Poetry: forms, analysis, and literary significance

Lights up to reveal a room of gleaming linoleum and steel, futuristic leather chairs and a large computer screen. This is the headquarters for the Poetic Justice League of America. A red light is flashing as an alarm blares. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLAIMS comes striding in wearing a lab coat and peeling gloves off his hands. He throws the gloves in a wastebasket and hits a button. The red light and noise from the alarm both cease their pulsing.)

WILLIAM: The red light gone, and empty silent room.

AUDRE LORDE enters)

AUDRE: Talking to yourself again, Bill?

WILLIAM:it's William, Audre.

AUDRE: I know, I was just giving you a hard time. Like I'm given a hard time because I'm black. And because I'm a woman. And because I'm a lesbian.

WILLIAM: I just asked you to please get my name right. I've got it twice, after all.

AUDRE: That wasn't funny when you introduced yourself to me, and it isn't funny now.

WILLIAM: Lighten up.

AUDRE: What's that supposed to mean?

T.S. ELIOT and ADRIENNE RICH enter)

ADREINNE: Are you two bickering already?

AUDRE: It isn't my fault that the patriarchal system is inherently sexist, racist, and homophobic, and that

WILLIAM: Look, Audre, I'm sorry

ADREINNE: Don't interrupt her! You can't choose the words for her that she hasn't chosen

AUDRE: You don't speak for me, white lady -- your brand of feminism just toadies up to the existing racist patriarchy.

ADRIENNE: Audre, that hurts. And after I shared my award.

WILLIAM: Ladies, can we please settle down and AUDRE & ADREINNE: Ladies!! !

WILLIAMS: I didn't mean that, it's what I call my patients, I just

AUDRE: Just because you spend half your time with your hands up a ADREINNE: Watch it, Audre. Don't objectify the body.

AUDRE: Right.

ADRIENNE & AUDRE: My body is my politics.

T.S.: There's really no need to get so upset in the first place.

AUDRE: Excuse me? Just who are you to tell me how I'm allowed to feel?

T.S.: Oh, it's not about being allowed to feel. I mean there really is no need to get that upset. The strength of your emotion simply isn't supported by your experience. You've disconnected from any sort of objective correlative.

ADRIENNE: (snorts) Formalists.

AUDRE: Hate it to break it to you, Tom, but poetry is subjective. Life is text, and text requires life.

ADRIENNE: Amen, sister.

AUDRE: Don't patronize me.

ADIRENNE: O.K.

T.S.: But great poetry is by its very nature impersonal. The living mind of the English canon evolves with every poem and poet, reacting and absorbing and moving poetry beyond the time and place of the mere poet into a linguistic beast that

ADRIENNE: And exactly where to we fit in, in this living canon you're talking about? What if your living canon does not react to my experience?

AUDRE: It sure as hell doesn't react to mine.

ADRIENNE: Be quiet for a minute and let the real award winner speak, won't you?

AUDRE: You're just never going to let that go, are you? And no, I won't be quiet, it is the imposed silence that is used as a tool for separation and powerlessness, and I refuse to be subjected to it.

ALLEN GINSBERG enters)

ALLEN: You tell 'em, Audre! Up with controversy! Down with polite silence! Didn't anybody hear the alarm go off?

WILLIAM: Oh, Allen, thank god you're here!

T.S.: Of course we heard the alarm go off. That's why we're here, Allen. There's no other reason I'd come to this wasteland.

WILLIAM: Not to be rude or anything, T.S., I know you're a pal of Ezra's and all, but why are you here? I mean, this is the Poetic Justice League of America. Didn't you expatriate?

T.S: (defensively) I'm still taught in American Lit classes.

ALLEN: Guys? Hello? The alarm? Somebody needs some Poetic Justice!

WILLIAM: To the screen! (the group huddles around the screen) Computer. Turn on. (the screen blinks, then fills with static) Tune in. (the screen begins to clear)

ALLEN: (half under his breath) Drop out!

T.S.: (with a withering glance) I have seen the best minds of your generation

WILLIAM: (as the screen comes into focus) Quiet, you two!

The screen fills with an image of President-elect Obama, then cuts to an empty podium)

ADRIENNE: Does that mean

AUDRE: I don't believe it.

T.S.: How did they find us?

ALLEN: One of us gets to be Obama's inaugural poet?

WILLIAM: It looks that way.

ADRIENNE: Umm, as the only person in the room that's still alive, I have to say

WILLIAM: Woah, no fair playing that card, Adrienne. You've already won a bunch of awards anyway.

ADRIENNE: So have the rest of you.

AUDRE: Ahem.

ADRIENNE: Well at least a couple. And you're dead.

T.S.: But all poetry is judged and created in accordance with the dead.

WILLIAM: Oh, no.

ALLEN: Here we go again. At least we're dialoging.

T.S.: As you'll see I proved in "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

AUDRE: Excuse me, proved?

WILLIAM: C'mon, T.S., you can't really say that you proved

AUDRE: Really? Proved? How's that for demonstrating the inherent arrogance of the system? You create your own subjective reality and fill it with mathematical rules and decided that you can determine what poetry should and shouldn't be, just because

WILLIAM: Hey, there can be math in poetry.

ADRIENNE: Sitting their counting beats and breaking your sentences into metric chunks doesn't exactly count as math.

WILLIAM: It's the way we talk, Adrienne. it's the only truly American poetry.

ADREINNE: You mean the only true American male poetry.

WILLIAM: No, I mean American poetry. How we talk. In short segments. Breaking up the thought that could be (pause) one syntactical unit. Women talk too. (under his breath, to ALLEN) Lord, do they talk!

ALLEN: They howl!

ADRIENNE: What was that? (innocent stares. discombobulated:) Where were we?

WILLIAM: We were talking about why I should write Obama's inaugural poem. Because I found the true American poetic voice.

ADRIENNE: Right. And then I reminded you that your man, and that therefore this "American voice" doesn't belong to at least half the population of the country, and since a woman lost the Presidency again

ALLEN: Technically, John McCain lost the Presidency

WILLIAM: Yeah, and anyway, my poetic voice is the American poetic voice; it doesn't exclude you. Aren't you an American, Adrienne?

ADRIENNE: I am a woman first, openly and loudly.

AUDRE: Shut up.

ADRIENNE: What was that?

AUDRE: As the only black poet in the Poetic Justice League of America, I think it's pretty obvious that I should be the one to deliver the inaugural poem. His rise to the Presidency was about struggle, and no one has had to face struggle under the racist, patriarchal, and homophobic system the way I have as a black female lesbian.

T.S.: Isn't that redundant?

AUDRE: Don't mess with me old man. This poem needs to celebrate the circumstances of life that culminated in this moment; the poem mus be autobiographical from the very heart of this nation

ADIRENNE: I couldn't agree more, and I really think that someone alive

WILLIAM: This is just to say, I'll be writing the poem. It will be sweet.

T.S.: The poem doesn't need to be alive, all good poetry is always and already alive. If the poem and the moment are truly meaningful, then they will be absorbed into the living mind.

ALLEN: Is anyone else getting tired of hearing that?

AUDRE: He's said it so much I don't think even he believes it.

T.S.: I do so! The poetic tradition is of utmost importance

ADRIENNE: Originality, which is a function of personality and biography, is what counts in a poem.

T.S.: Originality's an illusion! It is just the result of a prejudiced view of poetry.

AUDREY: It's a prejudice view of reality that subjects my poetry to your definitions.

ALLEN: Yes! That's it! Stop being polite and really use language to affect change.

T.S.: Poetry can't happen in a vacuum! It requires objective experience in order to be hared and transmitted!

ADRIENNE: There is no objective experience, T.S. it's an illusion that the half of the system that's in power uses to convince everyone -- including themselves, apparently -- tat the status quo is the only natural choice.

ALLEN: The status quo is never natural

ADRIENNE: I know Allen, that's my point

T.S.: You're not listening to me!

WILLIAM: We heard you already, T.S.!

T.S.: Yeah, but you're too lost in your own image to understand me!

ALLEN: Hey, don't yell at Will! I'm pretty sure he was a big influence on me!

WILLIM: (to ALLEN) Yes, I was. (turns to audience) and to many other poets of Allen's generation. (back to the scene) and I moved past that imagery stuff a long time ago, T.S.