Anne Waldman: Plurality

Plurality as a Poetics: Begins with a series of questions. What are the implications of the new information world? How will we manage our diminishing fossil fuel? Our diminishing civil liberties? Who will be "in charge?" What are the shifting paradigms the world faces? What is the New World Order that seeks to control whole populaces, governments, theocracies, plutocracies? May an artist, in fact, create, muster energy toward an act of beauty after atrocity? What is the ignorance about history that does not face the truth of its own karmic nightmare? Or does not experience the urgency of the call to struggle for peace, justice, humanity? How may poets — privileged, educated, or autodidact — relieve the suffering of "other," of "others?" How does one respond on behalf of other? What is the "other" in us? The plurality in us? After 9/11 Arundhati Roy said to the US of America: "Welcome to the world."The charnel ground of Ground Zero with its amalgam of individuals of copious background was extremely vivid in its plurality. It also showed the way that people, whether they realize it or not, are working in tandem with others, in fact they may be working at jobs that are contributing to the suffering of others. The destructions brought to mind the killing fields of Cambodia, the slaughter of Rwanda, Srebrenica, and images of conflict everywhere, elsewhere, over there. Lebanon.

"The sacrificed others" in Jean Baudrillard's sense perhaps?

The brutal violence in countless "other" — realities go abstract, for the most part, in the American mind. But it also created a backlash, a desperate sense of revenge. What a rare opportunity to wake up, in fact, to be¬come part of the world — instead it was used as an excuse, for America, in its own suspect and illegitimate governance, to become more isolated, more ignorant, more arrogant, more barbaric, more greedy.

Many millions have protested the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This latest war (this "eternal war") has shown people are connected in their struggle now "more" than ever before. I found myself in contact constantly with others all over the world in protest. And I found myself writing letters of protest to the embassies of other countries.Yet there is a kind of death wish in the land as a child in Africa dies of malaria every 30 seconds. As the weaponry created for "the eternal war scenario" grows crueler — the horrific "daisy cutter" that slashes apart its victims with incredible and unbearable pressure and brutality. The psychological suffering, in fact the "wounded psyche" all around is papable.WHAT IS THIS TO POETRY?

Post-traumatic stress syndrome is palpable. Our dreams and nightmares vent our fear and confusion all the time. This is a little report on one of the workers in the aftermath of ground zero in November 2001 (when they are still sifting through body parts): "If I had people in here, I'd want to know someone was looking too," Danny Nolan says. He has nightmares now, waking up screaming about the job sometimes. Friends from the past who have died visit him, like the old friends whose names he will not speak because of the belief that the name now belongs only to the soul. In the dream, the friend takes him into a strange room and shows him actual items that Mr. Nolan has seen recovered from the World Trade Center, things like African artifacts. "The place is playing tricks on me, I guess."

There is a plurality of the mind, of the imagination.

There is a sense of plurality vs. dominance.

The US of A is the single largest producer of greenhouse emissions, generating twenty percent of the global total.

Who rules and why?

Could Henry Kissinger ever be brought to trial for the secret bombing of Cambodia? Could Ariel Sharon in absentia be brought to trial for the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps? How many generations for the Hutu & Tutsi to find resolution and so on. How many generations for Iraqis to forgive the perpetrators of their unmitigated suffering?

How does a poetics take on so much wanton killing?