Ethos of Oppression.
Then I saw America, dressing in all White,
Settling through the West with a Blinding Light.
One of my favorite responses to the Rankine & Hoagland debate is an essay by Major Jackson, titled "A Mystifying Silence: Big and Black." Yes, I know, the Jackson essay was published in 1997 but if you didnt notice the theme of this debate for many is "rehashing." Anyhoo, Jackson's essay examines many poems about black people written by white poets (apparently Jackson collects these kinds of poems):
Thus far, white poets have been content to: populate their poems with people of color (see Elizabeth Bishop's "In a Waiting Room"); exoticize and extol the virtues of ethnic life and so-called "primitive" cultures (see Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo" or any number of Jazz poems written by white poets); make passing presumptive and ostracizing remarks about nonwhites (see Tony Hoagland's "Poem in Which I Make the Mistake of Comparing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washerwoman"); or cunningly profit from the loaded meanings and connotative power black and other dark-skinned peoples have come to signify in white readers' imagination (see John Berryman's Dream Songs and many works of literary art by American writers). Contemporary poets replicate some of the same strategies but also are beginning to frame contemporary situations, map new emotional and psychic terrain as well as aesthetic approaches to discuss difference in this country and for us as a public readership to take delight in, to debate and argue.
Why do some white people write like this? Is it the nature of their Basic Savagery? Jackson concludes: "Many white contemporary poets do not have black friends."
I am only kidding. He does write that, but I'm quoting it out of context. Actually, Jackson sees a lack of contemporary white poets writing race, and he thinks it would a good thing if there were more (be careful what you ask for [enter tony hoagland]! Jackson concludes for real:
"It bears repeating again: for us to actualize as a country whose ideals and documents profess the value of a diverse ethnic and racial populace, we must begin to pen a body of poems that go beyond our fears and surface projections of each other to a fuller account of the challenges and reaches of an ever-evolving democracy."
And by "ever-evolving democracy," Jackson of course means "ever-consuming capitalist imperialism."
Then they had Aesthetics, then they had a Canon.
They could not Stop from their Ethos of Oppression.
Then I saw America, dressing in all White,
Settling through the West with a Blinding Light.
[note: a great discussion of The Congo can be heard here on PoemTalk]
Last commentator in paradise