http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-donald-trump-political-depression-mental-health-2016-psychiatric-cbt-methods-heal-britain-a7528581.htmlPolitics

Quote:

So what is helpful? What’s the cure for political depression? For one thing, liberal conservatives are going to have to borrow from some of the left’s irrepressible optimism. But if my last few months of lethargy and dark doctors’ waiting rooms have taught me anything, it’s that all those in search of a cure for our current political malaise could do well to look at recent advances in the mental health ward. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, is today’s wonder cure – but what does it actually entail, and can it save a country as well as it can a person?

CBT is all about breaking unhelpful mental patterns. It’s also about the art of the possible. Under pressure at work? Find one request you can reasonably make of your boss. Determined to run a marathon to feel better about being obese? Start by using the stairs instead of a lift.

In politics, focusing on the big picture can often seem overwhelming. The future is bleak; there are a lot of battles that the forces of liberalism seem unlikely to win. When I think of Trump in the White House, Erdogan imprisoning critics in Turkey, martial law in the Philippines – I could continue – I curl up and go back to bed. When I think about the two refugee friends who I’ve got coming to stay next week, I scurry up and start readying

Adrienne Rich on the Political Power of Poetry and Its Role in the Immigrant Experience

Quote:

Adrienne Rich — who spent a lifetime contemplating the relationship between art and capitalism and became the first and so far only person to refuse the National Medal of Arts in a political act of protest against the foibles of that relationship — considers poetry’s singular promise amid a culture increasingly preoccupied with the unfeeling superficialities of rampant capitalism:

Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire.

[…]

I have never believed that poetry is an escape from history, and I do not think it is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

[…]

Where every public decision has to be justified in the scales of corporate profits, poetry unsettles these apparently self-evident propositions — not through ideology, but by its very presence and ways of being, its embodiment of states of longing and desire.

With an eye to the commodification of feelings in contemporary culture, she considers the tragic resignation of despair — a notion the great humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm had examined half a century earlier in his timeless treatise on human destructiveness, and one which Rebecca Solnit would echo a decade later in her sobering clarion call for resisting the defeatism of easy despair. Rich writes:

We see despair when social arrogance and indifference exist in the same person with the willingness to live at devastating levels of superficiality and self-trivialization… Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat, is, like war, the failure of imagination.

One of Rich’s most potent points examines the role of poetry in the immigrant experience and in the flight from oppression. She considers poetry as a counterpoint to the problematic metaphor of the “melting pot”and writes:

There was a late woman from Devon
Who was still blogging when she got up to heaven
When God asked her why
She said “Though I died,
I still want to keep being lovin’.

The angels like laptop computers
And asked BT for some routers.
They need tech support,
So goes the report….
A new career dawns for tech tutors.

Gabriel could have sent Mary an email.
To fill her in on the details.
“God has impregnated you,
I’ll email Joe too,
As we don’t want this venture to fail.

https://youtu.be/APi_Q3GoP-E

In my heart, my love is still alive
I feel his presence just where eyes can’t reach
I need another person to survive.

I am angry but do not feel enraged
For all must die and life its lessons teach
In my heart, my love  still is alive.

As I write, my pen disturbs the page
The art of love is just beyond my reach
I need another person to survive.

We need another in order to engage
The wit, the sense, emotions that we seek
In my heart, my love is  still alive.

Could that ” other  “be my other side?
The part that dreams and sometimes needs to speak?
I need another person to survive.

Gentler than the rain’s sound on the street
The still small voice sends messages to greet
In my heart, his love is  now alive
I wed my  “other self” to loss survive.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2007/03/the_origins_of_postmodernism.html

In the words of Nietzsche,

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-we-should-memorize

Extract

“My late colleague Joseph Brodsky, who died in 1996, used to appall his students by requiring them to memorize something like a thousand lines each semester. He felt he was preparing them for the future; they might need such verses later in life. His own biography provided a stirring example of the virtues of mental husbandry. He’d been grateful for every scrap of poetry he had in his head during his enforced exile in the Arctic, banished there by a Soviet government that did not know what to do with his genius and that, in a symbolic embrace of a national policy of brain drain, expelled him from the country in 1972.

Brodsky was a nonpareil in various ways, not least in being the only teacher I knew who continued to smoke during class as the air-purifying nineties rolled around. He loved to recite poetry. The words emerged through smoke, and a thick Russian accent, but the conviction and import were unmistakable: to take a poem to heart was to know it by heart.

I’m struck by how, in the seventeen years since his death, the meaning and justifications for verse memorization have shifted. The effort in its acquisition may be the same, but we’d be naïve to suppose the necessity behind it is unaltered.

Memorized poems are a sort of larder, laid up against the hungers of an extended period of solitude. But today we are far less solitary than we were even a few years ago. Anyone equipped with a smartphone—many of my friends would never step outdoors without one—commands a range of poetry that beggars anything the brain can store. Let’s say it’s a gorgeous afternoon in October. You’re walking through a park, and you wish to recall—but can’t quite summon—the opening lines of Keats’ “To Autumn.” With a quick tap-tap-tap, you have it on your screen. You’re back in the nineteenth century, but you’re also in the twenty-first, where machine memory regularly supplants and superannuates brain memory.

So why undergo the laborious process of memorizing a poem these days, when—tap, tap, tap—you have it at your fingertips? Has this become another outmoded practice? When I was a Boy Scout, in the sixties, I spent some hours trying to learn Morse code and even, on a couple of overly sunny, headachey afternoons, trying to communicate by flag semaphore. Some things were meant to disappear. (And many of my students wish that assignments to memorize poems would follow them.)

The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen. Robson puts the point succinctly: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat”

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/poetry-prophecy

“Whenever a catastrophe strikes, it’s incredibly common to see an outburst of apocalyptic mania. One of the most enduring and popular artifacts of such an outburst is “The Second Coming”, a poem written in the early 20’s by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The inspiring catastrophe in question was, of course, World War I, which had recently ended; but Yeats was also influenced by the failed Easter Rising of 1916, when Irish Nationalists tried to obtain independence from Great Britain. In fact, Yeats wrote a poem, “Easter, 1916”, commemorating the fallen heroes, many of them personal friends, just a few months afterwards. But “The Second Coming” elevates Yeats’ sense of disillusion into a cosmic existentialism foretelling the very end of the world.

The poem is divided into three sections, although many publications divide it into two stanzas. In the first section, Yeats describes the intellectual and cultural atmosphere in Europe after the War, with a ‘falcon’, symbolizing mankind’s animalistic aggression, escaping from the control of its ‘Falconer’, the social codes of civilisation that had recently been blown apart. Without these codes, ‘things fall apart’, causing ‘mere anarchy’ and ‘the blood-dimmed tide’ to become ‘loosed’ upon the world (in this context, ‘mere’ means ‘total’). That these disasters are ‘loosed’ implies that they were always somewhere within us, but had previously been held in check. ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity’- disillusioned by catastrophe, idealists completely give up, leaving a vacuum for more aggressive and violent people to take over. In less than fifteen years after the poem was published, the Nazi party would take over Germany.”

I was my daddy’s curly headed child
Although he died I recollect his voice
I threw great tantrums and became real wild

He ignored me till my beauty him beguiled
He loved me  then from will power not choice
I was my daddy’s curly headed child

My mother made me dresses  of quiet style
And I was a success with tiny  boys
I threw fewer tantrums and became less wild

He did not live to walk me down the aisle
I  make him live by singing, what a ploy!
I was my daddy’s curly headed child

Now I must  have come a million miles
Without my daddy whom I loved, annoyed
I throw no tantrum though I miss his smile

I loved Daddy, I believe he died
I have no proof but would Mother tell lies?
I was my daddy’s curly headed child
I threw great tantrums, played with toys and wailed.

As I lie alone in my large bed
Occasionally graced by a big cat
I recall  the habits of the long gone dead

For there is an article I  just read
How  entire families used to lay down and might chat
As I sing along in my large bed

I wonder what my husband would have said
Had I asked the neighbours  to do that
I recall  the habits of the friendly dead

I know my bed is smaller than a shed
The surface seems unsteady and not flat
As I lie and tell the truth in my large bed

I feel ashamed; my  high boned cheeks are red
Is that strange noise a tiger or a rat?
I cry,I’m  missing  all my friends who’re dead

If   our innings comes, we each must bat
For life does not award an aegrotat
As I lie in reverie in my  bed
I  float into a dream  redeeming  dread.

Extract

Twelve years ago, I began work on a long poem about a subject I’d tried dealing with in several novels, my experience while working in a welfare building in San Francisco in 1969. I decided to combine this idea with new material about a pogrom in Poland in which 1,600 Jewish men, women and children were murdered. The many narratives and characters required balancing techniques I’d learned in writing all those failed novels.

Winning the Pulitzer Prize had ended the rivalry, I thought. The poet in me was triumphant. I was never meant to be a novelist. But when I finally finished the book in the spring of 2013, my editor suggested calling this long poem “a novel in verse.” I protested somewhat but finally gave in; both my identities were too exhausted to continue the struggle.

It’s hard not to smile when I hear myself explaining to people that “The Wherewithal” is a poem that uses some novelistic techniques. The novelist seems to be taking all this in his stride. He knows that the poet got the book published and that the lines are broken into stanzas, not paragraphs. He’s even being, well, something of a gentleman about it. Forty-two years is a long time to struggle to do anything. And the poet is more than willing to share credit if credit is due. In fact, we are on our best behaviour. Maybe, after all these years, we’re finally learning to cooperate, or at least live like brothers.

http://hekint.org/sylvia-plath-the-tortured-artist-2/

Extract

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people’s eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.

Here we experience Plath’s love affair with shadow, suggesting yet another dichotomy: shadow and light. The two coexist, although Plath doesn’t allude to shadow’s counterpart; she writes about it as a single entity, existing in the most ordinary things, giving them depth and beauty. In noting the shadow at the “back of people’s eyes and smiles,” Plath seems to underscore the importance of human relationships and subtext—a critical theme in Plath’s poetry and a possible explanation for why she connects so well, so broadly, and so richly to so many people. In isolation, Plath could not achieve this “social nirvana” that not only embraces the shadows that characterize her existence, but elevates them. This duality creates a vivid picture of Plath’s interpretation of happiness: seeing shadows as a thing of beauty, whereas most people perhaps only appreciate the light. This perception of shadow through a different, brighter lens comes from Plath’s ability to connect with the people around her. This is something she achieves intermittently in life, as does her protagonist in The Bell Jar.

The most telling example of this achievement, and one that truly captures Plath’s ability to discern beauty in a dark, troublesome reality, is this line: “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” There is no equivocating in this simple statement, made during a free-spirited rush down a skiing hill, which ended in a broken leg (Plath broke her leg skiing as a senior in college). First, Plath describes the components of the world: air. Mountains. Trees. People. This evokes a simple scene from Plath’s life but a crucial one: she has managed to escape the claustrophobia of her pressure-filled life through a trip to the mountains, which in some sense capture the same vast, beautiful possibility of the open sea. Here, too, there are people. There must be for Plath to achieve true happiness. The last line confirms it: “This is what it is to be happy.” There is no comparison here, no softening of terms with a simile or metaphor; this is Sylvia Plath’s definition of happiness.

https://youtu.be/PcDqpRX41NE

Since the Holocaust very few people if any in Europe can speak Yiddish as they were all killed.I wonder of that is partly why Europe has gone even further down hill

Last year I was a moron at this test
Even though I aimed to do my best
Should I have a brain implant right now?
I’d love to be an imbecile, and how!

I’m stunned  that I write English like a man
Even though my name is Mary Anne
Do they mean homo , or is it vir?
Anyway, I feel a little queer.

I managed to  do mathematics  very well
That I was a moron, none could tell
But should I manage to reinvent a metal wheel
I hope that proves I am an imbecile

I even gave long lectures on Pascal
The heart has got its reason.I can tell
So though on IQ tests my brain is weak
It is from my heart I truly speak

I enchanted men while also gave them pain
For beauty made them blind to my strange brain
As for my heart it’s hidden in my breast
And therefore cannot take an EQ Test

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondeau_(forme_fixe)

[This is a slightly altered rondeau form]

My heart, my mind, my soul are very sad
Yet summer comes and I must pick the flowers
I gain my comfort from the love we had.
My heart, my mind, my soul are very sad
The price is paid for all that made us glad
The love that seemed eternal was not ours
My heart, my mind, my soul are quietly clad.
Summer comes; I  lie amidst the flowers

In winter darkness, all  the garden’s hid
Tormented by the cold of winter showers.
For our fresh air we make a sudden bid
In winter darkness, all  the garden’s hid
Forgetful of the love making we did
The sullen heart in dying seems to glower
In winter darkness, all  the  world is clad
In ice and snow are hidden what was ours.

Not even a Greek Tragedy but Soap
With music from the Workers Playtime gagged
The Government is ruling us like dopes

The intellectuals eye the scene and mope
Their notebooks plugged, the files then dropped and dragged
Not even a Greek Tragedy but Soap.

For playwrights, there may be an ample scope;
But like the water pipes, they’re  surely lagged.
The Government is ruling us like dopes

They’ll charge the  foolish suicides for rope
Their bodies  to recycle in bin bags
Not even a Greek Tragedy but Soap.

I glare from rooftops with my telescope
Listening to the songs of Billy Bragg
The Government is ruling us like dopes

Well, pass the brandy, light me a new fag
Stand beside the Union Jack and gag.
Not even a Greek Tragedy but Soap
The Government is ruling us like dopes

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/why-poetry-misses-the-mark/497504/

” Poetry is linked, in his vision, to the possibility of a total redemption of human society, of the kind Marxism used to call “the revolution.” In particular, his fusion of aesthetic, political, and spiritual messianism brings to mind the work of Walter Benjamin, the 20th-century German Jewish theorist. Lerner’s previous book, the novel 10:04, was saturated in the Benjaminian concept of redemption: the idea that the world as we know it carries within itself the possibility for transformation. Key to this vision is the idea that salvation will come from within, from a rearrangement of the world, rather than through an external power or a god.”

Art by Mike Flemming

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/the-purpose-of-poetry

” I believe the personal is also political.  I remember a time about 10 years ago when I audited a poetry writing class at the University of Chicago as an “older adult.”  (I was 36, but easily the oldest student in the class!).  When it was my turn to submit a poem to the workshop, I offered a piece about my two kids fighting over a doughnut in the back seat of our mini-van.  I’ll never forget the first comment from one of my classmates:  “Your poem is so real.  It’s really about something.”  He meant the words as a compliment.  Even if my poem was not about anything particularly enormous, it was grounded in everyday reality unlike any of the poems my classmates had offered before me.   And Smith’s memoir Just Kids is artful, I’d argue, because of its personal observations.

I don’t mean to be making any grand distinctions here. But, speaking crudely, I think we are living in an age of artistic abstraction. The purpose of poetry,” Sir Philip Sidney famously pronounced, “is to instruct and to delight.”  The order of those two points seems pointed.  Delight, to him, is a secondary concern.  While Sidney’s epigram might hold just as powerfully today, I don’t think the order of points would remain the same. In contemporary poetry I believe there has been a turn toward abstraction and a turning away (however slight) from poetry of everyday reality and the poetry of social conscience.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/the-purpose-of-poetry