Tip-Off #181 – Doing enough? – by William Green

During her life, poet and essayist Adrian Rich stood among the leading public intellectuals of America. When she passed away in 2012, she became one of the nation’s most respected poets, and was able to know by addressing the political issues of poetry, while maintaining artistic complexity and emotional depth. It was being done.

Rich was famous for her political activities, radical feminism and advocacy for lesbian rights and visibility. Her poetry influenced her politics, but not the other way around. For Rich, this is not just an artistic responsibility, but a timely lesson from an artsy nature, a turbulent time period. Some insights from understanding what it reveals, not analyzing her poem:

Her 1995 collection Dark Fields of the RepublicRich’s opening poem, “What Time Are These?”, presents the theme of the collection and her perception that directness can become impossible. The poem’s title comes from the innovative German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht. Rich offers Brecht’s routes in a memo.

In response to Brecht’s poem, Rich corrects his lines to imply that the poet must argue the trees to attract readers in this age of indifference and irony. As Brecht sees the form of evil and accomplice, rich people change their phos and in modern America, engage in natural images may be the only way to embrace difficult political truths. It suggests that. It’s being ignored. The tree itself conveys the meaning of power, persecution, and resistance. “These are things we learned to see who lives in a troubled area.”

Rich resisted the slogan “Individuals are political” and saw reduction rather than liberation, and personal experiences, including poetry, diminished into mere politics. Instead, she believed that politics and public life should be enriched and expanded by personal experiences and poetic truths. We artificially divide a unified life that is as wasteful as separating my son from the air and separating my existence from the public world that supports it. Even the desert monks remained bound by the larger community of the church in their apparent loneliness.

Our word “idiot” comes from the Greek foolOriginally, it meant someone who refused to participate in public service. A purely private person was, by definition, ignorant. Greece’s understanding was not about the importance of being Related –Today’s virtue–But about doing justice to who we are already. To Aristotle, we are political animals. They are creatures that live, think, grow, choose and decide in relation to others. Just as forests define the nature of trees, human communities and qualities define our political character. We are each other’s destiny.

Poetry helps us rethink the world. From our “suburbs of acquiescence,” Rich urges us to question reality and find beauty in the darkness without succumbing to it. True disparities lie between those who grasp the specific power of language and those who reduce it to formula, not secular, sacred, natural and supernatural. When language becomes stylistic, it becomes a weapon of oppression, exerting empty certainty to enforce submission and truth as partisan clickbait.

The rich declare that we live in a flatland society. Imagination is a product and is the same everywhere. Moscow is in Washington, and Antarctica gift shops sell card t-shirts. Politics is a “rabbit hole” and an endless dead end. This cliche is covered by a poetic sensibility that restores Lewis Carroll’s original vision. Alice’s fallen rabbit hole is not confined, but leads to a world of fantastic possibilities. What appears to be a dead end will demand strange encounters and adaptation of nonsense demands, making it a gateway for self-discovery that brings unexpected insights. Fantasy is a preparation for a crazy world. You have to learn to draw straight with curved lines.

At the height of the Vietnam War, acclaimed author Frederic Buechner was working on his inexplicable novel about a 12th century saint who was trying to overcome the pride of his humility. “When I should be the truth, I write about the pride of a monk,” replied by his friend, the well-known anti-war activist Yale Chaplain William Coffin. “Sit down on your butt and keep writing!”

Adrian Rich would have been praised. The warrior of social justice was first and foremost a poet. She knew what a good poet believed. The world is in chaos. You hit the street when obligations are called. but Don’t forget to “sit on your butt and keep writing.” Excellence is part of the fight for justice.

Sometimes sentimental, she may have added, “The world needs you like you. It’ll get better.”

Notes and reading

“There is a rush to dismiss art that does not bring immediate political consequences. The discomfort that both troubled Plato and both left and right. Knowing that poetry can unleash new possibilities and restore emotions. But I internalized that singular American. Poetry cannot shape society. See Adrien Rich, What’s out there: A Notebook on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition, 2003), “Preface” and “Jacob and the Angel.”

Early Poems Collected: 1950–1970.

The dark fields of the Republic, poetry 1991-1995.

“Storm Warning” – Rich’s first published collection of poems, Changes in the world: Poetry (1951), by wh auden.

Outer: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Melting – Ed Pavlich (2021). Based on their relationship, Publich covers the arc of Rich’s career, showing how she portrays our lives. Intimate– In a shared space, not “owned privacy.” Publich is a renowned research professor at the University of Georgia in English, African American research and creative writing.

. . . Draw straight with curved lines. -Affiliates to various types.

Buechner-Coffin Exchange – From personal conversation.

>Polarization reflects literary ignorance rather than simply “communication failure.”
What is lost when language dies? Was Babel a blessing? -Veronica Esposito, Today’s world literature (March/April 2025) “Language as an evacuee.” -Esposito is a family therapist who was a judge of the 2022 National Award Award for Translation. She is a regular contributor to the respected venue.
cf.Adrien Rich, Dreams of Common Language: Poems 1974-1977.

> Living in ambiguity – “We are the masters of ambiguity. We habitually, not monotonous, but compatible with many interpretations, words and actions that snap into a shared grid that is implicitly and continuously negotiated. ” – Judith Wolf, Theological imagination: Perception and interpretation of life, art, and faith (2024). Chapter 3 – Wolf is a professor of philosophy theology at St. Andrews University.

> cf. “Fascism” of ambiguity: Conceptual accuracy through poetry and music. – Ambiguity and unclear meaning can be a form of its own tyranny. Resistance is doubtful when the truth is made to look permanently uncertain.

Tip Off #180-Timeout

Easy for defense

Approx. 2 + 2 = 5