Woody Guthrie – The Coming of the Toads

Poetics and Politics: Notes on “Poets for Corbyn,” a Berfrois e-Chapbook

Is poetry a sturdy platform for political action? Aren’t poets the ones following rabbits down holes? Jumping into ponds to hug moons? Talking blather and twittering sentiments to one another across an inky night? Politicians often twist tongues, glossolalia filling their cheeks, but what they speak is not usually considered poetry.

“Poets for Corbyn,” another e-chapbook from Berfrois, features 21 poems by 20 poets, edited by Russell Bennetts. The poems are unified by their support for Jeremy Corbyn (1949), a member of the UK parliament and of the Labour Party, and currently standing to be Labour’s Leader. US readers might be accurate in aligning Corbyn with their own Bernie Sanders.

Mixing poetics and politics reminds me of the note Woody Guthrie taped to his guitar in 1943: “This Machine Kills Fascists.” If music and culture critic Greil Marcus is right, and the guitar is not a machine and it does not kill fascists, then poetry is not a fit medium for political activism. But why does Marcus take Woody’s note so literally? Guthrie knew the difference between figurative and literal language, but he also knew that even the white lettered on red background STOP sign is an argument, even if only occasionally a driver passes through it with some disagreement.

Maybe one of the most politically effective signifying messages in “Poets for Corbyn” is Nick Telfer’s “For the Love of God.” A concrete poem, it evokes a rally chant where we hear the single slogan “No Blair” shouted repeatedly, 21 times in a black and white grid: noblair; no noblesse – shares of rights and duties are equal.

That Woody labeled his guitar a machine is more than a nod to labor and unions. Woody was a machinist, manufacturing messages in song – in song because song is what people (as in The People) hear and respond to and remember. And song is poetry. Poetry stirs pathos, and it’s pathos that gets politicians elected, pathos that goes to war, pathos that sacrifices, pathos that bangs the drum slowly and paddles the boat and joins the march and walks down the line.

How do the poems in “Poets for Corbyn” sound? What forms are employed? What characteristics of poetry are in evidence? Are the poems difficult to understand (i.e. modern or postmodern and such)? Are the poems all polemical?

Some of the poems might be considered polemical. From Michael Rosen’s “For Jeremy Corbyn”:

“celebrating an economic system
that was developed and finessed
with the use of child labour around 1810
…they tell us that socialism is outdated.”

Some of the poems sound traditional, employing stanzas with rhyme, as in Michael Schmidt’s “Until I Built the Wall,” a kind of ballad narrative:

“Until I built the wall they did not find me
Sweet anarchy! tending quietly
To wild birds or picking the blackberry.”

Some of the poems in “Poets for Corbyn” are clear and concise, but with irony spreading like tattoos, as in Helen Ivory’s “Doll Hospital at the Top of the Hill”:

“Take her to the doll hospital;
restring the limbs with slipknots
fill the skull with lint
clean out the craze lines on her face
and paint on a 1940s smile.”

Some of the poems are painfully forthright. Reminding me of the ruined hopes of George McGovern’s 1972 US Presidential campaign, is Andy Jackson’s “Unelectable”:

“I represent the things you want but cannot say,
the ideology of why the hell not; socialism redux,
neither new nor old, not clean or compromised
but human to its heart, and that could be enough.”

Of course, in 1972, the human heart was not enough. Will it ever be enough? A heart needs a voice, as illustrated in Nicholas Murray’s “J. C.”:

“Corbyn’s no knight in shining vest,
or bright Messiah from the West
(he’d say)
but someone who has found a way to voice
a fractured country’s need for choice,
to say we’ll make another kind of noise:
No way!”

That “No way!” is a call for solidarity, expanded upon in Erik Kennedy’s (long-titled) “Growing Fears That the Leadership Contest Has Been Hijacked by Far-Left Infiltrators”:

“and if in your entire life
you’ve had
no-one to identify with
who wasn’t first and last
a danger to the good
through well-meaning compromise,

if you can agree to this,
resignedly but definitely,
you might be a socialist.”

The austerity buzzword is taken down by Becky Cherriman’s “Austerity”:

“Hear it scutter
along the guttering of offices
in the bins behind Waitrose,
the thorned bushes at the playground’s edge –
a language devised by the high-born
to parch the lips of those with less.”

In place of austerity, Josephine Corcoran suggests a “Coat” of hope:

“A woman filled with the gladness of living
refused to be suspicious of hope….
Deep inside the coat,
the woman held on to the goodness of people.”

And of opposing viewpoints, the kind that lead to divorce? From Erin Belieu’s “Poem of Philosophical and Parental Conundrums Written in An Election Year”:

“And that’s what you call the realpolitik in action
when it comes to divorce, wherein the rubber hits
the ‘blended’ family’s road. But since I’m not…
…and I’m thinking
maybe I got it right this time…
…the obstinate and beautiful mystery
that every soul ends up being to every other.”

The poems in “Poets for Corbyn” are unified by their call for solidarity in support of a purposeful cause. For that call to be successful, the politics must not be subsumed by the poetics. There is tension here, no doubt. Woody’s machined message was made to defy backstabbing political machinations. At the same time, real machines made real weapons used in a real war, and a military industrial complex prevailed. But Woody knew that, even as Marcus does. “What did you learn in school today?” Tom Paxton sang.

Over at Berfrois, readers may download for free an electronic copy of “Poets for Corbyn.” There are several covers readers may choose from; I liked the one with the blue bicycle.

“Poets for Corbyn”, edited by Russell Bennetts, Pendant Publishing, London, UK, 2015. ISBN 978-09928034-5-2. V2.0. 34 pages, with poems by Tom Pickard, Michael Rosen, Pascale Petit, Ian Birchall, Michael Schmidt, Marion McCready, Nick Telfer, Rory Waterman, Helen Ivory, Iain Galbraith, Andy Jackson, Nicholas Murray, Alec Finlay, Erik Kennedy, Ian Pindar, Becky Cherriman, Josephine Corcoran, Natalie Chin, Ernest Schonfield, and Erin Belieu. Covers by Evan Johnston @evn_johnston.

Hootenanny Revisited: Photo Essay of Old Songbooks

“As Woody Guthrie advised those who heard and sang his Songs to Grow On, ‘Now I don’t want to see you use these songs to divide nor split your family all apart. I mean, don’t just buy this book and take it home and keep it to yourself. Get your whole family into the fun. Get papa. Get mama. Get brother. Get sister. Get aunty… The friends. The neighbors. Everybody.'” Mose Asch quoting Woody is found in Asch’s “Foreword” to Pete Seeger’s “American Favorite Ballads: Tunes and Songs as Sung by Pete Seeger.” Moses said, “It was not until after World War II that young people in all walks of life and all parts of the United States made use of this folk music tradition and adapted it to their way of expressing their feelings and of tying up the past to their future…Now it is up to the children and grandchildren to take it from here.” But that was 1961, and those children now have children and grandchildren of their own.

Oak Publications put out all kinds of folk music books in the 1960’s. Ramblin’ Boy and other songs by Tom Paxton was one of the best. My copy, well worn with taped binding, is a second printing of the book first published in 1965.

Says Tom in his “Introduction,” “I have a habit – the habit of sitting in Joe’s on West Fourth Street or the kitchen of the Gaslight…trying to carry on the work that Woody began.” 2012 is Woody Guthrie’s centenary.

Paxton, in his intro., wonders if the songs he’s written are folk songs. He says, “…it takes years to know for sure.”

A guy by the name of Jerry Silverman put together several instruction books. The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide came out in 1962, and was followed by The Art of the Folk-Blues Guitar in 1964. These books contain chord diagrams; traditional music notation and tablature; lyrics; photographs of players and scenes; and comments on the songs and how they might be played.

Happy Traum was another instruction book anthologist and player. His The Blues Bag came out in 1968, and remains an outstanding introduction to blues guitar song playing: includes lyrics, tab and classical notation, study notes, photographs, and additional resources information.

By far the most curious song book in my collection is Dylan: Words to His Songs. There is no publisher named, no price. It appears to be a bootleg project. Here is what the introduction page says, completely: in the upper left hand corner, “november 1971”; then, centered: “this book has no pretentions [sic] but to offer you the words to dylan’s songs including the ones released on his albums, singles and broadside recordings and a gathering of songs released on the white records: daddy rolling stone, great white wonder and little white wonder. you will find an alphabetical index in the back of the book”; and in the bottom left hand corner: “illustrated by holy cat.” The book is organized by chapters corresponding to Dylan’s albums, beginning with “march 1962 bob dylan,” and ending with “nov. 1970 new morning,” but that is followed by pages marked “broadside,” “singles,” and “other recordings.” The book is 79 pages in length, and 8 & 1/2 by 11 in size. The text is set in basic, pica-like, manual typewriter font. For years, my copy travelled with my old ES neighbor and friend Jon, but it’s been back home for awhile now. It’s falling apart, the pages falling out, songs spilling out, the way I think Woody would have enjoyed.

For anyone planning a hootenanny or a hoedown, a few songs from any of these books might play and sing happily well. Be sure you invite the children and the grandchildren.

When we read and write, we argue.

When we read and write, we argue. We all argue from time to time, and we generally apply, from an opponent’s prompt or from our own desire to make ourselves clear, examples and proofs, persuasive tools, but as we ramble on, as is often our wont, making claim after claim, supporting or not, making assumptions left and right, some stated, others not, we shortly may find ourselves caught in a riptide of our own words.

As Samuel Beckett said, “You can’t listen to a conversation for five minutes without noting inherent chaos.” But we swim on, using what persuasive tools we find handy – tools described and explained nicely for us in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It’s not only OK to argue; arguing is our responsibility.

In Aristotle’s view, argument is what makes us human; we engage in argument as a consequence of our living together, working together, playing together – reading and writing together. It follows, though it may sound paradoxical, that when we learn to read and write arguments effectively, we more effectively cooperate with one another, and we learn to live together in greater harmony. But not all arguments are equal. Some are specious, others obfuscated, sometimes deliberately so. Some, contrary to Aristotelian principle, persuade to do wrong. As Woody Guthrie said, “Some men will rob you with a six gun, others with a fountain pen.”

If arguing is good (and necessary), not all arguments are good (or necessary). But what’s necessary? And what’s good? The answers to those questions are what we work toward when we work on learning to read and to write arguments.