| Two important discussions by Ellen Reiss of poetry and economics |
[Mar. 22nd, 2007|05:01 pm] |
1) The commentary "Jobs, Discontent, and Beauty" by Ellen Reiss leads off The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, issue no. 1324. This commentary is given in its entirety on the page this links to. Her discussion of America's unjust profit-driven economic system and the great Robert Burns of Scotland--a poet who was intensely opposed to this kind of economics--is a masterpiece. Ms. Reiss begins: "The huge discontent of Americans--on assembly lines, at computers, in trucks, operating machines of every kind, on construction sites, in fields, working in hospitals--is part of that historic occurrence which Eli Siegel identified and explained in 1970. He showed, with opulent evidence, that economics based on using human beings for profit had failed and would never recover...."
One reason I love this commentary is because it describes what's affecting every American sadly yet it is immensely hopeful writing: the profit system is increasingly faltering and cannot recover. And another reason is, it shows how a poet of great stature and popularity felt (including about unjust economics) many years ago--as she takes up two poems: "Man Was Made to Mourn" and "Merry Hae I Been Teethin a Heckle."
2) Ellen Reiss writes in Clothing and Emotion, The Right Of no. 1290, on Eli Siegel, the most amazingly musical, subtle, philosophic, and diverse of poets. She discusses 8 poems under the title "The Persistence of Fabric." First, she places fabric itself in the history of economics the last few hundred years, a history with a great deal of pain. She tells what that pain arises from. And then, how she talks of the effect of the 8 poems of Mr. Siegel! You really see what is in them, the beauty you may have felt or may even have missed. For instance, she writes: "In the first poem, 'Not Muslin,' the bewilderment of a woman both rustles delicately and is presented with brisk clarity. Muslin can stand for femininity as airy, innocent, hopeful--and a woman doesn't understand how she got from that to something so bitterly different. The three adjectives in the last line, with their assonance, make for a music that brings together sharp distress and poignant wonder." I cannot help but quote that whole short but vastly meaningful poem:
1. Not Muslin
When a girl is
In muslin
On a lawn,
Of a spring morning—
She doesn't seem to be the woman
Going to a divorce court
Of a spring morning—
Angry, sad, legal.
The complete merging of literary criticism and social criticism that you see in Ellen Reiss's writing is simply not to be found in any source outside of Aesthetic Realism. And I love John Ruskin as critic of art and economics, and William Morris as poet and social critic, and Dickens as passionate opponent of injustice and great writer.
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