Independence Day Celebration in Centre Square, Philadelphia, by John Lewis Krimmel, 1819
“…rather these question marks arise when the human condition is so improved and ameliorated that the inevitable mosquito bites of body and soul are found to be altogether too gruesome and gory, and in the poverty of their experience of actual pain, people will even take being troubled by ideas to be suffering of the highest order.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyous Science trans. R. Kevin Hill
This essay is a reflection on the current crises and my own proposed approach to handling them positively. I also attempt to offer some meaning to them while keeping within the tradition of American constitutional liberty. I also invite the reader into my own experiences.
If the reader is adverse to controversial ideas that challenge prevalent assumptions, then I suggest passing on this personal essay. I plan to shake assumptions concerning the direction of the United States and talk about things that matter and how our country and culture are reckoning with them.
Trump emerged as a Black Swan President in 2016, completely shattering liberal hopes of the first female president. Most of his supporters were white, seen as uneducated rednecks and put on display for ridicule. He was the anti-immigrant candidate, the one saying that “bad, bad hombres” were crossing the border. He told us that he could shoot someone on the street and his constituents would still love him, demonstrating a casual arrogance found in every other politician we have come to know. What makes him different?
President Trump is an arrogant man who has courted authoritarian regimes of various stripes including North Korea, India, and even the Russian government is pleased to have him in power. This could signal a global paradigm shift in power relations altogether. Trump is not the problem, but he is the response. By reflecting the face of Caliban back to our souls, he leads us to think on matters of importance.
After President Obama created the Syrian refugee crisis with the aid of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, what sort of leadership was needed to counteract the ensuing instability? Bernie Sanders suggested importing thousands of people as climate refugees and writing a blank check to cover expenses of an increasing welfare state. Even the controversial Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who this writer admires) suggests major changes in fiscal policy guided by Modern Monetary Theory. Infrastructure needs dire improvement as it crumbles. What better time to create something entirely new from the old patterns?
Let’s also talk about injustice. How we have treated others historically. How we continue to marginalize people. Why are we only now reckoning with our own hideous reality that we created?
Society needs a culture to help it identify itself. It requires art, both commercial and fine arts. It requires attitudes and stereotypes to fit our lazy thinking habits. It requires political economy, adjustments to government and its relations to industry. A country is a thing much larger than itself.
Nationalism, a word I have often despised, means what a country identifies as should be held at high value by its citizens. Pride in one’s country is not inherently exclusive. Critics of the United States on the left have offered a great number of reasons to reconsider our global supremacy. Post-globalization society will be much different; it will need to be strong and fit to survive, but it will require openness. It will need to be robust, but multicultural. Open criticism helps us adapt to growing cultural pressures.
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July 4th, Independence Day, is a celebration of the penning of the Declaration of Independence which declared the 13 colonies of America separate from the tyranny of British monarchial rule. Later the founders were to establish a new government after coming short with the Articles of Confederation.
In creating a stronger central power capable of collecting revenue to pay the debts of the Revolutionary War, the United States engaged in a radically new political mode of being in the world. After centuries of European wars over religion, the Enlightenment sought to empower the individual and empirical science. The ideas of the Enlightenment from thinkers such as Rousseau, Locke, Voltaire, and others established a new precedent which emboldened culture and science.
The founders were familiar with these ideas. After rational debates concerning the new government, the United States Constitution as we know it was written. The ideals presented of rational discussion, free speech and assembly, not only founded this majestic country, but were the very staples of its founding. Free press was established to help circulate ideas. Common Sense by Thomas Paine was a leading factor in persuading the colonists so free press was also beneficial to the American Revolution. These ideals are something to make us exceptionally proud.
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This writer is a left-libertarian when it comes to ideology, but we must look beyond ideas. The metamodernists convey that reality and text are different things, but not mutually exclusive. How we conceive ourselves matters. With Donald Trump in the White House, a man who has shady dealings in the past as everyone does, a political outsider whose rhetoric is extreme but powerfully honest, a reality TV host who admittedly has helped our culture decline into laziness, we have come to firmly reckon with not just our history but our present as well. There has never been more open, honest discussion in the public domain as now. I see people defying the conventions that have long held them down. Ideology is an enemy, a bad conscience. However, it is a necessary component to our being. It contextualizes and celebrates our caveats.
President Trump has put in front of us what so many past presidents have hidden in private. In doing so, he is caused us to think more deeply on our predilections. Broad cultural shifts are taking place that wouldn’t have without such an impetus. The mobilization against Trump is as powerful a catalyst as he is himself. Let’s not be dogged by ragged assumptions.
With this said, I plan to vote for Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen to make a point that I want to preserve the ideas of liberty, independence, and freedom of thought. I cannot empower the left or the right in my vote with reasoned conscience. Identity politics has triumphed as a reaction to racism, sexism, and the various evil isms setting one’s “identity” as political collateral in a battle against history. This leftist dogma does not suit me, and I cannot empower it by voting to uphold it and its culture.
I respect Trump and admire some of his accomplishments. I have discussed them in writing. However, I cannot vote to uphold Trumpism either. With writers such as Anis Shivani I believe Trump is a man of the people, although his responses to coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter movement are tepid. A recent NPR (National Public Radio) article discussed by FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) suggested that experts have failed to properly address an issue yet again, and making comparisons to the expertise that lead to the Iraq War. Government authority clearly is human, and not divine.
I was an atheist after hearing Bad Religion for the first time at age 13. Raised strict Catholic, I merged my traditional and revolutionary tendencies into Christian humanist anarchism, my own variety of metamodernism.
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My mother, also an atheist, lost her mother to a drunk driver at age eighteen when I was a toddler. She and my father separated. Courts ordered my father to pay child support for which he never took responsibility. Custody was granted to my grandmother and aunt. Court documents from the Chancery Court of Monticello, Mississippi I dug up a few years ago reveal that my grandmother was given custody because she would raise me in a “Christian atmosphere suitable to the court.” She raised me exceptionally well, but held strong patriotic tendencies and for many years I despised her politics. She read Ann Coulter as she was passing away and I selfishly argued with her. Independence Day was always cause for argument over American Empire.
She had a heart of gold. She had an intellect that the world did not fully glimpse, and I only understood in retrospect. An independent woman can take many forms.
My father hates liberals so I grew into one, naturally. Now I renounce the left as a sworn leftist. I will not stand for attacks on free expression. I will not passively watch our country slide into extremes. I will not, I cannot, let this happen now. I will pray for my own redress. The world needs God. I need God.
It is often said that the founders did not like religion. This is only partially true. Jefferson’s own writings mock the clergy. However, Madison was a devout Anglican. Washington was a Mason. Even the radical democrat Jefferson praised religious tolerance as the means to spread truth, thus the creation of separation of church and state.
Is it time to separate church and hate? Enough of the religious supremacy. It turns people away. Embrace the shifting world. One can be strong in faith and reasonable in heart.
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It is time that we celebrate independence of thought, free discussion, and individual liberty again. These ideals must be vindicated. The Enlightenment emboldened science, elevating it to a cause of its own. However, it did not leave a strong legacy of criticism of science. Science, however, offers criticism of itself. As it creates its own church with dogmatic expertise in the name of consensus, we sometimes forget that it’s mind is human.
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I released a poetry collection called Salt and Sorrow several years ago. I even boldly sent a copy to the White House as a gift to the new president, asking him to end the longest federal shutdown in American history. The book’s basic idea was to restore Western values to their Platonic Idealism. After reading an introduction to Plato’s Collected Dialogues that notes how these values have saved Western civilization over centuries when it was at its most crucial moments, I thought to add some Christian humanist Idealism to our culture. The book was well received. The President sent me a thank you card which he signed personally. I have it hanging on my bedroom wall. The book is an easy but thoughtful read and worth discussing.
I announced to the Cosmic Poets Society that I had sent the gift to the president, and the day after the tracking number showed it was received the shutdown ended. Many people suggested I may have persuaded the president, although I humbly doubt it.
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In the aftermath of Black Lives Matter and the ongoing battle against all forms of bigotry, lightning struck the Washington Monument. The monument stands as one of the world’s tallest structures in memorial to the United States’ first president, General George Washington of the Continental Army.
For years, I prayed justice would come to halt the world. I know God knows what He is doing as He has been doing it for an eternity and will continue to do it. The world stands.
Perhaps the astounding loneliness penetrating my soul and the soul of humanity found a course for its reckoning.
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Again, all ideas have their faults and we should be willing to critique them. Ideals are important especially in the United States where slaveowners boldly declared independence from tyranny. Words are powerful. Over the course of American history, movements have developed to challenge bigotry and discrimination. When we fail to honor “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and forget that “all men are created equal” (even the language is a tad sexist, though the idea is powerful), we relinquish our ideals to the dustbin. The founders were imperfect, and they were trapped in world history with all its faults.
We can discuss slavery in 1776, and forget that sex slavery still exists in this country. Children are sold and trafficked across the border. We can continue reckoning with our history, and forget that its spectre still haunts us in myriad shapes. It is important that we shape our identity to suit the growing multicultural globalism before us.
Liberal democracy is a faith. It has proved to help us ascertain the human condition and address it assertively. Ideals are to be cherished; they guide us. Independence is not to be relinquished.
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Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author.
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“…history is potent enough to deliver, on time, in the medium to long run, most of the possible scenarios, and to eventually bury the bad guy.”
Nassim Nicolas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness
This essay assumes a personal and historical tone during time of global unrest. It is my response to the murder of George Floyd and seeks to re-imagine what could be from what is.
My great grandfather on my dad’s side loved Black people. He was respected in the small Mississippi town of Monticello where he frequented Black churches at night. As a Southern Baptist, it was an odd thing for him during that period to appreciate the Black community. This was during a time prior to the Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s.
My grandmother grew up in that era and married at age 13. Her husband was involved with Klansmen. She told me stories about violence against Blacks including an incident where she saw a Black man run into a field followed by an angry mob of white men that included the town sheriff. The sheriff told her not to worry about what was going on. She told me in confidence that when the Civil Rights Act made it possible for Blacks to run for office, she voted for a Black woman running in a local election. She told me stories of Blacks being chased from sidewalks and vapidly discouraged from smiling casually at white women, treated as second-class citizens, jazz clubs being raided, Black musicians portrayed as negative influences on youth and women for smoking marijuana, and newspapers with severely racist headlines. The picture was distant to me other than history books. She told me about the first time she witnessed a sit-in. Her shock was outrun by her admiration. She owned the Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.
These stories will come as no surprise to Blacks, I’m sure. The Black community has suffered repression by white supremacists and societal conditions imposed on them for hundreds of years in the United States. It seems unjust that even Nature is not even-handed. For instance, the COVID-19 virus and AIDS disproportionately affected Black communities. I attended a short discussion with Tantra Zawadi, an activist and poet, several years ago during which she showed a documentary film about the suffering of Black people due to the AIDS virus. I asked her why she thought it hurt her community particularly. She responded that the Black community has learned to not care for itself. That is a long and frightening discussion.
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It is often assumed that the American Civil War resolved the problems created by slavery. President Lincoln is reported as stating, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” This was quoted from his debates with Sen. Stephen Douglas on September 18, 1858. This statement was made in defense against the Democrats who believed Lincoln would abolish slavery, what was then a radical suggestion.
Frederick Douglass said of class struggle, “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
The Black Codes of the Reconstruction era did just this. Even before the Civil War, such codes were designed to protect the institution of slavery. Blacks were expected to turn their guns over to white men upon the white man’s request. Through convict leasing, private parties could employ the free labor of convicts. This practice provided immense revenue to southern states. Time Magazine writes, “Prison privatization accelerated after the Civil War. The reason for turning penitentiaries over to companies was similar to states’ justifications for using private prisons today: prison populations were soaring, and they couldn’t afford to run their penitentiaries themselves.” In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment for a crime. Privatized prisons historically targeted Black males. African American families still suffer from policies such as the Drug War. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act created tougher mandatory sentences for possession of crack, a drug that was cheaper and easy to transport than powdered cocaine, though not much different in substance. Media hype of the 1980’s created the illusion of a “crack epidemic”, thus leading to the tougher sentencing law. This law was amended by the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act. The Sentencing Project Records the racial disparities of incarceration.
Some statements from The Sentencing Project:
“One contributing factor to the disparity in arrest rates is that racial minorities commit certain crimes at higher rates. Specifically, data suggests that black Americans—particularly males—tend to commit violent and property crimes at higher rates than other racial groups. Other studies, however, demonstrate that higher crime rates are better explained by socioeconomic factors than race: extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods experience higher rates of crime regardless of racial composition. Because African Americans constitute a disproportionate share of those living in poverty in the United States, they are more likely to reside in low-income communities in which socioeconomic factors contribute to higher crime rates.”
“The United States government’s War on Drugs has perhaps contributed more than any other single factor to the racial disparities in the criminal justice system.”
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We continue to remind one another to “beat our swords into ploughshares.” We must be hungry.
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In the 19th century prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, factions of anti-immigrant sentiment developed and coalesced into the Know Nothing Party. They were generally working-class nativists who resented Irish and German Catholics for economic reasons. They came from industrialized cities in the North and spread into the South. The Party was founded in 1844 and rose to prominence in 1853 until the Dred Scott decision and John Brown’s raid proved slavery was a central issue to the nation rather than immigration. John Wilkes Booth was a member.
Once the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) replaced congressional edict with popular sovereignty regarding slavery in territories included in the Louisiana Purchase, what is now known as the Republican Party emerged in the North among anti-slavery advocates and Freesoil debaters. Nativists in the South became entrenched in the Know Nothing cause. Such nativist sentiment evolved into the strict anti-immigration policy in the 1920’s that was oddly lax on northwestern European flow into the United States.
It is a commonly understood fact of history that the northern economy was less dependent on slave labor, and more on the surplus capital provided by taxing the products of slave labor. In Hylton v. US (1796), Justice Patterson wrote, “The constitution declares, that a capitation tax is a direct tax; and both in theory and practice, a tax on land is deemed to be a direct tax… The provision was made in favor of the southern states; they possessed a large number of slaves; they had extensive tracts of territory, thinly settled, and not very productive. A majority of the states had but few slaves, and several of them a limited territory, well settled, and in a high state of cultivation. The southern states, if no provision had been introduced in the constitution, would have been wholly at the mercy of the other states. Congress in such case, might tax slaves, at discretion or arbitrarily, and land in every part of the Union, after the same rate or measure: so much a head, in the first instance, and so much an acre, in the second. To guard them against imposition, in these particulars, was the reason of introducing the clause in the constitution.” (bold emphasis is the essayists)
In 1895, the Pollack case redefined direct taxation to include taxes on property and income, and the 16th Amendment restored the original definition of taxation whereby to allow the progressive income tax and other measures.
The northern industrialized economy continued to exploit Black labor. According to thehenryford.org,“No single reason can sufficiently explain why in a brief period between 1910 and 1920, nearly half a million Southern blacks moved from farms, villages, towns and cities to the North, starting what would ultimately be a 50-year migration of millions. What would be known as the Great Migration was the result of a combination of fundamental social, political and economic structural problems in the South and an exploding Northern economy. Southern blacks streamed in the thousands and hundreds of thousands throughout the industrial cities of the north to fill the work rolls of factories desperate for cheap labor.” The population of Detroit nearly doubled between the years 1910-20 with a significant increase in the Black population. The Great Migration provided companies like Ford Motors with cheap labor from African Americans.
Clearly slavery shaped the United States economy and was a major catalyst of dispute as well as change. Some may argue it was necessary for the New World; however, religious groups such as the Mennonites were abolitionists as far back as 1688. Along with immigration and taxation, today’s Republican Party has utilized these antiquated hostilities; yet, the Democrats have convinced a segment of voters with other reasons. They became the party of ‘civil rights.’ Encyclopedia Britannica defines civil rights as “guarantees of equal social opportunities and equal protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, or other personal characteristics.” A July 12, 1964 article in the New York Times states, “…the pressure exerted by militant Negroes had become so great that many businessmen had dropped racial barriers in their establishments. Many others were waiting only for the excuse provided by the new law.” The spirit of the times was changing to oblige equal rights. Some may argue that law does not guarantee equality or fair treatment. However, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King stated in a rebuttal to Goldwater’s “change of heart, not legislation” approach that he agreed with Goldwater, and although legislation cannot make a man love him it can in fact prevent him from lynching him.
We should not define bigotry, xenophobia, and racial injustice along party or regional lines as the usual contemporary narratives have it. My grandmother and I used to argue about the Old South in contrast to the “New South.” A few years ago, Newsweek ran a cover article along those lines. The changing attitudes of young people and the decline of traditional narratives favoring “states’ rights” were the article’s focus. After reading, I called my grandmother to discuss it with her.
She didn’t seem to agree that the South was changing significantly. She often spoke against the Democrats and their effect on the South historically. Democrats caused enormous civil unrest during the Reconstruction Era, including at the Battle of Liberty Place where white supremacists defeated US troops in an attempted coup against elected governor William Pitt Kellogg. Kellogg was considered a “carpetbagger” by white southern Democrats because of his years collecting customs at the Port of New Orleans. The White League, as the paramilitary white supremacist force was known, intimidated Blacks to prevent them from voting—no poll tax or literacy tests! Reconstruction era Democrats used violence and intimidation to oppose Black emancipation! The grandson of a Confederate soldier, President Lyndon Baines Johnson who passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, supposedly remarked,“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.” It is sometimes said President Johnson was simply navigating the political realm wisely, much like President Lincoln.
This began the era of “Southern Strategy”. The term “dog whistle” was used to indicate the new rhetoric of “state’s rights” employed by the GOP. “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger’. By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites,” Lee Atwater stated to explain states’ rights. Atwater further states, “But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference.” Does making race a central issue hurt or help the cause of equal justice? Have we forgotten the importance of racial dynamics in shaping this country?
I remember as a child in the Reagan 80’s I was tutored to read and write by a Black woman who came to love me as her own. This was in Mississippi, the heart of the Dixiecrat struggle only decades before.
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In 2013, a high school in Jacksonville, FLA initiated a name change. It was originally named after Confederate general Nathan B. Forrest who was known to have cut off the arms of surrendered black soldiers. My father was at the forefront of keeping the name. I reluctantly signed a petition he created to keep the school’s name even though I strongly disagreed with it. The school’s African-American student population grew to over half the student body. The school used a Confederate flag in its pep rallies. I can see why the name, which was suggested by the Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1950’s, would upset Black students. Nathan Bedford Forrest was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. I signed the petition in a lukewarm decision to support my family, believing it was a lost cause. I was later told that the petition would not be used because only current students and their families’ voices mattered in the decision process. My father was irate.
I agree with the decision to change the school’s name. Who wants to be subjected to seeing the symbols of racism—watch videos from the Civil Rights era—symbols used to oppress and intimidate Blacks, or have a school honored after the KKK’s first Grand Wizard who was not even from Florida? I learned of my own temerity and indecision during this dispute. While the petition had few signatories generally, I was one of them. My decision to sign went against my conscience.
The high school is now known as Westside High School.
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As a matter of general observation, it seems that political grievances are not resolved only politically.
Continuous police brutality against Blacks throughout history from Emmitt Till to Amadou Diallo, from Rep. John Lewis to George Floyd, is a serious concern. Blacks are 2.5 times as likely to face police violence than other racial groups. In 2019, 1,098 incidents of police homicide were recorded. According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, Black people were 24 percent of those homicides while only being 13 percent of the population. In 2017, 1,117 police homicides occurred with 27 percent of them being Blacks. According to a National Institute of Justice study, 50.6 percent of police surveyed believed that it is not unusual for police to turn a blind eye to police misconduct and disagreed that police report abuses of authority at 58.5 percent of those surveyed (Police Attitudes Toward Abuse of Authority, 2000). This study notes that 65.6 percent of those surveyed do not believe the “code of silence” is necessary to good policing. This suggests that in spite of the numbers, our police forces have integrity.
The Black community even retaliates against other Blacks, but Black violent crime is more likely to be interracial. Some solutions to these problems have been suggested. A February 4, 2017 NPR article reports that “as the ration of black officers in police departments rose – up to a certain threshold – so did the number of fatal encounters between officers and black residents… The tipping point appears to be 25 percent. When black officers reach that ratio in the force, the rate of fatal police-involved incidents levels off. The study also found that once a police department became about 40 percent black, the trendline flipped – the more black officers a department has after that point, the less likely the incidence of fatal encounters with black people.” Varieties of strain theory suggest that criminal activity could be due to strain on families, institutional and societal demands on the individual, the Ferguson effect (increased distrust of police due to police violence), and other factors. The National Review reports, “In reality, a randomly selected black man is overwhelmingly unlikely to be victim of police violence — and though white men experience such violence even less often, the disparity is consistent with the racial gap in violent crime, suggesting that the role of racial bias is small. The media’s acceptance of the false narrative poisons the relations between law enforcement and black communities throughout the country and results in violent protests that destroy property and sometimes even claim lives.” The data at mappingpoliceviolence.org notes that Black Americans killed by police are more likely to be unarmed. The broken windows approach encouraged in the 1994 Crime Bill puts undue pressures on poorer communities through increased policing of them. Some suggest juvenile delinquency is caused by the readiness of illegitimate opportunities compared to honest work.
Bloomberg reports a novel addition in this national conversation. Sarah Holder writes in “The City that Remade Its Police Force” that community policing has enabled peaceful protest. Holder writes, “Homicides in Camden [New Jersey] reached 67 in 2012; the figure for 2019 was 25.” With the assistance of New York University’s Policing Department, the police in Camden developed a new manual for use-of-force. (The manual can be read here.) Camden is hoping the rest of the country’s forces follow suit.
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It seems in recent years there has been some improvement for the Black community. Graduation levels improved under the Obama administration and Black unemployment is at historical lows under the Trump administration (prior to COVID-19). Economist Walter Williams in The State Against Blacks notes how government policies such as minimum wage and affirmative action have worsened conditions and discrimination. Since the book was written in 1982, unemployment among Black youth is still about 50 percent. Redlining began under FDR by housing authorities has also contributed to impoverishment of Black families. The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in the 1970’s to combat redlining, is even said to have played a role in the Great Recession of 2008 by encouraging subprime leasing.
The riots and demonstrations going on in the United States today as a reaction against the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was not resisting arrest and cried for his life while an individual officer’s knee clamped on his neck, are not historical anomalies. The problems faced by the African American community are rooted in a history that affects us all as Americans. The cheapening of Black lives, the destruction of their communities, and the ignorance prevailing concerning these matters and their causes should be openly discussed.
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Aside from institutional violence, other policies have impacted the Black community disproportionately.
Conservatives believe abortion is rooted in the eugenics cause. As evidence they mention Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist and founder of Planned Parenthood. According to a 2017 study by American Journal of Public Health, black women had the highest rates of abortion even though white women had more of them.
The study, which also notes a decline in the number of abortions in the USA between 2008-14 says, “White women accounted for the largest share of abortions among the 4 racial and ethnic groups examined (38.7%), although they had the lowest abortion rate: 10.0 per 1000. Black women were overrepresented among abortion patients and had the highest abortion rate: 27.1 per 1000.” It has been noted that clinics tend to be in poorer communities, granting easier access to minorities who tend to be economically disadvantaged. Sanger herself notes the reason for her activism: “If THE WOMAN REBEL were allowed to publish with impunity elementary and fundamental truths concerning personal liberty and how to obtain it, the birth control movement would become a movement of tremendous power in the emancipation of the working class.” (from “Suppression”) Abortion is a socioeconomic issue more than a race issue. The mistake is easily made when we forget that race and class intersect in the United States.
In spite of these facts, Sanger wrote in “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda”, “As an advocate of Birth Control, I wish to take advantage of the present opportunity to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit’, admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit though less fertile parents of the educated and well-to-do classes.” While it is true that the poor tend to have larger birth rates with less means at their disposal to care for the children, this passage indicates Sanger’s early commitment to eugenics.
California’s prison system employed the decision of Buck v. Bell to forcibly sterilize 148 female prisoners without consent between 2006-10. Huffington Post writes, “In the past, sterilization of vulnerable populations in the name of ‘human betterment’ was carried out with legal authority and the backing of political elites. What current and past practices share is the assumption that some women by virtue of their class position, sexual behavior, or ethnic identity are socially unfit to reproduce and parent.” (“Sterilization Abuse in State Prisons: Time to Break with California’s Long Eugenics Patterns”, 7/23/2013) PBS.org states, “While California’s eugenics programs were driven in part by anti-Asian and anti-Mexican prejudice, Southern states also employed sterilization as a means of controlling African American populations.” (“Unwanted Eugenics and Sterilization Programs in the United States”, 1/29/ 2016)
However, Coretta Scott King had this to say about Margaret Sanger upon accepting the Margaret Sanger Award for Human Rights on behalf of her husband: “There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts. … Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by non-violent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.” NPR recognizes in their Race Card Project that “black babies cost less to adopt” because of supply and demand. In other words, there are more black children prepared for adoption and less interest in adopting them.
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Why have we come this far without questioning ourselves, white friends, white family, white society? It seems when the world turns a mirror to us, for us to look at ourselves, we would rather forget, argue, debate, make excuses.
I am not any better. I admit. I am not any better. It is a tough thing to look at yourself and say, “I can do better. I can encourage more equity.”
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Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about the United States. It isn’t about capitalism or socialism. Research South Africa, for instance, and find that the violence against white people is a result of a system that clearly is in favor of white people. Even post-Apartheid, Blacks are being shafted of opportunities. School books are free for white children. White farmers are wealthier and rely on the work of Black people.
This is an issue with humanity. This is an issue with the world. This is not an issue with specific groups, countries, or factions. I framed this essay in the context of my country, the USA, because this is where I see the most immediate effects of the problem. Being in the center of European imperialism and colonialism from the beginning, the United States is responsible for the lack of equity faced today.
In Timbuktu, Islamist insurgents torched two libraries containing historic manuscripts in 2013. Some of the material in the libraries dates back to the 13th century. On the edge of the Sahara, Africa preserves some of its vital history. In a battle for civilization, extremists torch the buildings. These documents include important translations of Plato, Hippocrates, and other Western thinkers, as well as writings on medicine, art, and philosophy. There are also Medieval copies of the Qur’an. Many of the manuscripts were evacuated with financial help from multiple organizations such as the Ford Foundation founded by Edsel and Henry Ford in 1936. Recalling my comments on Ford Motors earlier, perhaps we have come full circle and things are improving although only slightly? Are Blacks being recognized as independent, fully competent individuals now as compared to the Civil War era?
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It is a difficult and sobering thing to let go of power. In order to see the reflection of one’s skin and the haughtiness of one’s attitude and acts, one must look into the eyes of another’s experiences.
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Capitalism, emerging from the products of slavery through rapid industrialization, left many people out. Since the founding of the United States under the words “All men are created equal, entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” there have been struggles to make this ideal into reality. Once John Jay, founding father, argued that ownership of property should be the sole criteria in considering the right to vote. The values of a capitalist society include the right to the product of one’s labor, free enterprise, and to do with one’s property what one decides in a fair and just manner.
The US Constitution declares we have a right to security in our persons and property. The US Constitution also declares we have a right to freedom of speech, religion, association, and peaceful petition. The world has been inspired by this model of democratic republicanism. The product of many noble minds put together through rational argumentation, the American federalist system provides a positive model for the world in struggles for freedom, as well as great abundance. With its checks and balances, both across government and the economy, the American system is constructed to encourage fairness and rational decision-making among free parties. The right to utilize one’s gifts is the epitome of justice. Human action, not time, will bring these ideals to greater fruition.
The American system is not inherently segregationist, but we still await justice to wash away this culture of supremacy entirely.
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The author thanks Dr. Reza Parchizadeh, Dr. Troy Camplin, and henry 7. reneau, jr. for their editorial contributions and guidance.
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Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Manab Manik’s My Poetic Offering is clearly an invocation to the Divine. Manik seeks the bosom of the Eternal Lord present in all religions and poetries. In this delightful and unpretentious presentation of sonnet-styled verse, the poet reminds us that divinity is not a fruitless quest. To seek the divine is the heart of poetry itself and the poet in these verses makes it abundantly obvious that he is presented with divinity in his soul. Edgar Allan Poe writes in The Veil of the Soul that the definition of art is “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul”.
These verses are formal in character and not for the frivolous minds. These poems are not for indulgence but rather for enlightened thought. He writes in the opening poem ‘Prayer to the Almighty’:
Oh Lord! I have a simple prayer to thee,
I pray to thee,
I pray to thee,
Not for my own happiness and peace,
But for those,
Who remain in darkness,
Who are half-fed, unfed, and badly dressed.
The composition style is direct, formal, and delightful to read. Manik’s verses often are intoned with Wordworthian splendour in the “tranquil remembrance of emotion” to paraphrase the famous statement.
Wordsworth writes a seeming reflection on the thought in ‘The Solitary Reaper’. He writes
“Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!”
Manik seeks in solitude to enrapture himself around the question of divinity. These verses are not so much seeking, as expressing what is already found by the poet. God becomes a teacher and muse as in poems such as ‘Thorny Way of Thy Life to Immortality’ where the poet writes this sublime verse: “In my mind’s eye glows and glows thy life and thorn, / Leaving bloody foot-prints thou invent a wise morn.” Nature is seen a book in several poems such as ‘Thy Inspiring Eternal Voice’ and ‘Shining Pages of Thy Life-Book’.
The inspiration for My Poetic Offering is not the crowd of believers. Manik writes to the earnest seeker, but his work is consecrated to the power of God, and to God Himself in the most eloquent of commendations. We do not read about the poet in My Poetic Offering. This collection is not confessional and does not intend a social message. It is what it claims to be on the cover: an offering to God through poetry.
However, we question throughout how the poet comes to know God. Does he provide any clues?
Life’s indeed a pamphlet, not a great book tho’,
Its pages can be turned o’er and gone thro’ at one go.
But the pages of thy life-book’ll ne’er end and stop
Thy book neither white ants nor Time can tear and chop.
By invoking Nature as the presence of white ants, the poem endears the reader to a sense of gentleness and eternal love. Even the smallest creatures are life’s guidebook. However, something eternal and essential to life exists in the Beyond. The poet indicates eternity can be perceived through Nature.
With these notes, do we even conclude the poet knows God? In what sense does the poet know God? We understand through the lines of verse that the writing speaks for itself and is a consecration to divinity. However, we cannot assess how the poet concludes God actually exists. We can only surmise this through his eloquent and dedicatory verse written in passages such as:
The stars, planets, satellites’re lone in cosmic address,
But in my mind’s cosmos thou art crowned with laurel headdress.
(From ‘My Apollo’)
The individual mind grasps intuitively, or through faith, what is not revealed. Within each person, there is a universe; as microcosms, we contain infinitely small things within us.
Manib Manik is not a seeker himself but appears to one who is found. It is written in the Bhagavad Gita that, “Maya makes all things: what moves, what is unmoving. / O son of Kunti, that why the world spins…” and Jesus Christ speaks to the crowd thus, “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.” (Matthew 6:28, KJV)
When someone is curious and lacks conceit in God, the Creator may make His presence known. However, it is a choice of the poet to use his gift to acknowledge the beautiful God within us all. In his designations and mythical allusions, Manik completes the circle of what we call divine humanity. St. Augustine wrote, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.” These poems express heady and highly refined sentiment toward God. With such spiritual fervour does the poet write that the reader may only listen to what he or she already intones within the soul.
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Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Dustin Pickering on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew
A literary work is often a code that reveals distinct things. Sometimes these things are simply too advanced or the logic of them too cruel. The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays and its language is easily read and understood. However, the embedded symbolism may pass by even the most astute mind.
The play is obviously about gender battles, and it seems to some that Kate is tamed by her husband. However, a deeper look at the intricately woven tropes exhumes a critique of culture, a sense of equal justice, and the way institutions impress on our minds. The play extends beyond property relations and the inequality of women. It also poaches one of theatre’s daunting faults. In Shakespeare’s day, women could not play the female roles and instead teenage boys were selected. The theatre was considered dangerous and women too unfit to perform. There was lead in the makeup and the stage action too rough. Theatre was too bawdy.
The Taming of the Shrew contains puns on horses, games, “moveables”, music, and theatre itself. Props or “furniture” signify costumes; there are witty puns revealing the dissembling nature of appearances. In Act IV, Scene III, Petruchio says, “And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / So honor peereth in the meanest habit.” The sun in this respect is the human mind because it is “the mind that makes the body rich”. After Petruchio is delivered a faulty wedding dress, he pontificates on the problem of physical beauty. It is true that he uses this reasoning to tame Katherina. It is part of the ploy to obfuscate her with a list of her own faults. He seeks to embody her worst aspects so she can learn from them how devilish they are. This discussion concerning the gown further moves toward critiquing the use of teenage boys to fill roles meant for females. Again, Petruchio: “is the adder better than the eel, / Because his painted skin contents the eye?” I remind the reader of the lead makeup.
Perhaps Shakespeare intends to remind us real world experience supplements bookish learning. When Vincenti is confused with a young virgin boy by Katherina (Act IV, Scene V), she realizes her error and admits to being “bedazzled with the sun”. Taking up from the aforementioned sun symbolism, Katherina’s error stands in as a trope for pure reason. With pure reason absent of categories, all things merge without identity or qualities. Her vision of green is one of seeing the world “light”. Much of the symbolism in The Taming of the Shrew references binaries such as bottom/top and heavy/light. There is a wild pun on the nature of matter. Actualities contain density while potentialities are ethereal. In an early passage, Tranio prescribes a middle way between the Stoics and Ovid. He advises Lucentio, “The mathematics, and the metaphysics, / Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you: / no profit grows where no pleasure is ta’en.”
Other engaging puns bring to mind property relationships of the Elizabethan era. A role reversal encouraged by Petruchio, of Katherina and Dian, and the playful engagement of dungeon metaphors parody imprisonment. I doubt it can be said with certainty what sort of political statement Shakespeare is making. Is he reflecting the faults of that era, or is he acclimatised to them? The bandying about concerning an imprisoned Kate, her shrewness, and the several occasions where property relations speak on their own behalf invite me to this conclusion: the play is comedic not just in form, but it is a satire of an unequal socio-political environment.
Continuous role reversals, contradictions, and allusions to myths concerning rape and chastity lead me to assume the play indicates that property relations sever our deepest humanity. Katherina can either be her husband’s chattel slave, or she can remain chaste. Both these options are not appealing and neither can be safely ruled out. Perhaps Petruchio marries for the dowry, or maybe he realises his error. After all, the play puns and moralises on looking beyond surface appearances.
Katherina is intent on remaining a shrew but Petruchio is set in taming her. Perhaps in the process both learn something new.
Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
W. H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” is often quoted to dismiss the importance of poetry as a form of social justice. The current fashion among poets is that poetry can revolutionize social inequalities, make positive changes, build empathy for marginalized groups, and convey information about causes important to the poet. For example, Robert Huddleston writes in Boston Review, “In its day, W. H. Auden’s claim that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ was a necessary reproof to an ideologically mandated culture of protest that had a chokehold on the literary left in the 1930s, an example it remains important to consider today. Clashes over the political rights and wrongs of poetry, then as now, are often disguised contests over cultural and academic turf, ideological purity, and even the relative priority of criticism versus artistic practice.” He is correct concerning the cultural war that cloaks literary discussion. Literary figures and public intellectuals are often chided for their implicit biases. However, I conceive of the poem as saying something drastically different; I do not see it as being a political rebuttal at all, but rather serving as one within a larger context.
Auden’s poem contains these lines:
…For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
The poem carefully navigates the terrain of the unchangeable dimensions of political life. However, it clears a safe space for the poem as a thing of its own. Poetry does not instigate events; rather, it is an event itself. The day remains cold for Yeats’s death, and his poetry lives beyond him through the many misinterpretations it will face. “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” defies the culture war to uphold the dignity of the human spirit to which poetry testifies. Auden once defended Pound from censorship by his publisher. He said anti-fascism will become the new fascism. The publisher relented and granted Pound a space in the anthology. In this course, Auden defends the integrity of the poet as a person whose work dignifies the ideal humanity. In this respect he clears a space for poetic license because a poet must spend their life empting themselves.
No, poetry makes nothing happen. It is an event itself. It is the fire of intellect applied to the cold apathy and spiritual destitution we suffer. As protest against the human condition, it becomes universal in its design.
Hence poetry is spiritual warfare. The poet is a paradigm for virtue. The contemporary world now challenges the absolute freedom of the visionary. It is historically stated that the visionary should be exempt from moral considerations. Recent shifts in consciousness concerning this attitude are becoming mainstream. The UK Telegraph reports, “Janet Marstine, Honorary (Retired) Associate Professor, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, added: ‘The National Gallery has taken an important step in acknowledging that it is no longer ethically tenable to interpret in an aesthetic vacuum. An artist’s position in the Western canon does not make them immune from accountability.’” The visionary in question at the National Gallery is Paul Gauguin. He is under question for exploiting the myth of the noble savage for his sexual and financial gain. The moral dilemma posed by such considerations does not discount the artistry or accomplishments of individual artists. Its intent is to hold artists accountable for immoral behaviour. The hope in the #metoo era is these considerations will keep living artists accountable rather than giving them license to act uninhibited, and influence the broader society.
Vincent van Gogh, a friend of Gauguin who he accused of insanity, wrote, “The way to know life is to love many things.” Van Gogh is historically considered a misunderstood visionary who underwent severe lifetime disappoint and failure. His legacy is a myth of its own. He was expelled from his church where he was minister. His father thought of him as a lunatic with stupid ideas. However, he is also considered a beautiful person who showed the world a light it misses in so much conflict. Don McClean wrote of van Gogh, “The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”
These two towering figures in art leave us with widely divergent displays of personal conduct. Van Gogh’s misconduct is chalked up to a serious mental health issue, but Gauguin is a sexual deviant who exploited the European assumption of the noble savage. What can be learned from these patterns? Emerging views of artists’ conduct have more at stake than aesthetic considerations. They are the battleground of the purpose of ideas. Gauguin’s art and moral conduct are under question not because his art is unpleasing, but because ideas hold power: we must take into account how ideas can effect culture and the treatment of others. Misconceptions of indigenous people have serious repercussions historically. Our worldview must consider that others are right to their cultural experience without infringement. This is where the culture war stems.
If we conceive a race as inferior, does our conduct toward them change? Gauguin is not being questioned as much as an entire colonialist legacy and how it shapes the behaviour within the culture that adopts it. Human dignity is universal; a person should never be treated as inferior. Perhaps we are right to question history so vapidly, and demand the culture at large change. The most important thing may be a humanist conception of world culture. Those who deny it are perhaps harming not only others, but also degrading themselves.
The culture war is the domain of values and whose values develop dignity in the human heart. Art is one of the most developed and poignant tools to communicate values. The Marshall Plan advanced capitalism throughout Europe using art to influence people. Culture is what stands as testimony to prevalent attitudes, reactions to those attitudes, and the historical presence of a people. We are right to subject it to deeper inquiry.
In fact, I would consider a moral duty to question historical circumstance through art. Duty is defined in the Bhagavad Gita, “It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.” This offers a subtext for individuality. Art is the historical realm of the individual—they who create art are the most developed in ideas. One’s heart will reveal one’s purpose. St. Paul writes in Romans 12:2 (KJV), “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” The world’s major faiths are abundant in praises of nonconformity. As St. Paul carefully describes, interpreting the will of God is a struggle. One must resist pressures external to oneself. Sometimes one must question oneself deeply to find the moral current within. Jihad, or “struggle”, is spiritual warfare in three senses: against one’s own temptations, against one’s peers, and in defense of one’s territory. Aristotle wrote, “Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.” The perennial wisdom seems to be of the consensus that morality is deeply personal, and one’s character is deeply revelatory. Art is where the person speaks honestly with high eloquence. Art itself is action. How much of artistic achievement depends on cultural consensus? Is art rather a defiance of consensus, bearing more of the soul of the artist than their times? A moral purpose should derive from the inner life, and counter the wheel of consensus in bare revolt. John Milton writes in Paradise Lost:
“A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.”
Vatsala Radhakeesoon, contemporary poet of Mauritius, grants insight into the nature of freedom, character, and morality of being in her poem “Unconditional Thread”:
Born from the Divine’s golden thread Molded with perfection, purity and grace I’m the invisible heart – the unconditional thread ruling the universe
I’m soft I’m generous I’m not from the Mundane the materialistic world the uncanny competitive rules
I’m omnipresent but recognized, seen only by the unadulterated
I, Unconditional Thread survive in immortal realms and go on whispering in every ear “ Love, love and love discarding mental blocks and embracing spontaneity.”
A poet warrior embraces compassion, action, duty, and dream. Henry Miller writes, “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.” One’s leap becomes one’s light. The darkness illumined is one’s spiritual landmark. To seek beyond one’s perilous comfort is an act of defiance in a world where complacency is sanctified. The artist’s presence stirs the world from sleep if they are securing their foundations. Ultimately, we are clueless about life: where it takes us, what it means, how we cope with it. We engage in symbolic acts of protest and incite civil discussion on important issues. Papers are published on every subject; scholars shake their fists at apathy and ignorance. Theories emerge from data and trends. Life’s most recent turn provides us with newfound perspectives. Once the trend is fulfilled, new storms rage on the horizon. Science is continuously revising and incorporating new facts and figures. There is nothing steady in the order we endure; in fact, to call it order defies its purpose.
In such a world of flux, kindness is even spirited defiance. In “Kindness”, Naomi Shihab Nye carefully constructs the meaning of kindness in counterintuitive language:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt weakened in a broth.
What you held in your hand,
What you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Walter Pater writes in The Conclusion to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Ideas, “Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion—that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness.” Kindness is passion. Etymologically speaking, “passion” reflects suffering, endurance, and loss. Compassion means to “suffer with”; hence, Nye’s poetic rendering of kindness defines it as passion.
St. Francis of Assisi writes in “Praises of the Christian Virtues” of the three virtues of Wisdom, Poverty, and Charity that “Whoever possesses one virtue without offending the others, possesses them all.” Guatama Buddha is recorded as saying something profoundly similar, “We will develop and cultivate the liberation of mind by loving kindness, make it our vehicle, make it our basis, stabilize it, exercise ourselves in it, and fully perfect it.” In the doctrines of Buddhism, the problem of suffering is rooted in attachment. Attachment pertains to physical things, mental habits, and stubborn attitudes. When one is attached, the object of attachment invokes fear of its loss, and can trap the mind in unhealthy suffering. In Sanskrit, the word samsara translates “it flows together.” In Hinduism and Buddhism, the concept signifies worldliness, attachment, and the cycle of rebirth and suffering. To be released from this cycle one must be released of oneself and desire. This state of enlightenment is called Nirvana.
Octavio Paz, poet and ambassador of Mexico to India, writes in “Perpetua Incarnada”:
Hour by hour I saw him slide
wide and happy like a river
shadow and light linked its shores
and a yellow swirl
single monotonous intensity
the sun set in its center
Then he writes:
I ask for strength I ask for detachment
open the eyes
unharmed evidence
between the clarities that are canceled
Not the abolition of images
the incarnation of pronouns
the world that we all invented
sign town
and in its center
Solitary
Perpetual incarnate
one half woman
peña manantial the other
Word of all with whom we speak alone
I ask that you always accompany me
man reason
This poem reflects an existential loneliness but it extends into territories much broader. He asks prayerfully that the world be returned to the state of the ‘Word’ from its embodiment of images. Once again, we return to Pater in his essay on Leonardo da Vinci. “We recognise one of those symbolical inventions in which the ostensible subject is used, not as a matter for definite pictorial realisation, but as the starting point of a train of sentiment, subtle and vague as a piece of music.”
In “Flux and Movement in Walter Pater’s Leonardo Essay” critic Lene Østermark-Johansen writes, “The body which twists around its own spine creates the illusion of moving from one extreme to another thus resulting in a kind of harmony of opposites, a concordia discours.” This statement not only describes drawings and sculpture, but applies to rhetoric also. The concept of Self is illusion because all things contain their opposites. One cannot step in the same river twice. We are the river, and our Self is a form within the flux of promissory existence. We are granted time within this cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. As the Cross represents redemption, one reaches Nirvana by letting go. Christ is reborn to demonstrate he can conquer the forces of death.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche writes, “The Shambhala teachings are founded on the premise that there is basic human wisdom that can help solve the world’s problems… Shambhala vision teaches that, in the face of the world’s problems, we can be heroic and kind at the same time.” A warrior poet sets the world aright through their heroism, but what does setting the world aright mean exactly? According to Shambhala: the sacred path of the warrior, the world must restore its focus to human dignity.
Mirabai writes:
O friend, I sit alone while the world sleeps. In the palace that held love’s pleasure the abandoned one sits. She who once threaded a necklace of pearls is now stringing tears. He has left me. The night passes while I count stars. When will the Hour arrive? This sorrow must end. Mira says: Lifter of Mountains, return.
– “The Necklace”
We cannot restore dignity alone. Existential dread implies that as individuals we are alone to choose and must live with that responsibility. In her abandonment, Mirabai still affirms her dignity as God’s beloved. She calls to God to return. This reflects the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth as eternal flux which harmonises with our physical existence. God is with us. Christ is ever present in our domain of suffering.
It is no coincidence that Paz concludes his poem with the words “I ask to be obedient to this day and tonight.”
U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo writes in “The Myth of Blackbirds”:
“Justice is a story by heart in the beloved country where imagination weeps. The sacred mountains only appear to be asleep…We cannot be separated in the loop of mystery between blackbirds and the memory of blackbirds.”
Myth is a cultural awakening. Being “alone to choose” does not defer human dignity or one’s relationship to the divine because we are creatures of memory. As Plato reflected, learning is remembering what one already knows. Such a cycle is not promising. It is eternal.
We are ripe with questioning historical errors in this period of history. “The emergence of pessimistic philosophies is by no means a sign of some great and terrible distress; rather, these question marks regarding the worth of life arise when the human condition has been so improved and ameliorated that the mosquito bites of the body and soul are found too altogether gruesome and gory, and in their poverty of experience of actual pain, people will even take being troubled by ideas to be suffering of the highest order,” writes Nietzsche in The Joyous Science. Is our ability and right to assess history as such a privilege offered by our affluence and security? It was the intellectual who once hid in ivory towers. Now, do we all live in ivory towers with epigenetic fears and concerns?
Such a question does not demean our relative poverty, private traumas, failures and shortcomings, or deprivation. What it suggests is we have plateaued to become so complacent and unconcerned that it requires serious tragic thinking to stir our imaginations. We may long for suffering; yes, we may hunger for the cross. As they say, comedy is born of tragedy. Is the opposite also true?
Wendy Chen-Tanner describes Kai Coggin’s collection Wingspan in the following words: “Wingspan is a book about becoming, transforming, and unfurling into the fullness of selfhood in all its disparate parts.” The human soul fluxes and fades with the human condition. Being is Becoming. This discovery of the fullness of being is impressively expressed in “Everything Silver/Artemis and Her Lover.” Students of Greek myth know the story of Actaeon and his tutelage under Chiron. When he witnesses Artemis bathing, she turns him from hunter to the hunted. Coggin’s poem is deeply personal. She observes the two as lovers experiencing oneness together. She writes:
“I will watch them,
the hunter and the hunted,
these lovers mounted in the stars,
I will watch them,
and wish for an arrow to fall from the sky into my open heart.”
Aside from the sheer beauty of these lines, the poet transforms herself into hunted for the sake of the poem. Perhaps it is self-voyeurism—the poem is solitary in tone. Gazing into the attic of her heart, Coggin sees the night sky and the eternal myth of huntress and hunted. The ebb and flow of life enchants the poet deeply and she wishes to be one with it. The opening phrase “attic of my heart” parallels the night sky and symbolically suggests yearning for oneness. Chen-Tanner’s description is impressively accurate. Jeremy Taylor writes in Psychology Today, “The universally experienced world of dreams and dreaming has always been a deep mystery, ever since the first confusing hints of self-awareness arose in our instinctively nervous, curious mammalian ancestors. Awakening and remembering that we were dreaming just a moment ago always suggests that we live in two successively alternating worlds – one of made of dreams, and the other composed of our waking experiences.” The article (“The Expanse of Our Unconscious is as Immense as the Night Sky”) combines psychology with evolutionary principles to explain the interconnectedness of the dream and waking worlds. Poetically rendered, Taylor incidentally offers insight into the importance of myth. Our minds are myth-makers in their own right. The bridge between self-awareness and yearning, our ancestral past and myth, is accentuated in the story of Actaeon and Artemis. Coggin immortalises them in the starry fixtures of night. The hunter and hunted are not only archetypes, but also offer a dialectical conversation with oneself. Akin to Hegel’s master and servant dialectic, the need for truth anticipates struggle and dissipation.
Coggin’s poems are rich in spiritedness, thoughtfulness, and hope. Hope strives for unity of self, toward knowledge of one’s desires, and deeper into the wilderness of dream. The dialectic flips on itself as the wise hunter becomes the hunted—his desires are too stubborn to resist, and he is transfixed by the translucent beauty of the immortal. He ascends into fatherhood by transfiguration into his master’s image. The transfiguration is an exact mirror-image of his role as hunter. This reversal is symbolically important because it reflects a registry of Becoming. Revolutionary ideas shrivel into double standards, mimicry of their exactness, and memory. Hope is a struggle against the unfathomable and inevitable decline of meaning. It is assertive. Like energy within neurological structures, it dissipates and connects. The mind is forever incorporating the ancient and traumatic into meaning.
Andrea Gibson writes of Coggin’s Periscope Heart, “Kai Coggin’s Periscope Heart is beauty mapping the dark, a canyon of becoming and letting go.”
I want to learn you like a language,
speak you on my tongue until I am
no longer foreign to your body…
Periscope Heart feels more personal. In “Language”, loving is compared to constructing a language. In a real sense, myth-making is language. Language is universal mapping, constructing roads through the caverns of being, and developing a common language. Powerful insight serves as the poet’s resolution.
Dorothy Day writes, “To offer the suffering of celibacy, temporary or permanent, to the Lord is to make use, in the best possible way, of man’s greatest joy.” Such is the world we live in, Day writes, that “The lack of tenderness in people’s relations with each other, tenderness expressed by warmth of voice and speech, handclasp and embrace–in other words, the warmth of friendship–lack of these things too means a concentration on sex, and the physical aspects, the animal aspects of sex.” Poet and reviewer Jagari Mukhergee writes in “Metapoem”:
“My poems are vinyl dolls that I make for you sketching in eyes and nose and lips with watercolor ink. My poems are glass lanterns — every time one is lit on nights when the soul has no electricity from within… My poems are a dusty tempest seething. Each a life.”
The warrior poet brings light to the world. Her tenderness is chastity and her self-love is universal nature. Her tears water the foundations of our aching existence. Our longings are satisfied in her dissolutions and dreams. The warrior poet is the self within each person.
Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author.
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