Review of Alejandro Albarran Polanco's, Cowboy & Other Poems (Clara B. Jones)

Cowboy & Other Poems

Alejandro Albarrán Polanco

tr. Rachel Galvin

2019

Ugly Duckling Presse, Señal Chapbook Series

18 pp

$7.00

Alejandro Albarrán Polanco's, Cowboy & Other Poems, Reviewed by Clara B. Jones

It is not every day that one has an opportunity to review a poetry collection destined to become a collector's item. However, emerging Mexican poet, Alejandro Albarrán Polanco's, Cowboy & Other Poems, translated by Rachel Galvin, is such a text. This handsomely-crafted chapbook is issued by Ugly Duckling Presse, a small, non-profit publisher located in Brooklyn, NY, committed to offering avant garde poetry and other genres produced by a volunteer editorial “collective.” As described online, many of the 300 titles published since incorporation by Matvei Yankelevich, Yelena Gluzman, and Filip Marinovich, among others, in 2002, “contain handmade elements, calling attention to the labor and history of bookmaking,” a practice, the “codex book,” traceable back to the Roman Empire. Cowboy & Other Poems is part of the Ugly Duckling Presse Señal initiative, “a chapbook series for contemporary Latin American poetry in bilingual editions.” “Señal” means “sign” or “signal” in Spanish, and, in the present project, seems to suggest words communicated intentionally for verbal, including, semantic, and sensory, as well as, aesthetic, impact. As expressed on the press' website, “we publish what we love and what cannot find a platform elsewhere.”

Polanco, a poet, musician, editor, director, and conceptual artist, has received several awards and grants for his writing. Galvin, a poet, translator, and scholar at the University of Chicago, is a co-founder of the international creative translation collective, Outranspo. Cowboy & Other Poems, a hybrid text, is comprised of six innovative poems, including an image of firearm parts, and a translator's note. The poems are beautiful in their formal features—especially, image, rhythm, music, and lyricism—exhibiting sonorous and poignant elements. Though, in my opinion, Polanco's “voice” is not nihilistic, the language is “indeterminate,” as if he is saying to us, “The situation is dire, but I do not have the answers.” In the first, title, poem, “COWBOY,” “the world is no longer enough” [3], and, symbolized by “a prosthesis,” the prototype of a reckless, wandering, unmoored man travels

on this sea rubbed raw by the coast, on a raft that

you can pull apart and with its two parts make a cross that

flaps like a flag, like the waves of this bilious sea, this sea

from which a sacred body's scabs emerge, from a swell-

ing. This raft on which I float is a stump and I'm riding

it cowboy-style, riding my stump over the bile, people

will say they saw me mounted on a white swan, they'll

say that they saw me, but it will be a lie, it will be my raft,

the stump-raft I ride, and I too am a stump... [4]

Using the signs, “stump,” “mutilation,” and “prosthesis,” Polanco begins his book by introducing us to the spectre of loss and erasure, a theme continued in the second poem, “CONFUSION”—“Did he throw himself into the river?” / “Yes, he was confused.” [5] Both poems appear in experimental form, employing prose, unconventional lineation, and varying use of capitalization.

The third, untitled, poem is introduced by a two-part drawing of a gun and bullets, a foreboding image, again, of loss and erasure—taken one step further into method. Partially-appropriated text accompanies the image, and we are warned, “This bullet is not a bird. Although it invents itself in the air.” [8] Continuing themes of erasure and, now, death, poem four, “HEAD OF A DEAD MAN,” is inspired by an ancient stone statue. This poem appears to be entirely appropriated with erased components and sentences situated irregularly combined with other “defamiliarized” elements mentioned before.

Poem five, “Posthumous Instructions for My Body,” is dedicated to Peter Handke, the controversial co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. This piece is crafted as a conversation between two individuals—the deceased person's “voice” [Polanco's?] and the listener/respondent. This poem is one that would appeal to Handke, capturing his sardonic mien: “First of all crush // all // the bones // until they're compacted.” // “And then?” // “Then (after you cherish them) // char them well // until they become powder (after laughing louder).” [10] A footnote includes information appropriated, no doubt, from corporate advertising, about a process to transform ashes of a loved one into “authentic diamonds,” “a one-of-a-kind way to reencounter the intact beauty of your beloved.” [11]

The final poem, “Multitasking,” is a 5-part prose text including dark content and “dark humor,” as Galvin has described Polanco's sensibilities [“This party is fun, right?” (15)]...

2

Something's coming, I know that something is coming. Perhaps

a storm or a caste of birdmen with cassocks, but something, a

fistful of fists, a grain of salt on the tongue, is going to come. I don't

know what, but something is coming […] a hurricane

of marmots, a gang of winged tigers, a bird that vomits bombs... [12]

Polanco's Cowboy & Other Poems left me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth combined with feelings that, while it is important for radical poets to disrupt the status quo, we must be wary of negativity and defeatism. On the other hand, in her translator's note, Galvin quotes the critic, Luis Felipe Fabre, as saying that Polanco “opposes a poetry of silence—an aseptic, apolitical, 'pure' poetry—with the noise of the world, the sound of the background, a brutal and ungraspable landscape quickly glimpsed through the small window of a train in motion.” [17] In Cowboy & Other Poems, the author's “train” is moving very rapidly, for sure, toward, it would seem, a future not well envisioned but, also, not wholly devoid of “epistemic virtue.” If poets are the bearers of ethics as well as truth, we can understand Polanco to be a messenger of the existential crises of the 21^st Century, indeed, of the Anthropocene, itself. The moral question is whether we have the will to save ourselves from dystopian scenarios, and, if so, how? Cowboy & Other Poems is a good place to begin to consider the gravity of the human condition. Galvin's sensitive and durable translation highlights a young poet who deserves an international audience.

BlogPost in progress: my developing Aesthetics/Poetics (Clara B. Jones-3/2019)

"Works of art that achieve 'masterpiece' status share several characteristics: they convey a special type of originality that captures the imagination; they stand the test of time; and, they change the way artists or readers-observers think about their genre or sub-genre." based on/after Goldstein JL (9/20/2018) What makes a piece of Art or Science a 'masterpiece'? Cell 175: 1-5.


Other criteria based upon Modernist and Russian Formalists--especially as they may pertain to poetry [in no particular order at this point]:

Overview: THEME, FORM, PLOT, MOTIF, NARRATORS, CHARACTERIZATION, IMAGERY, FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

--interpretive power
--changes the way we look at things
--stands the test of time
--stimulates the imagination
-- form [including, in most cases, strong beginning and ending]/style
----arrangement/visual-textual/title[s]
--technique/devices [especially, Shklovsky's "strangeness,"&  "de-famiarization;" also, see Wittengein's "language games"]; "transrational poetry/experiments" [Shklovsky & other Russian Cubo-Futurists]; zaum;[Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh--Russian Cubo-Futurists] 
--theory[ies] behind work
--music/rhythm [meter?]
--rhyme 
--color
--content/theme/subject [still mulling this one]
--integrity in the sense of part-whole and/or part-part coherence
--image
--intentionality [?]
--"anti-automatism" [?; see Surrealism]
--non-didactic
--non-literal ["literal" usually related to "didactic"]
--beauty [how to define?]
--"psychological transformations" [effects upon motivation, emotions/feelings, sensations, perceptions (e.g., Gestalt effects)], cognition, ideations; effects on unconscious [Surrealism] by way of "defense mechanisms;" effects on "self" [e.g., self-image, self-concept] 
--include "spiritual" effects? [what would this mean?]

Monetizing Poetry [this proposal is a (tentative) work/idea in progress] (Clara B. Jones)

To: Whom it may concern

From: Clara B. Jones*

Knowledge Worker

929 Bonifant Street, Apt. 512

Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA

Cell: (828) 279-4429

E-mail: foucault03@gmail.com

Re: Proposal to create a market for Poetry via the visual arts gallery network, as well as, to monetize and to create a market for Poetry comparable to the visual arts market intended, in part, to enhance poets' income from their creative work, to widen Poetry's influence and impact, as well as, to broaden the range of artforms represented by a given gallery.

Date: 12/16/2018 [revised, 1/14/19]

Visual arts as an industry: Much has been written about the national and international monetization and commodification of the visual arts in America created by the influence of buyers, sellers, 3^rd parties, such as, representatives, the media, galleries & museums, critics (academics and non-academics), artists and their agents, as well as, other entities. Visual arts networks, in aggregate, have become an industry driven by economic forces yielding the potential to “make or break” artists' careers, as well as, for the potential for individual artists to earn significant income and exposure from their creations.

Herein, I propose that...

...a given poet will, by contract, agree to print, frame, sign, date, and number a limited series of poems (1/1 to N/N) that will be professionally framed, represented by, and marketed by a given art gallery for a price agreed upon by gallery owner or representative. Mode of presentation of the printed, framed, signed, dated, and numbered poem would constitute a category of Radical Publishing. For example, to suggest a few conventions that could be employed, the poet might combine the poem with other visual art or features, such as, artwork, varied fonts, font sizes, and/or colors. Or, creating an object potentially of value to and attractive to gallery owners or their representatives, poets might be expected to collaborate with visual artists to create an object comparable to "text art," prints, engravings, woodcuts, and the like, the difference being that the text would be an original poem presented as a single work or as one copy in a limited series.

By contract beneficial to both entities, a given gallery would have exclusive rights to represent, to display, and to sell the poet's creation(s) and to market his/her/their printed, framed, signed, dated, and numbered poem which, in effect, would be characterized and treated as a work of visual art similar in sub-genres to text art, prints, engravings, woodcuts, and the like. Also, by contract, poet and gallery owner (or, representative) could agree upon series number (from 1/1 to n/N) and other pertinent details (e.g., price of artwork, advertising, duration of contract, handling of product after termination of contract, terms of copyright, etc.).

Consequences for the poetry community, its networks, and galleries: Clearly, no poet would be obligated to participate in the marketing strategy proposed herein. However, if the strategy is even marginally successful, advantages (stream of income, incentive for poetry journals to pay poets, increased status of Poetry among the Arts and in public) should obtain to poets using this strategy. Poems not under contract could be published in traditional ways. The gallery would be expected to benefit in ways comparable to what is gained by showing any other work of Art.

*Feedback is solicited about the clarity, desirability, and feasibility of this proposal, or, about any other matters of concern (see contact information above).

Review of play dead by Francine J. Harris (Review by Clara B. Jones)

play dead

Francine J. Harris

Alice James Books

2016

pp 85

$15.95

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones*

I am rarely at a loss for words—particularly, the written word. However, this is the most difficult review of poetry I have ever attempted. My mind tends to work linearly; thus, when confronted with experimental or postmodern writing, I struggle to repress a search for meaning, coherence, and the tendency to classify based on orderly categories. One of my favorite critics, Tony Hoagland, a mainstream poet, prioritizes subject matter, sincerity, clarity, exactness, and concreteness—characteristics of canonical writing; however, in his analyses of contemporary, “compositional poetics,” Hoagland deftly deconstructs poetry of the moment as collage-like and fragmentary. In many of my conversations with poets, especially, younger poets, over the past three years, a theme that often arises is the need for detailed analysis of current styles—what Hoagland sometimes refers to as “tone.” While, in the final analysis, Hoagland rejects contemporary poetry in favor of canonical forms, language, and functions, I have not read more insightful and useful essays about contemporary poetry as those provided by that critic¹. I recommend beginning with Hoagland's essay, “Fear of narrative and the skittery poem of our moment” (p 173), in which he states, “Generally speaking, [poetry of the moment] could be characterized as one of great invention and playfulness. Simultaneously, it is also a moment of great aesthetic self-consciousness and emotional removal.”

Not all of Hoagland's characterizations of contemporary poetry apply to Francine J. Harris' work since her relationship to her writing is decidedly attached and present. She does not keep her subjects, her themes, or her own emotions at arm's length. Nonetheless, Harris' use of language is playful, collage-like, and fragmentary, and she, also, uses punctuation and forms creatively. I first encountered Harris' work when I read her poem, “Canvas” (reprinted in the volume under review) in Boston Review...

“You want to make a painting of a fat woman.

As if you could render the skin translucent you start at the

stomach. Inside its bag, you start to fill in hot-cross pastries

and sausage and hot dogs on a stick.

You stand her upright.

You brush out a background in vats of all-purpose flour and

Swiss milk chocolate bars near the belly button and figure

you may dot areas of ambiguity with gummy bears and

popcorn chicken. But instead you find yourself stenciling in

pigs.”

Harris, a young African-American poet who has won several prestigious awards and fellowships, represents a new wave of young poets of color who are not bound to situate Race front and center of their work. Nonetheless, racial effects are apparent in her occasional use of non-standard English (“What you taking so long.”; “Like ants; maybe she crawl in the dark.”; “Kara, you wild.andIdontknow” [sic]; “One day when we grown”). Rarely, but effectively, Harris references current events, as, “A woman/in Oklahoma holds up a two-year-old baby girl/to keep her lover from being tasered, which is also not/an act of God. Science won't disprove a cop/hanging from a man's neck in a choke hold. We doubt/footage of alien ships in the sky.” Speculatively, Harris' frequent use of “fat” and “pig” may be references to African-American stereotypes—obesity and lovers of pork.

The poet often refers to “mother,” possibly expiating rage and sadness. Some of her lines appear to be cries de coeur and are often heartbreaking (“I mom of you. I mom of you a lot.”). Even as a young poet, Harris has become a rock star because of the widespread attention paid to her poem, “Katherine with the Lazy Eye. Short. And Not a Good Poet,” published in Rattle in 2011. In some ways, Harris might be classified as a writer of the grotesque because she emphasizes “dark” themes (unpleasant sexual encounters, drug addiction, alienation, damaged personas), Indeed, reading some of Harris' poems left me with the feelings I have when listening to Billie Holliday sing “Strange Fruit,” “Summertime,” or “God Bless the Child.” Perhaps more significant from an academic perspective, however, Harris poetry might be constructively compared with the “elliptical” poet, Lucie Brock-Broido since both writers, in my opinion, play with words in a similar fashion, especially, their penchant for using neologisms and their use of adjectives and nouns as verbs, a convention that I have found infectious and that I have, sparingly, begun to incorporate into my own work. This type of play, however, can quickly become tedious as well as seeming arbitrary or contrived, and I found Harris' frequent use of periods to separate phrases and to segment sentences an unnecessary and distracting conceit.

Similar to her references to Race, Harris' treatment of Gender is mostly understated; however, her identification with feminism appears strong. In a recent interview at divedapper.com, the poet stated, “The word I'd use if I were being kind to myself would be 'confidence.' 'Entitlement would be the word I'd use if I were trying to rein myself in....I still have something to say, and I'm going to keep having something to say, and I'm just going to keep talking. You can either be on board or not, but I'm not done.” It is rare to encounter a young female poet whose voice is so certain and so mature. Given the well-deserved attention Harris has received to date, her future work is sure to expand her audience. Even if “collage” poetics is not your preference, I encourage you to acquaint yourself with Harris' strong, emotional, and moving poetry. I suspect that her next book is awaited eagerly by many, and I look forward to following her career.

¹Hoagland T (2006) real sofistikashun: Essays On Poetry and Craft. Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota

*Originally published in Yellow Chair Review, August 2016

Intersectionality And The Black Poet (Essay by Clara B. Jones)

Intersectionality And The Black Poet¹

“I think I’ll borrow from Walt Whitman here and say, 'I contain multitudes.' I write out of who I am, and who I am is a cis-hetero woman, a Caribbean native, an immigrant, a woman of color, a member of the African, Latino, and South Asian diasporas, a New Yorker, a lover of British crime dramas and 'Doctor Who', an Italian-speaker, etc., etc. The poems come out of all of me: I’m not black more than I’m a woman. I’m not a woman more than I’m an immigrant. I understand why people ask these types of questions, but I find them impossible to answer as it always makes me feel like I’m reducing myself somehow, slotting myself into a box. And if I select a particular identity, how do I prove it? Am I then supposed to write a certain way or have certain poetic heroes or write about certain subjects? I want to be known as a good writer who is, also, quite proudly, all of these other things.” 
Paulette Beete (2018)

"There is great literature which has little or no social relevance; social literature is only one kind of literature and is not central in the theory of literature unless one holds the view that literature is primarily an 'imitation' of life as it is and of social life in particular. But literature is no substitute for sociology or politics. It has its own justification and aim." Wellek R, Warren A (1977), Theory of Literature (3rd Edition). Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, NY.


The purpose of this brief essay is to present a tentative hypothesis about the practice of poetry by African-American writers and to illustrate my ideas using examples from a chapbook by Paulette Beete (Voice Lessons, 2011, Plan B Press) and by presenting quotes from an interview I recently conducted with her. In particular, I intend to show how form and content can be employed in the service of transformative, even, radical, reinventions of The Race Project. The old project derives from Modernism's (post-Romanticism---->~1945 [WWII]) reliance upon grand narratives (e.g., Marxism, Fascism, Science, Psychoanalysis) and binaries (e.g., black-white, he-she, fact-fiction) that, applied to the present case, advance the centrality and essential import of race to African-Americans located as victims in a hostile, alienating American landscape. The new project that I discuss herein is rooted, instead, in Post-Modernism, acknowledging a world diffracted, not essentialist—characterized by relativity rather than absolutes and by meaning that is fractured rather than coherent. From this perspective, the world is heterogeneous rather than unified and predictable—an unstable universe of mutable facts and shifting, multifarious identities.

In 2015, writing in the poetry journal, Yellow Chair Review, I proposed that some African-American poets appear to demonstrate what I termed, "self-directed writing"—discussing what I considered to be an increasing tendency for these authors to project "identity's heterogeneity and complexity" rather than project themselves from a fundamentally race-based place (consider, for example, poets associated with the Black Arts Movement such as, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, or Amiri Baraka) [see my essay on "self-directed writing" elsewhere on this blog]. The “self-directed” poets who come most readily to mind are Beete, C.M. Burroughs, Gregory Pardlo, Arisa White [see my review this blog], Ishion Hutchinson, Ross Gay, Alan King, and Francine J. Harris [see my review this blog], among several others. In this note, I suggest that African-American poets increasingly project themselves intersectionally—as writers with multiple identities and interests, creating work, often, from an interior, subjective place, and, sometimes, from no political or racial or sociological place at all. These authors compose with personal voices, more or less unconstrained by stereotypes and pressures imposed from society and other outside forces (e.g., academia).

My concerns in this note derive, not from empirical research, but from my earlier interest in “self-directed writing” and from anecdotes based upon personal experiences. Several months ago, I attended a reading by a Washington, DC poet—Caribbean-American, male, 45 or so. The reader presented some strong poems; however, I found it noteworthy that his work communicated no angst, no opposition or resistance to the status quo, few references to historical markers that might have identified him as a member of a historically oppressed group. I came away determined to explore my own reactions of surprise and discomfort as well as the extent to which independence from topics generally associated with poetry by marginalized poets might be more common than I might have speculated (see, for example, epigraph, above by Beete). As a result, I decided to test the validity of my ideas by studying Beete's forms and content and by interviewing her directly. I was, especially, interested to assess my intuition that writing by some proportion of African-American poets communicates “intersectionality” and conforms to post-modern criteria (“the new project”).

One such criterion, for example, holds that a poem as a whole may not be meaningful though fragments or particular words, phrases may be meaningful to the reader. In a post-modern world, then, the reader or observer has interpretive control. Some critics have pushed the foregoing perspective to the point of deflating the roles of both reader and author by stating that a poem is about itself. I asked Beete, “What do you want your readers to know about you?” She replied: “The most important thing that I’ve ever learned about poetry—thanks to the poet Maureen Seaton—is that you don’t have to understand what a poem means to appreciate the poem. It’s fine if you just like the sound of it in your ears. Or the way the words feel in your mouth as you recite it out loud. Or how it looks on the page. Or maybe you just catch hold of a phrase or two. And, it’s fine not to like the poem at all. I hate that idea that there is some right answer to what a poem means. That probably doesn’t answer the question of what my readers should know about me, in particular, but it’s absolutely what they need to know about poetry.” What we need to know about P-O-E-T-R-Y!—rather than what we need to know about Beete. Notwithstanding, the author's poems are often intimate, telling us a great deal, indeed, about her and her experiences (“Why do I write? Because that's who I am...Writing is how I make sense of the world. It is how I make sense of myself.”). Yet, her governing framework remains idealistic, even, intellectual, and, as her reply indicates, the poem is, ultimately, about its relation to the reader.

Like much of the canon of post-modern poetry, Beete's work can be classified as “experimental” [see my essay on "experimental" poetry elsewhere on this blog] in the sense that she explores form and, content in non-classical, non-traditional ways. For example, she pushes the bounds of what we mean by a sonnet. Her poem, “Eva Cassidy Sings At Last” (p 33), is an understated reference to jazz (and race?) in 14 lines (but, not in every line!) with universal import: “1. To be gone is to swing or be inspired/2. vibrato & trill-laced ravings, an imaginative flight of melody/or rhythm/....” As Beete explains in her book, this poem “is collaged [sic] from” several sources, including, Simone de Beauvoir, a personal e-mail, and a newspaper article, among others. To “collage” a poem is to arrange and re-arrange fractured parts, not, necessarily, for coherency, but, consistent with a post-modern worldview, for the artistic act itself.

Other “experimental” constructs appear throughout Voice Lessons, violating expectations in numerous ways. Like Gertrude Stein, Beete employs repetition so frequently that it might be said to be her signature convention. In the poem, “She wears her beauty” (p 20), this phrase begins a line 13 times in a 26-line poem that includes other repeated phrases. Using lines such as, “She wears her beauty all out of proportion.” and “She wears her beauty like a ghostwritten memoir.”, Beete disguises elements of personal narrative with subtle lyrical, often, metaphorical, undertones. Elsewhere, she combines humor and surprise and self-effacement and seriousness, as in the poem, “Curriculum Vitae” (p 31): “1. I write poems to itch things out, to measure the antediluvian folds of/the body, the woman's abdomen, stretchmarked hoarder of near misses.” Again, identity is heterogeneous and imprecise and, while not exhibiting herself literally as a person of color, the author communicates that she is no stranger to struggle.

It is in this, and other ways, that the author confronts different aspects of her identity—or, maybe not. Again, in a post-modern mode, accurate or literal interpretation is not the point. Though she may refer to jazz or to physical weight or to God or to sex, etc., it is not her primary intention for the reader to form a stable, predictable impression of her “being in the world.” In this note, I have used a few examples from one African-American writer's words in an attempt to show how an intersectional, heterogeneous pose re-invents what it means to be a writer of color. A related dimension of this perspective inherent to the phrase, “self-directed writing,” is the suggestion that African-American poets are claiming the power to define themselves and to create work on their own terms. I will continue to follow what I think may be a trend. These poets are empowering themselves and creating their own niches that often seem to be independent of the historical and current expectations and characterizations others might try to impose on them.

¹Originally published in 7/2018 in the online journal, i am not a silent poet [revised]

...Male...Female..."Good" Poetry... (Table by Clara B. Jones)

Contrasts & Comparisons Between “Male” & “Female” Standards/Criteria For “Good” Poetry (very tentative...most comments in “Female” column represent my own impressions though some sound like stereotypes...my comments on Female poems strongly influenced by Alicia Ostriker who points out that some Female poets are said to write “like men” such as Elizabeth Bishop) and there are exceptions to every “rule” in each category. For what it's worth, I think that Early Ostriker & C.D. Wright write “like men”. Throughout Paul Fry's YouTube class on Literary Theory (Yale Courses), he is concerned with different literary standards, many of which seem extensions of Male “agency”. In general, and IMO, Fry “ghettoizes” women & AfAs (1 lecture on each category of these canons)...clara b. jones...21 January 2015...*

MALE	FEMALE
Creates beauty that perturbs, not necessarily comforting	Resolves conflict?, comforting?
Agency (“Thou art not August unless I make thee so.” Wallace Stevens (WS)	Relationship “This is the oppressor's language, yet I need it to talk to you.” Adrienne Rich (AR)
Dominance-Subordinance (e.g, WS)	Egalitarian (e.g., AR: “Abnegating power for love, as women have done....”)
Reification (“yillow” WS)	“the thing itself”(“The cold felt cold until our blood grew colder.” AR)
Discourse begets Power & Surveillance (Michel Foucault)	“When the wind tore our breath from us at last, we had no need for words.” AR (thus, Discourse not privileged?)
Language as a system of signs (Paul Fry [PF])	Same?
Speech as performance (PF)	Speech personal, authentic
Language is Social (PF)	Same?
Speech is a sum of agencies	Speech as emotions, feelings?
Poetry is invention (Harold Bloom [HB])	Language is true communication, personal, authentic
Does one arrive at Meaning at all?...concern for Structure (Formalism) (PF)	Concern for Meaning
Language has function (PF)	Same?
Language brings consciousness into being (“trusts” language) (PF)	Language belongs to the oppressor, thus cannot really trust...”A wild patience has taken me this far.” (AR)
“Good poets borrow; great poets steal.” T.S. Eliot	Privilege honesty, authenticity, subjectivity
Poetry imitates Nature (Plato, Aristotle)	Same?
The mind of Europe is more important than one's own mind. (Eliot after PF)	Most would disagree...emphasize characteristics as per response to 1st Eliot quote (above)
Oedipal tension is the central tension/conflict (e.g., Freud, Lacan after PF)	Mother-child/daughter relationship central?...may be source of conflict (n.b. Some French feminists are Freudians [Electra Complex?])
Is poetry an entity in a larger whole? Deleuze & other Post-modernists say no...(after PF)	No...holistic...
Binary, hierarchical	Holistic, Egalitarian
Subject-Predicate relationship, Agency (PF)	“Rhizomic” (Deleuze, after PF), “organic”, privilege Subject, Egalitarian
Poetry presents the familiar in unfamiliar ways (WS)	Familiar, local (“My power is present and local, but I know my power.” AR)
Poetry follows literary rules and stimulates the imagination (PF)	Does not follow “literary rules” (Modernism?); not necessarily imagination but “the thing itself”
Discursive (language)= social= political= objective (Darby English [PF, DE])	Emphasis upon the subjective, psychological, & “interior”
Classicism (return to past; “true for all time”; Bourgeois perspective; “social” perspective [PF])	Utopian (unattainable?)
Metaphor	Concrete, direct (primitive?, naïve?, “animal”?...see Helen Vendler [HV] on Adrienne Rich [AR])
Poetry may be an entity in a larger whole	?
Hierarchical, linear	Holistic
Subject-Predicate relationship (agency, control, binary)	Egalitarian
Ego, Superego	Id (?...or, not Freudian)
Hard to separate Logogenesis from Psychogenesis (PF)	Not hard to separate; Emotions & Psychology (Psyche) privileged over Language
Astrophysics (HV)	Myth (HV, distinction made about AR's poetry)
Contained & disciplined (HV)	“Hysteria”, “ghostly heat” (HV, distinction made about AR's poetry)
Metaphorical (PF; HV)	Allegorical (HV, distinction made about AR's poetry)
Originally prepared for Asheville (NC) Women's Poetry Collective.
*Addendum, 6/17/18: see Formalist standards  used by many to determine what "good poetry" is (e.g., see interview of Helen Vendler in The Paris Review)

Young black poets...Self-directed Writing (Essay by Clara B. Jones)

Young Black Poets And A New Sub-genre: Self-Directed Writing

“[Harryette] Mullen's work...provides a telling reply to those who would argue that lyric innovation should be, or just is, an inappropriate genre for examining the political, the social, or the cultural.” Juliana Spahr (2002)

by Clara B. Jones

Until I read the Jamaican poet, Ishion Hutchinson's, poem, “The Coffin Maker” (“the alabaster hour of day”), it never occurred to me that black poets were acknowledged and rewarded for work that did not concern race as a central theme. I've begun to pay close attention to styles, themes, and aesthetics in contemporary poetry, especially, when reading black American writers. My own standards tend to reside in a Formalist domain, privileging Helen Vendler's criteria: pitch, innate rhythm, interpretive power, distinctive timbre (lyric)--though my, often experimental, poetry does not always follow these rules. I realize that the esteemed poetry critic considers race, class, and gender to be secondary to “temperament,” a standard subordinating language to form. This effect is problematic since most of the poetry written by members of marginalized and underrepresented groups, fundamentally, emphasizes L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E. In addition, the latter writers are characteristically concerned with what Vendler would term, “politics” or “sociology.” as well as, personal narrative and relationships, modes of literary expression that do not always have “good staying power,” in Vendler's words. After many pangs of guilt for regarding Vendler's principles with high esteem, I have formed the opinion that the boundaries between LA-N-G-U-A-G-E and F-O-R-M are more fluid than often presented in textbooks or critical pieces written by members of the poetry mainstream and that this observation is supported by considering several contemporary, mostly, young and emerging, black poets now writing in this country.

Young black poets and their practice

Many of the poets in the category I am tentatively defining are males, some of whom have received recognition—awards, winners of contests, competitive academic positions, and the like. In addition to Hutchinson, Gregory Pardlo, Terrance Hayes, Jamaal May, Geffrey Davis, Ross Gay, Dante Micheaux, and Reginal Dwayne Betts come first to mind. Phillip B. Williams is a young poet who has taken control of his craft, engaged in self-directed creative activity, rather than work produced within Formalism's strictures or by adopting a separatist political posture by directly addressing race and institutional racism. Williams, instead, decides when and when not to employ race as a personal, social, or political construct or marker—as a filter through which to interpret and express interior experience relative to its personal meaning, a local condition, politics, or other phenomena and events. In “Canticle to the Tune of a Waistband's Slap,” he says: “Imagine empty suits gin-/fanned to a river bottom, hollow button-up shirts/Tuskegee's into silence,/in the shape of a Khoisan woman/renamed for a planet and propped up for exhibition.” Williams' reference to a South African “Khoisan woman” should be interpreted as an indirect reference to race, gender, and identity, since most of his readers will not know of the tribe or of steatopygia, characteristic of female Bushmen. It is, also, of interest that the physical trait (protruding buttocks) is considered a sign of beauty in Khoisan society and that these women's facial features are recognized for their comeliness around the world. The poet, then, employs a poetic conceit by cleverly embedding race and other markers into this piece in a manner that does not allow or demand easy categorization or stereotype and that does not overwhelm lyric or art. In this and other poems, however, and, without self-consciousness, grandiosity, or an obsessive sense of obligation (thus, not without authenticity and agency), the theme, race, is woven with other signifiers in a manner permitting a creative space, the poem, to encompass several individual markers, including, personal (woman), impersonal (river bottom), social (Khoisan), and, by implication, political (South Africa).

The young, female African-American poet, Morgan Parker is much more direct when referring to race but manages to “slant” (Emily Dickinson) her phrases and associations in ways that do not corrupt the aesthetic features that have made her one of the most visible black females in the mainstream poetry community. Many of her poems assert gender, sex, and class themes as well as concerns with race, demonstrating identity's heterogeneity and complexity. For example, in her poem, “Magical Negro #217: Diana Ross Finishing A Rib In Alabama, 1990s,” Parker writes, “All my friends are sisters and husbands, I'm afraid/to be uncharted I want an empire in my teeth....” In this piece, as in the work of other young poets that I highlight, race can remain a backstory (in this case, via the poem's title) upon which readers are positioned, making a slanted approach that is, arguably, a more significant message of the poem than if race were front and center (glaringly “in your face”). Morgan Parker fuses race-talk with fiesty, clever, technically competent, irreverent, sometimes hilarious, writing in which her intelligence and personality project themselves into the reader's awareness, as if to say to Formalists, “Move over, I'm in charge here!” In this article, I am discussing poets who, like Williams and Parker, take ownership of their unique voices and variegated material by treating race as one component of their identities comprised of many traits and markers, refusing to “play to” the limits and limitations of classical standards. These poets' Egos and skills are strong enough to voice a craft and to stand on their own relative to an industry, particularly, publishing, that has typically excluded them or kept them on the margins.

Self-directed creative work is embodied in what the young, African-American, female poet, CM Burroughs, calls, The Vital System (2012, Tupelo Press), a book that has been embraced not only by poets of race but, also, by the mainstream poetry community. Like Williams and Parker, Burroughs has crafted a self-directed creative project in which race is one of many interconnected components of a complex tapestry of self. Like many visual and performance artists (e.g., Pope.L who, in addition to performance art, also produces “text art”), Burroughs makes clear that she refuses to filter her her writing through race alone, identifying with “post-blackness,” a contemporary critical perspective rejecting notions that the person of color must speak to, speak for, or bear the burden of race (“Like so: post- slides into your/dailiness...call it Counter-Culture. Post-/Black. Fancy it.”) Following an aesthetic tradition situated in the poetics of Harryette Mullen and Jorie Graham, Burroughs offers an “associative” poetry of fractured identity, slaying the haunting dragons of death, sex, race, and gender with a post-modern sensibility in which the narrator's voice is fluid and short lines and white spaces denote heterogeneity without straightforward or binary answers suggested by white vs. black or male vs. female. Like a mark of Graham's work, Burroughs presents a “revision” of what we mean by race, sex, and gender, employing a model supported by several, rather than one (race) or a few (race, class, gender) supporting themes.

Throughout her volume, Burroughs returns to death and her seemingly ambivalent relationship to sex and to black men, highlighting her obsession with personal history, and the reader will note her implied reference to Shakespeare's use of “die” and “death” to represent “orgasm” in some poems (“a woman who allows a woman to die”; “we did not see its beak/gag, did not see it die.”; “Dying happens just as your waking happens”) The Vital System translates Burroughs' life into textual form, represented, not only, via her language (“So much has happened. I'm black. I have a dead sister. I love you, but, and believe this,/I mostly want to talk.”). Several poems are written in prose, and, like Graham's long sentences, carry thoughts and feelings and situations from the present over the long term, perhaps to an imagined eternity or place where separation and loss do not occur. Both Graham and Burroughs combine elements of the poetics of form and of language, bridging the concerns of both traditions into literature that is taken seriously by highly-regarded poets, critics, scholars, educators, publishers, and other professionals, practitioners, and stakeholders, resulting in wide acclaim for each poet's work.

Conclusion: Fusing aesthetics and politics

It is interesting to note, and would be important to study, Morgan Parker's recent call for black poets to develop their own aesthetics based upon a radical resistance that she traces to Nikki Giovanni and the [“angry”] Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Parker's White Paper, published as a Harriet blogpost, was devised in opposition to current calls to increase racial diversity among poets, and she suggests that black poets should withdraw from that initiative. Elsewhere, I have termed this nascent school, Black Nationalist Poetry, and it remains to be seen whether a significant proportion of black poets will forgo efforts to become validated by the mainstream poetry community in this country. A conventionally race-based poetry, particularly, black nationalist perspectives, might oppose the self-directed creative processes represented by the young black poets mentioned in this article. However, there are several reasons to argue that a self-directed practice is a more powerful way to bring issues of identity, including, race, to national and international domains. First, black nationalist aesthetics characterize movements of the past, outcomes of Modernist ideals of meta-narratives and utopian thinking based on allegories (i.e., oppression generated by institutional racism rather than discursive “performance” of race; reliance upon binary thinking—black vs. white, male vs. female). On the other hand, many of these writers' paradigms, also, exhibit Post-modern aspects since they situate race in a social and political arena. Second, a more heterogeneous, complex view of race and race-based poetics benefits the poet and her audience by promoting an independent writer in control over her product that, it can be argued, is less vulnerable to commodification by counter-interests in poetry's mainstream. Finally, heterogeneity and complexity permit more flexible and differentiated responses to racism over the short-, medium-, and long-terms, components of tactics and strategies to assert leverage, if not immediate influence, in professional networks often biased in favor of a limited set of phenotypes (putatively, male, white, and economically privileged).

I have argued, elsewhere, that “oppositional” poets, educators of poets, and progressive critics should develop a systematic analysis of Formalism out of which might emerge a new, progressive aesthetics linked by language to politics, in particular, racial politics. The present article is intended to propose a tentative conceptual framework by revising and expanding the latter project for one based upon the idea that form and language are both important to the aesthetics and politics of marginalized poets who benefit themselves, their art, and their, direct or indirect, messages by adopting literary standards and techniques reaching the widest possible audience. It is only by these means that the elitist strictures of Formalism and classical criteria can be effectively impacted and modified by black and other underrepresented poets. Like Burroughs' “vital system,” many young black poets, as autonomous agents, are connecting the interior and the personal with the social and political via language as a new writing model. The latter paradigm might be crafted in a hierarchical or non-hierarchical manner depending on the values and purposes of the poet whose art is now generated by self-directed aesthetics and politics rather than by the externally imposed, exclusive, elitist, and divisive standards, priorities, and expectations of conventional and mainstream poetry networks.

Originally published in online poetry journal, Yellow Chair Review.

Contemporary "Experimental Literature"... (Essay by Clara B. Jones)

Contemporary “Experimental Literature” In America, Emphasizing Poets, Poetry, And Poetry Journals

by Clara B. Jones

As every writer knows, it is important to use words intentionally. However, the term, “experimental poetry,” is used variously in the literature and is difficult to define. Paul Stephens of Columbia University titled one of his papers, “What do we mean by 'literary' experimentalism?”, choosing to review uses of the term rather than to settle on a single definition. Stephens points out that several terms are employed interchangeably with “experimental literature,” especially, avant garde and Postmodern [rejection of the previous periods' universal truths (e.g., humanism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, Fascism)], and I have noticed in my research that the term, “innovative,” has been used to describe experimental poets who are female. As a sub-title for one of my manuscripts, I have used the words, “exploratory poems,” to describe innovative pieces, a figurative substitute for the word, “experimental.”

Writing, primarily, about experimental poetry, Stephens states that, historically, “experimental literature” has been associated with Symbolism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Imagism as well as, other schools (e.g., Futurism, Bauhaus) and that the term, “experimental,” did not come into common usage until the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the word's diverse interpretations and uses, Stephens agrees with Ann Lauterbach that, “in the world of poetry, to be experimental is sometimes taken to mean you have...an aversion to form....” I suggest a more restrictive version of the previous statement—that literary experimentation exhibits an aversion to the aesthetics dominating mainstream standards at a given time (the “canon”), especially, standards of form, language, and function.

Gertrude Stein as an exemplar of “experimental literature”

Speaking of Gertrude Stein and other experimental authors, Stephens asserts, “Writers like Stein...seek to confront us with massive blocks of information [e.g., “epic” poems] that...thwart what we traditionally expect from poetry as a formal expression of carefully crafted sound and meaning.” Using “conceptual” writing as an example, Stephens goes on to suggest that this form of experimental literature, in particular, poetry, “is not necessarily a careless literature,” contrary to some critics who have claimed that many experimental works are produced “arbitrarily.” Natalia Cecire considers Stein's epic poems “unreadable” and “boring,” suggesting that “it is not scale but rather something about her style that is an impediment to reading; not the how much, but simply the how.”, particularly, Stein's penchant for “repetition.” Yet, consistent with the idea that experimental literature opposes mainstream standards, Cecire states that Stein's poetry challenges “the status of reading” and that other experimental writers (e.g., Kenneth Goldsmith, Vanessa Place) negate “the need for reading in the traditional textual sense.”

The latter comment is reminiscent of current experiments in American poetry whereby information technology (e.g., texting, Twitter, Facebook, video, music) intersect with conventional ways to use words, and the highly-regarded, young experimental poet and internet artist, Steve Roggenbuck, promotes the terms, “internet poetry,” “vlogging formats,” “essay film,” “collage poetry,” as well as other sub-genres for utilizing technology and text (“emergent poetry” in Roggenbuck's lingo). One might suggest additional ways of describing media poetry, such as, “cyber-poetry” or “cyborg-poetics;” “neo-poetry” or “neo-poetics;” or ,“anti-poetry.” “Text art,” related to “media poetry,” though, a simpler sub-genre, is famously represented by the work of African-American artist, [William] Pope.L (University of Chicago), producing stylized printing composed as highly provocative statements, usually, innovative phrases about race, class, or gender. These novel ways of conceptualizing poetry and other text require a new aesthetics, a project in progress judging by Stephens' recent publications, including, a book and critical articles in the journal, Convolution, which he edits.

A case study of contemporary “experimental poetry”: “video erasure poetry”

I encountered Claire Peckham's media (or “internet”) poetry ( http://www.houndlit.com/claire-peckham-whispering-gallery) when reading an issue of the poetry journal, HOUND, a relatively new publication edited by Danielle Susi. The venue's webpage states, “We...tend to lean more toward experimental pieces and work that takes risks.” Based upon an e-mail interview with Claire, I learned that she is an “artist” in Seattle with a background in English (Creative Writing) and Photomedia, concentrating on “image and language.” More precisely, she said, “My work, among other things, is concerned with levels of perception and their intersections.” Claire began illustrating and binding books when she was about nine, finding that “games were not worth playing without characters; imaginary adventures were not interesting without plot.” When visiting libraries, she was, especially, interested in audiobooks. She reported, “I started saying, 'I am a poet.' as often as I said, 'I am a writer.'”

I asked Claire to relay her process for creating, “Whispering Gallery,” the “video erasure poem” published in HOUND. She responded, “'Whispering Gallery' was the culminating project for the last photography class I took at university. It was a class dedicated to exploring and re-appropriating the concept of books made explicitly as works of art. The piece is visual art and poetry [as well as sound], though I would not call it 'performance art'.” I asked Claire to be more specific about her process, in particular, what she means by a “video erasure poem.” She replied that her use of the term is “literal” and that “Whispering Gallery” was created “by erasing words from 'found' text,” specifically, entries in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). She thinks of the poem as a combination of “poetry and visual art” [and sound] with video as the format and, I would suggest, using video as the vehicle for the experiment, though the mediation of text by technology might, also, be considered a form of facilitation or enhancement.

Claire's current project is another “video erasure poem” using text “from an ancient study on the distance at which something becomes invisible to the human eye [perception].” Claire's work is one of several sub-genres of contemporary experimental poetry, and readers interested in exploring the wide variety of these forms are referred to journals such as Posit, Inpatient Press, Otoliths, Experiential-Experimental-Literature, in addition to, HOUND and other venues (see below). In most of these journals one observes that the most common techniques and strategies utilize the manipulation of electronic technology, including, sound and music, with text, though Roggenbuck and others point out that other poetic/textual forms are “emerging.”

Experimental Literature concerns artistic function as well as form

Paul Stephens, referred to above, points out that experimental literature has political and social components. I conduct research on experimental poetry, and it seems clear to me that movements in this genre have often served as mechanisms of resistance and forms of protest against political and social ideologies and institutions, as well as, opposition to mainstream aesthetics. These tactics are often utilized by members of marginalized groups, some of whom have been political activists as well as artists (e.g., Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez). Contemporary experimental movements have included the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, the San Francisco School, the New York School of Poetry, the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E movement, and the Black Arts Movement. Women have been important participants in all of these initiatives, including, for example, the “innovative” poets Harryette Mullen, Alice Notley, Gloria Evangelina Anzaloúa, Susan Howe, Leslie Scalapino, Eileen Myles, and Alice Fulton. Among these female poets, Alice Notley's and Susan Howe's work has become part of the mainstream “canon,” suggesting, perhaps, that there may be a fuzzy line between what is conventional and what is “experimental” and that, as the Caribbean-British sociologist, Stuart Hall, has suggested, activities “at the margins” can impact the dominant, majority culture and, possibly, change it. In poetry, Allen Ginsberg might be a good example of Hall's theory and an interesting subject for research.

Finally, perhaps reflecting roles played by females as well as racial and ethnic minorities in experimental poetry projects, several active journals of experimental poetry have diverse editorial boards (e.g., Door Is Ajar, Counterexample Poetics, Rhizome, Winter Tangerine Review, Really System), and this phenomenon may differ significantly from the, purportedly, mostly white, mostly male, editorial boards of journals privileging formalist and other mainstream poetic forms (but see, for example, mastheads of the highly-regarded online mainstream poetry venues, Memorious and Blackbird, as well as the print journal, Prairie Schooner). Possible differences between experimental and mainstream journals is a topic worthy of systematic investigation. The present article is intended to alert readers to the burgeoning sub-genres in contemporary experimental literature driven, primarily, by varied combinations of technology, text, visual art, and sound or music and is a call for reviewers of journals and books to focus on the creative experiments of these writers and publications, part of a new avant garde in literature.

Originally published in online poetry journal, The Review Review.

Exiting The Core Dialog (or, Default To Pseudoscience) [Poem for John Hurrell Crook by Clara B. Jones]

Exiting The Core Dialog (or, Default To Pseudoscience)

dedicated to the late John Hurrell Crook (1930-2011)

You were my Guru

sharing an elevator from Toronto to Bristol

Social Ecology's Père.

Restless wife

leaving you imploding, reinventing

a rugged Quelea

a monk of fieldwork.

Did Africa loom?

Did you miss reading journals?

Did your colleagues write?

Did you feel manly

or was that all in the past?

Before the Four Purposes supplanted Science

exceeding Dharma's proscriptions

filling every void

now seeking a different balance

compelled like other stoics to forfeit Natural History

for Moksha manifest as enlightenment

and for the spiritual wealth of Artha

no longer weighed in the currency of papers and books

a domain of joy as intentional Kama

Charvaka appealing to lone materialists

not at ease with magic and gods

switching from fact-finder to spiritualist

alien in the halls of Cambridge.

A wife defined by roles to others

categories like tributaries always moving, changing

sometimes in random directions

or immeasurable and ill-defined

engineering the ecosystem of kin, friends, acquaintances

as the Falémé nurtures soils and microbes

power over living things and things not living

abiotic and biotic

landscapes rugged as the slopes of Kouroudiako

where a wife near Saraya knows abandoning her fate

would mean death or silence

not the freedom felt by your wife leaving Bristol for London

then more popular than Stilton

dancing in halls when once she served port to your peers.

Her agency yanked you from worthy colleagues

no further prospects save surrendering Self

as another form of contract

left by your woman to conquer new demons.

With or without Ego, cause and effect prevail.

The act of writing is a conduit to Truth

that you abandoned for another sort of insight

turning inward to reject the landscapes of probabilities

odds offering few direct rewards

propelling you instead behind a veil of contemplation

seeking your non-self rather than a higher self

a mien without craving

if that state is possible

beyond mere abstinence from pleasure

not pleasure but abstinence from the satisfactions of the unconscious

relief from responsibility

trading arrogance for enlightenment or another quality of knowing

not seeking facts, equations but received integrity

seated alone on a mat.

A body crafted for work

Gramsci built for hegemony

von Frisch built for bees

Strassmann built for microbes

Dickinson built for poetry

wired for thought expansive and novel

Seewiesen encompassing Max Planck and Munich.

Your body performing intentionally

in Morocco and the Himalayas

willing the unity of Science and Buddhism

removed from the certainties of reductionism

leaving you to walk unclothed across ice

at a time when you needed the sun's thaw

striking a bargain with Sheng Yen

to wear the rough robe of celibacy

though you never extinguished desire

recalling craving controlled by midbrain

competing with frontal cortex for control.

Originally published in International Society of Behavioral Ecology Newsletter, 2015, vol. 27, issue 2, pp 10-11

Ode To A Species In A Time Of Extinction [Poem for Dan Janzen by Clara B. Jones]

Ode To A Species* In A Time Of Extinction

for Dan Janzen

We are losing ground, Dan said.

And I responded, Yes.

Juan Santamaria's tears are falling on the rainforest

weeping for their loss

almost gone the way of jaguars

legumes and lianas missing their playful leaps

and figs finding another kind to spread their seeds

figs sweeter than mangoes could not prevent their exile

by new conquistadores born in their own country

with villas in Alajuela and partners in Miami and Austin

flying into Corcovado in Cessnas

collecting samples of timber and ore

as I once collected their fragile bodies

destined for museums in Cambridge and Albuquerque

an orange monkey, head crowned grey as soot

stalking them on horseback with campesinos

no longer rulers of Osà

their peninsula fragmented

diurnal omnivore

moving to another landscape

groups growing smaller

grasshoppers and birds' eggs once fed them

prey to eagles' talons

now lost to human predators

whose lives are bound by decades not by years.

*Saimiri oerstedii

Originally published in International Primate Protection League Newsletter, December 2015, vol. 42, #3, p 24.

AMNH (1986-1987) (for the late Sydney Anderson) [Poem by Clara B. Jones]

AMNH (1986-1987)

for the late Sydney Anderson

I sat across from you

studying the Pleistocene

capricious and chill.

Brainy Primate types

riven by hostile climate

into their own kind.

(Her performance flexible as Rattus

following Schneirla

from a past with no future to a lab with no subjects.)

Your curator mind

preferring forests

hot and green.

Two Songs About Conservation by Clara B. Jones

Dian's Song*

On top of Visoke covered with clouds

floats the spirit of Fossey in tropical shroud.

Her work didn’t end when she died that cold night

killed by an outlaw before his long flight.

Dian would beseech us to stand on the side

of endangered species with nowhere to hide.

She lived for gorillas and died for them, too

transferring the duty to me and to you.

On top of Visoke all covered with clouds

floats the spirit of Fossey in tropical shroud.

by Clara B. Jones

*Sing to the tune of, “On Top of Ole Smoky”


=================================================================

Conservation Song*

I.U.C.N., C.A.B.S.,

CONICIT, CONICIT,

C.I.T.E.S., and

W.W.F. all

take the heat,

take the heat.

Chorus: Conservation, conservation

is our task, is our task.

Minimize extinction, minimize extinction

guard the past, guard the past.

Save rainforests, save rainforests

and their genes, and their genes.

These are rich resources,

these are rich resources,

by all means, by all means.

Chorus: Conservation, conservation

is our task, is our task.

Minimize extinction, minimize extinction

guard the past, guard the past.

Lepilemur, Microcebus,

Avahi, Saguinus,

Cheirogaleidae,

Daubentoniidae,

Lagothrix, Colobus.

Chorus: Conservation, conservation

is our task, is our task.

Minimize extinction, minimize extinction

guard the past, guard the past.

Stewardship of biota

has long-term gains,

long-term gains.

Human preservation

of these populations

strengthens chains,

strengthens chains.

Chorus: Conservation, conservation

is our task, is our task.

Minimize extinction, minimize extinction

guard the past, guard the past.

If the forests

of the tropics

disappear

from the lands,

we will bear the guilt for

this extermination

on our hands, on our hands.

Chorus: Conservation, conservation

is our task, is our task.

Minimize extinction, minimize extinction

guard the past, guard the past.

by Clara B. Jones

*Sing to the tune of, “Frère Jacques”