It's time for another poem on klimazwiebel, your favorite climate-poetry blog. Science is about finding out how climate works, how it functions. Philosophy tries to give it a meaning and to make sense of it (?). And finally arts and poetry try to figure out how it feels.
Recently, I posted Richard Braeutigan's 1962 techno-poem "All watched over by machines of loving grace" - a hippie-technology fantasy, a vision of an IT- controlled smart-grid world.
Half a century later, for the poet Michael Robbins (educated by Guns N Roses, hip-hop and the University of Chicago), Braeutigan's vision definitively has turned into a technological nightmare. He seems to live in a world with unclear boundaries between video games and reality, a kind of i-nightmare, and in his poem he struggles with issues like hybrid creatures, terror, and his carbon footprint which has turned him into a "Yeti for the Sherpas". Machines of loving grace? Well, not exactly - anger has raised his "appetite for destruction":
Recently, I posted Richard Braeutigan's 1962 techno-poem "All watched over by machines of loving grace" - a hippie-technology fantasy, a vision of an IT- controlled smart-grid world.
Half a century later, for the poet Michael Robbins (educated by Guns N Roses, hip-hop and the University of Chicago), Braeutigan's vision definitively has turned into a technological nightmare. He seems to live in a world with unclear boundaries between video games and reality, a kind of i-nightmare, and in his poem he struggles with issues like hybrid creatures, terror, and his carbon footprint which has turned him into a "Yeti for the Sherpas". Machines of loving grace? Well, not exactly - anger has raised his "appetite for destruction":
Appetite for Destruction
—Michael Robbins
—Michael Robbins
You homicidal bitch. I killed the boar
’cause boar’s the game I came here for.
I clear the jungle with the edge of my hand.
I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium.
Dude, this aggression will not stand.
’cause boar’s the game I came here for.
I clear the jungle with the edge of my hand.
I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium.
Dude, this aggression will not stand.
I want to watch you bleed. My tongue
doesn’t know its right from wrong.
I’m uninsured. I ride the bus,
a loaded gun inside my purse.
My mouth’s a roadside bomb.
doesn’t know its right from wrong.
I’m uninsured. I ride the bus,
a loaded gun inside my purse.
My mouth’s a roadside bomb.
The boar’s inside the mosque and then
the RPG has martyred him.
His favorite song was “Crazy Train.”
I pity the Lord, pity the Flash,
I sleep through gynecology class.
the RPG has martyred him.
His favorite song was “Crazy Train.”
I pity the Lord, pity the Flash,
I sleep through gynecology class.
They call me Yeti because my carbon footprint
drives the sherpas round the bend
into the village of the whup-ass can.
When I lie on my back in the ashy rain,
pigs drink from my cavernous groin.
drives the sherpas round the bend
into the village of the whup-ass can.
When I lie on my back in the ashy rain,
pigs drink from my cavernous groin.
This is from his recent collection of poems, "Alien vs predator". Here is an interview with Michael Robbins, and here a review in the New York Times.
Please! Alien vs. Predator, not "Alien vs the Predator." Thanks.
ReplyDelete@ anonymous
ReplyDeletethanks, it's corrected.
RPG = Role playing game?
ReplyDeleteATM = ???
I'm afraid I'm too old for modern poetry, Werner.
Andreas
RPG = Rocket-propelled grenade
ReplyDeleteATM = Automatic teller machine
Andreas,
ReplyDeleteATM = Geldautomat
RPG gefallen mir beide Übersetzungen.
Too old? Who isn't....
Hi Werner
ReplyDeleteYou say 'Art and poetry tries to figure out how it [climate chnage?] feels.' Aren't art and poetry simply the interpretations of the creator, merely representing how one person perceives something? Then the myriad of those who can't create tries to tell us a myriad of versions of what the creator really meant?
"It's time for another poem on klimazwiebel, your favorite climate-poetry blog" - Werner, indeed it is, always sure to make me laugh :o)
ReplyDeleteHi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteas usual, the answer to both of your questions is: No.
Hi Werner
ReplyDeleteVery concise explanations as always. Didn't you once call me dogmatic? Do poets typically have multiple personalities or represent the soul of the crowd? Do I usually ask only two questions?
Hey Hannah with an H
CONSENSUS BY POETRY
The weather today
Is dull and grey
Chilly rain
Rattling brown leaves
But I have poetic license
It is spring time in October
And I am sure all within sight
Will agree
For the poet has spoken
In 1732 in "The Lady's Dressing Room", Jonathan Swift, at line around 100 and something, wrote: "Oh! Celia Celia Celia shits!" Swift was criticized as being someone sufferiung from "the excremental vision". Some say that Swift was exploring the duality of the public and the private and exploring the role of each in society. Some accused Swift of having misogynistic undertones, with Swift protraying women as purely artificial. Other find what they will or want in the interpretation. But the point being is, if some envionmenalist with a bent on the use of poetry to define environmental attitudes, - i.e. the environmentalist is a victim of his or her own narrow environmental focus - came across Swift's poem, would he or she declare that Swift was addressing issues of human pollution, well before its time? Can we not say that an interpretation is shaped by the experience of the interpretor? How would a plumber interpret Swift? How would a perfumer? I believe there is no 'single' interpretation, only a picture limited by the imagination of the interprertor. And on this blog, there seems to a preponderance of the 'environmentalist vision'.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dennis, for appreciating klimazwiebel as home of climate poetry! You are a brave reader of my poetry post, and you are a man of poetic ambitions; from "spring time in October" to "Cecilia shits", you are familiar with the whole range of human emotions! Isn't it amazing, how a poem can transform a man of dry statistics into a man of great emotions!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, hermeneutics is a way to interpret poetry systematically. But don't worry, poetry will of course never substitute the coolness of questionnaires and statistics - I am sure you could easily find out what Sherpas really think about Michael Robbin's carbon footprint!
Hi Dennis, do you know this "Celia poem"? always makes me laugh! Unskyld Hans......:o)
ReplyDeleteCelia Celia
by Adrian Mitchell
When I am sad an weary,
When I think all hope has gone,
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on
Btw Mitchell said that "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people". An interesting thought...Werner? :o)
ReplyDeleteHi Werner
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, but are you telling me that with the use of hermeneutics - a specailized skill I am sure - it is possible to determine what the poet(s) 'really meant'? But that is not the point. If the elite interpretation of climate change by scientists is, as you claim, much less than perfect, then why not the elite analysis of poetry by hermeneuticers (?)? Please, one brush for all under such circumstances.
Sorry Werner, there was no transformation. I guess I am fortunate enough to be able to appreciate more than one thing.
Sherpas? I didn't know you could speak Nepalese. But I am sure you could figure out their poetry using the Big H as a technique. On the other hand, if I carefully prepared and translated a survey ... Why is you think that governments have Departments of Statistics and not Departments of Poetry?
Hey Hannah with an H
Never heard that Celia poem before. I have never been to High Holborn but I have been sad and weary. Thanks for the tip.