Reviews for Poetry as Insurgent Art

The average rating for Poetry as Insurgent Art based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-29 00:00:00 Ray Michaels i will not walk this path with you Ferlinghetti, i will not swallow your self-aware self- important sense of self- worth as you swear in so many words the world will be saved by poetry. and i spent summers in sweltering coffeehouses with cigarette smoke dense and packed as the words of amateur after amateur patting the backs of other amateurs in an amateur display of "we are poet, hear us roar," but i will not swallow this splenda-made sweetness that poetry is saving the world. i won't swallow that kool-aid. i remember in cloewes hall in 2000, your grip on a starbucks vente, as you preached the evils of autos and corporations as you pushed your sequel to your most successful book so snidely. now your pint-sized collection of pretensions previously published and stale on the shelf cancels out its message by its existence. if you believed these words, they wouldn't be printed in limited edition and signed and sold, they'd be echoing across internets. they'd be screaming from graffittied walls and they'd be tattooed across your bookstore. so, i will not walk that path with you, that dead end path of poetry being the salvation of this country. salvation is protest in the streets. salvation is blocked intersections and the intersections of ideas in genuine debate, salvation is in escaping the screaming heads that pretend to communicate on television. salvation is not poetry. it is the feminists who insist the way we think about thinking is wrong, salvation is somewhere beyond that place where we think differently. salvation doesn't wear tweed and read from old yellowed pages. salvation doesn't produce postcards, it can't be sold for 12.95 to fauxrevolutionaries and tourists with fanniepacks taking pictures next to cardboard ginsbergs. i've seen good minds of my generation distracted by pseudophilosophical bullshit by spouting slam on stages, their rage flayed upon appearance because every mother- fucker in the room already agrees. i've seen them muted by their chap-books that sit in piles of rebellion unbought on apartment floors. i've seen some of the good minds of my generation in bland rebellions by bong and by song but rebellions don't stay in apartments on couches under marley flags. rebellions don't simmer in coffeehouses before pouring out momentarily satiated into apathetic streets. poetry is a non-rebellion when it doesn't invade the vision of those who don't want to see it. you snidely look down your nose at academics who place thoughts of doubt like seeds in minds while you stew in your own juices and make money off echoes of your revolution that is over. the revolution won't hold tight to reveries of the past. it won't fear the internet; it won't run from technology. the revolution will be in minutea, as every generation is less locked into the fears of the past, as gay is legalized, as more people realize how this country treats other countries, as more eyes open to injustice. Howard Zinn's prose (which you look down upon) opens eyes. The web opens eyes as we see further, learn faster, travel the globe in seconds, as it becomes closer and closer to impossible to deny we're all human and no one is "other." you sung the song of the revolution, ferlinghetti, but now your revolution is rapidly aging. get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-07-13 00:00:00 Sd Asdf An intriguing and ironically inspiring book of essay-poems which address the most prevalent problems with the medium of Poetry. The book is quite eccentric and Niche and I doubt if it'll appeal to any non-poet or non-writer; but I strongly recommend it to anyone who has ever written and performed poetry.