Why I Continue To Write Poetry In An Age Of Aliteracy

I can’t answer that. It’s not a decision, not a decisive action. Not the product of a long contemplative journey. When you’ve been writing poetry for as long as I have it’s the result of an existential urgency, the action of a working autonomic homeostatic nervous system, a function essential as breathing. You could call it an addiction, but it goes deeper than that. It’s as intrinsic to my being as my lungs or pulse or fingers.

I am, at the same time, aware of the situation. And it’s deeply sad. More than sad. It’s terrifying.

I just watched a short video, hosted by a YouTube channel called A Homeward Journey, of a young woman venting in her car after doing a 12-hour shift in an operating room, presumably as an anesthesiologist or circulating nurse, and in order to afford her rent and food and household bills, had to continue work as a Door Dash driver. After 12 hours of highly stressful work in a hospital operating room. This is clearly not someone who might have time to read a book. And she is far from alone. A substantial portion of the U.S. population is now denied any leisure time to spend with a book, or visit an art museum, or go see a play. This young woman, as so many others her age, have been denied the things that give life meaning, depth, and joy. Hers is a slavish existence with few affordable pleasures sandwiched between shifts. A Cro Magnon living in what is now the Dordogne in France 30,000 years ago had, I am certain, a far better quality of life.

Unless you’re among the elites, unless you’re a multi-billionaire, life in the U.S. is barbaric, exhausting, and void of hope for a better future. And yet I continue worry about selling books and getting reviews. The situation is more than ironic, it’s shameful.

What motivates me to write anything at all, rather than figure out how to set up a podcast and blather away like a Joe Rogan or Theo Von, which is where the audience is, including myself much of the time, is not supported by anything rational. I joked once with my brother that I was practicing a trade far better suited to the 19th century than the 21^st century. Which I hate. I’m not a happy camper here. I should be hanging out with the surrealists in 1920s Paris. Not to mention James Joyce and Samuel Beckett and Gertrude Stein. I stood, a few years ago, with longing and wistful pining by the gated entrance to 27 rue de Fleurus, Gertrude Stein’s Paris address, nodding to a young Parisian woman as she arrived home with some groceries, feeling a bit foolish, and hoping she might invite my wife and I in for a peek at the grounds, maybe the interior of the building, or the very apartment where Gertrude hosted dinners with Picasso and Hemmingway and Ezra Pound, who broke a chair. She didn’t, alas.

I do know a number of people who, like myself, read books and write novels and poetry. But they’re not an audience; they’re competitors. It is nice, occasionally, to socialize with other writers, but I never get the feeling they’re as devastated and angry by what has happened to the world in the last several decades, maybe because they keep it to themselves. Many of them teach, which gives them, perhaps, a slightly rosier perspective. Every time I think of Bill Gates gloating over the disappearance of print media 20 years ago I seethe with resentment like a conquered warrior. There are many bookstores whose stock has been so eviscerated I believe they make more money selling T-shirts and coffee mugs to the tourists.

There are numerous books and articles citing the benefits of reading as opposed to the benefits of accessing entertaining videos on the Internet, and the consequent loss of attention span and inner reflection that comes with reading. Life for many people has shrunk from a multi-dimensional universe to a thin, tinny Metaverse of electronic jabber and social media emojis. I don’t feel the need to argue for the resurrection of literature. Who would read it? Yet here I am. Writing. Venting in binary digits. I’m as trapped by this machinery as anyone else. I do, however, manage to lead something of a dual existence, one foot in the 21^st century, and another in the imaginary library of a 19^th century manor in Sussex.

My fear is that as things worsen – and the pattern has been one of worsening conditions, particularly after the plandemic of Covid and its atomizing, desolating effects on society – and as AI assumes greater influence, nothing will remotely resemble what was once a rich intellectual life. I would include even its sillier moments, such as the William Buckley’s Firing Line in 1968, when a drunk Jack Kerouac surmised that the Vietnam war was fought so the Vietnamese could get possession of American jeeps. Kerouac had become a serious alcoholic by then, and would only be alive for another year, but his appearance a few years earlier on the Steve Allen show in November, 1969, was magnificent. He read the final passage from On The Road, beautifully, in full-throated command of the language, leaning into it with a love of the words, a bit nervous, but poised, and cool, with Allen accompanying him on the piano. It’s that image that helped launch me into the world as a writer, and for several decades I would proudly identify myself as such. These days, in case anyone asks, I don’t mention it at all. I just say I’m retired. On rare occasions, when I’m in conversation with someone over 60, I will mention I’m a writer, and enjoy a few minutes talking, as I once did with frequency in the 60s and 70s, about books and poetry and art and psychedelia. The afterglow is wonderful, especially if it lasts longer than a week. I feel a little more dignified sitting down at my desk to write, rather than the living specter of a former age.

What I feared might happen to our society 30 years ago when computers entered mainstream culture, has happened. People aren’t as friendly as they once were. There are words – genocide, transgender, homelessness, surveillance, porn, Epstein, Covid, vaccines, pronouns, etc. – are considered gauche to taboo. They can stop a conversation completely. People visibly stiffen. There is no chance, not the wispiest of possibilities, of enjoying a conversation of freely expressed ideas. I tend to be a very impulsive and spontaneous conversationalist, so I’ve had my share of faux pas. I’ve also lost some dear friends due to my feelings about Gaza.

I’m beginning to wonder if we still have a society. Electoral politics is a dead zone. Elections are rigged. Governments worldwide are steeped in corruption. It’s clear, when the billionaires gather at conferences like Davos, where the real power lies.

Every day I’m haunted by the final scenes of François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, when Oskar Werner, as former fireman and book burner Guy Montag, is led around the encampment of book lovers and introduced to people who have not only memorized their favorite books, but have become them, embody them. It feels disturbingly familiar, as if it’s already become my new home. It’s a place I feel comfortable, even though it’s imaginary, it gives me a raft of sorts, something to cling to in a hurricane of dystopic disorder. I’m sure I’d fit right in. Trouble is, my memory sucks. I’d have to choose a very thin book to memorize. Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents might be a good place to start. Or Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. The Stranger, by Albert Camus. The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein. Trout Fishing in America, by Richard Brautigan. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Tarantula, by Bob Dylan.

Ah yes, Bob Dylan. Who won the Nobel prize for literature in 2016. And why not? Tarantula is my favorite album.