May 9, 2002
When I have the cabin to myself on a day like this in the woods, language does not play a large role. I keep my unarticulated thoughts to myself and motion to the dogs if I want to get their attention or simply drop something in their food dish. (That always works!) Words get lost in between the trees and absorbed where the sun of early May stretches out. I’ll still have to find these words sometime before I write my next sermon, but not today. It’s important to have space for ideas to “air-out” before they take form on paper or in a poem. Out of this open space the creative options for something new arise. Anne Waldman has a new book out, Vow to Poetry (Coffee House Press). I liked what she had to say about language in this recent interview:
QUESTION: So what’s your sense of your role in a culture in which language is used as a tactic, as in portraying oneself as a compassionate conservative without ever having to demonstrate one’s compassion?
ANSWER: My role is to be a language guardian. I uphold and query the use and abuse of the gorgeous, subtle, mellifluous, energetic, and imaginative Mother Tongue! I get nervous around self-enclosed, solipsistic realms, where everyone is supposed to “get” it and is really brainwashed and not thinking on his or her own two feet. Or is not demonstrating originality of thought or language…If you don’t valorize reading and study and thinking and imagination, you are in trouble as a culture. So it’s much more than the hypocritical “compassionate conservatism” we need to guard against. It’s also the touchy-feely, soft realm of lazy and disempowered speech: stale, dead lingo that deadens our sensibilities, shuts down our perceptions. Words are powerful. William Burroughs calls the word a “killer virus.” It’s the ignorant folk like us – presumably on the other side – the bleeding heart liberal “enlightened” side – who should demonstrate language’s intelligence, humanity, and compassion by not allowing it to become canned, programatic, pre-fab, disingenuous, ideological.