Forum / Hear's to 2017! Hear's to supporting each other during new times.

  • Panama_hat.thumb
    Nonnie Augustine
    Jan 01, 06:52pm

    I resolve to read more here and post when I have something worth asking you to read. I am fairly terrified about The Man Who Would be King getting his shot on Jan. 20th. Terrified? Too strong? Maybe. It's difficult to pin down the exact emotion I'm experiencing regarding 2017 in the US.
    I know much more than I did before this election about my neighbors and that's probably a good thing and it is definitely a scary thing for me. Anyways, Happy New Year, you fine people. Good luck!

  • Samuel Derrick Rosen
    Jan 01, 07:06pm

    I think it is wrong to include politics in poetry. I think it is a mistake for someone to speak politically on behalf of everyone else on a site whose aim is to present poetry and fiction, as if everyone here shares the same belief system. I think a lot of people on here vary in their political beliefs but are too afraid to voice it for fear of leftist attacks.

    What makes anyone think Clinton would have been any better? Trump hasn't even taken over yet and you are all acting like he is Hitler. I've been watching Jonestown documentaries and archive footage, what most people don't know is that Jones was not about religion, he was attempting to establish a Socialist utopia and it resulted in 200 children having cyanide squirted into their mouths and over 700 adults either voluntarily taking it or being held down by others and having it injected into them.

    The thing I dislike (and I'm not even right wing, I wouldn't subject to being labelled so easily and so meaninglessly) about leftists is that preach tolerance but tolerate nothing but their own one-sided black and white ideology. Socialism and Feminism right now is being used by the powers elite to establish a new world order, to turn everyone into mindless sheep, to create a hive mentality.

    I naively used to think that Socialism and Leftism were about being authoritarianism, how terribly wrong I was. So please don't create threads where you dare speak for all, you don't speak for me and there are others on here that would object as well.

  • Samuel Derrick Rosen
    Jan 01, 07:09pm

    I meant to say:

    I naively used to think that Socialism and Leftism were about being anti-authoritarianism.

  • Samuel Derrick Rosen
    Jan 01, 09:13pm

    Jonestown death tape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMrFCwYAZxE

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    Sam Rasnake
    Jan 02, 01:10am

    I think we must - just an opinion - include politics in poetry and poetry in "our" politics. And here each person should determine the definition and identity of "our" since my intent is to cross boundaries, genre, race, culture ideology, religion, social status...

    Some great poets have mingled politics & poetry. Here are some of my favorites:

    Tu Fu
    Osip Mandelstam
    Denise Levertov
    Adrienne Rich
    Gwendolyn Brooks
    William Stafford
    William Butler Yeats
    Joy Harjo
    Miklós Radnóti
    Jorge Luis Borges
    Arthur Rimbaud
    Walt Whitman
    Anna Akhmatova
    Federico García Lorca
    Yusef Komunyakaa
    Paul Celan
    Wisława Szymborska
    Langston Hughes
    Jack Spicer
    Matsuo Bashō
    Robert Bly
    Ai
    Yehuda Amichai
    Mahmoud Darwish
    Constantine Cavafy
    John Berryman
    Robert Lowell
    Ezra Pound
    Carolyn Forché
    Muriel Rukeyser
    Shi Zhi
    Jalaluddin Rumi

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    David Ackley
    Jan 02, 01:54am

    Here's an opportunity to join with other writers of like mind Nonnie and Sam and any others who might be interested. Clearly they share your view Sam, and mine, that if there was any time when poets need to be political, it's now.

    https://pen.org/writersresistnyc

  • Panama_hat.thumb
    Nonnie Augustine
    Jan 02, 05:35am

    Samuel, I spoke for myself. How did I speak for you or any one else? The "we" in the lead to my post is regarding supporting each other and that refers to supporting each other as writers which is important, no? I understand that you have different political views from mine and I would never dare to speak for you. You misunderstood me.

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    Finnegan Flawnt
    Jan 02, 11:38am

    Here's a valid voice from Scotland on keeping calm while being held hostage. I believe we have some Scots among us who can attest to the video's veracity?

    https://youtu.be/KjOEokudZs4

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    Nonnie Augustine
    Jan 02, 04:30pm

    Finnegan, that's hilarious. Thank you. My Scottish ancestors, among the gaggle of other Europeans, grinned.

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    Nonnie Augustine
    Jan 02, 04:34pm

    Great list, Sam. Li-Young Lee should be there, too.

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    David Ackley
    Jan 02, 09:59pm

    And Liu Xiaobo who wrote, "To refuse to lie in day-to-day life is the most powerful tool for breaking down a tyranny built on mendacity."

  • Samuel Derrick Rosen
    Jan 02, 11:55pm

    Nonnie, sorry for being grumpy, I'm just sick of the pc crowd.

    That video is hilarious although based on stereotypes. Saying that, Stereotypes do have their roots in reality.

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    Nonnie Augustine
    Jan 03, 05:10am

    Thank you for the apology, Samuel. I appreciate it.

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    Chris Okum
    Jan 03, 03:52pm

    Trump isn't a harbinger of Fascism; he's a harbinger of Faecesism, which is the complete erasure of the political by capital. He is going to flush the United States government down the toilet, and only someone who hates the United States would view this as a positive. And politics has a place in every aesthetic venture. Now more than ever.

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    Chris Okum
    Jan 03, 04:11pm

    Oh, and the right is just as thin-skinned and immature as the left. Neo-Nazis - oh, sorry, I mean the 'Alt-Right' (Neo-Nazis are apparently very sensitive about being called Neo-Nazis) have managed to turn the entire US into their own private safe space. "Stop making fun of us," comes the cry from the Heartland. "Stop treating us like we're second class citizens." As the Right is attacked - and they will be, mercilessly - you will see them trying to enact the very same political correctness that they have been complaining about for the past 25 years in order to silence and disappear their critics. Funny how things work.

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    David Ackley
    Jan 03, 08:45pm

    I agree with all that you said, Chris except the extent. Politics and the aesthetic have long been bedfellows. But there is nothing in the present world that isn't politicized including the life of a gorilla in the mountain forests of Africa. Trying to maintain a non-political stance is like trying not to breathe.

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    Mathew Paust
    Jan 12, 06:55pm

    Voicing my concurrence and support here for Nonnie, Sam Rasnake, David and Chris, and, of course, Finnegan Flawnt.

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