Showing posts with label 202307E. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 202307E. Show all posts

Art and Ecology… and more

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

---Sylvia Plath: Elm

 

Sunil Sharma

Sylvia Plath states it so well, so powerfully, so lyrically!

The iconic female voice articulates the aftereffects of the so-called civilizational progress and the poisons and arsenic that are unleashed in the evolving stages of such a development, mainly responsible for the horrors of a mindless raiding of earth and nature for super profits.

Plath is the vanguard of a new kind of poetic awareness: Eco consciousness and advocacy for better, liveable earth.

This month’s focus is on this most-pressing concern of humankind: “Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice”, a special section guest -edited by the noted poet Kushal Poddar.

Talking of his experience, the young artist---known for the radical style and startling imagery---says, “We have been gazing long enough into the abyss of a rapidly unravelling social structure, moral injustice and above all the changing climates and the ecosystem going to rack and ruin. A vast section of us ignores the truths, but even ignoring a truth is a hollow way to acknowledge an anomaly in a false-faith. So, we all have been gazing into the abyss in our own way. Dear Friedrich Nietzsche, does this mean that the abyss has been gazing back into us, changing us, making us lift that safety latch?”

Can art make a difference?

Can it bring the required change and legislation to stop the plunder of the mother earth and her depleting resources?

Can we leave a replenished earth for future generations?

Well, the answer is a big resounding Yes!

Art can perform the crucial role of elevating consciousness and lead to a unique activism. Activism that can deliver hard-hitting and required transformations. Remember Dickens, Gorky, Picasso, Sergei Einstein, Brecht...and many others?

The invited poets in this section speak on behalf of suffering humanity by giving voice to global anxieties and concerns for restoration of eco balance.




(Art by Robert Maddox-Harle: 1. Mother Nature on the Run 2. Search for Ancient Wisdom)

The select digital paintings of the eminent artist from Australia, Robert Maddox-Harle (aka Rob Harle) portray such a scary world of climate change, bleak lands and decreased humanity, emergence of humanoids, and point to the strong possibilities of renewal and hope through introspection, and collective action.

Look at this one by Rob Harle, titled “Aftermath”:

Art and great artists like Rob Harle can mobilise critical public opinion through their works and build up a consensus for public action against policies that endangers the very survival of earth and humanity through a rampant exploitation of resources and destruction of forests, rivers, oceans and lands for profits. In Setu Vintage, we rerun one of his works on raising consciousness on environment and our role in it.

Poetry, fiction, painting, video and film are similarly pressed into service by the greens of the world for the finest cause: The Healed Earth.

Hope our tiny bit in this direction goes a long way in restoring health to the ailing planet.

.

Another notable feature this month is the First Chapter: Novel, where we spotlight exceptional literary works. This time, it is eminent author, editor, media personality from Canada, Tahir Gora, featured as the inaugural novelist.

In another Exclusive, reputed critic-poet-academic John Thieme revisits Margaret Atwood in his signature style. It is a seminal article that would add to the Atwood scholarship.

Please enjoy the flavours!


Sunil Sharma

Editor, Setu (English)
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Contents, July 2023

Setu

Volume 8; Issue 2; July 2023

Setu PDF Archives

Editorial

Poetry

Short Fiction

Creative Non-Fiction

Exclusive

Critical Essay

First Chapter: Novel

My favourite Works

Vintage Setu: Eco Art

Cultural Events

Author of the Month

Translated Poetry (Bengali to English)

Photo Essay

Novel in Instalment: Seventh Part

Book Review

Setu Video Series of Literary and Critical Conversations

Setu Initiative: Setu Series of Virtual Readings

Setu Special Edition: Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice

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Guest-Editorial: Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar
We have been gazing long enough into the abyss of a rapidly unraveling social structure, moral injustice and above all the changing climates and the ecosystem going to rack and ruin. A vast section of us ignore the truths, but even ignoring a truth is a hollow way to acknowledge an anomaly in a false-faith. So we all have been gazing into the abyss in our own way. Dear Friedrich Nietzsche, does this mean that the abyss has been gazing back into us, changing us, making us lift that safety latch? 

We know even if we pretend not to that climate is shrinking the scope of the world as we know it. Is it that sense of doomsday that makes us more careless? Does it give rise to the most corrupt governments in eons everywhere? Is it the reason why we sit on the edge of reasons and sometimes take the leap, shoot our classmates or brothers across the borders? Did we know it always? The cave men us? The new world explorer us? 

Poets are unstable catalysts. They can undo the things undone. Perhaps the poets should scriven the holy chants in favour of the social and eco justice. May be their collective consciousness stir up a change towards the better sustenance.

If I were a poet (wait a minute, I am!) I would have written this:

Where The Nuclear Power Plant Melted Down

I hear the footsteps, do not turn, murmur,
"There, they say, roams a wolf, lone,
near the core, in the epicenter."

"I know." Says the wolf.
I steal a peek and lower my eyes.
The beast of this radioactive zone
looks like a deformed reincarnation
of my old man. I close my eyes.
If you gaze at the wolf long enough
the wolf will leave a trace of it inside you.

Ashes still fly when wind so desires.
My hazmat suit makes me a traveller
in space sent in a sleep capsule,
and now that I have seen and reported
about the ruin they no longer need my existence. 

Or


I might delve into the life and desire during the duress of the drifting climate and write - 

A Family During This Eco-deconstruction

Midst of this haze
the sun rises and sets.

We can discern the shades, 
shapeless, tempera smudges
between the time-poles of darkness. 

The pink eye hurts the grey sky
bulges out, pushes the nerves.
Clouds at the corners clot like gunks.
Rain tastes saline, and acidic, of mucus. 

Midst this chaos my wife fabricates 
a home I deconstruct using the daily news.

Kushal Poddar
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Ted Kooser (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Ted Kooser (Theodore J. Kooser) was born in Ames, Iowa, on April 25, 1939. He is one of the most influential voices in modern poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Kooser was one of the first poets laureate selected from the Great Plains, was part of the Midwest Poetry Renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, and is known for his conversational style of poetry.

 

I Turned My Back

I turned my back for only a moment
and when I looked again the tide of the prairie
was draining away. Houses were emerging
out of the green, then sidewalks and streets.
Whole cities had been under the grass all along
and none of us knew.  Sage hen, hawk, badger
and antelope followed the tide's retreat,
leaving cat, dog and rabbit, and small children
were playing in the last puddles of green.
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Rae Armantrout (Climate Change, Eco-activism, Whisperings of Social Justice)

Rae Armantrout (born April 13, 1947) is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics. Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book Versed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award.[1] The book later received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her poetry, including an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

 

 

Dated

 

We were smart to conflate

time with space

in metaphors

so long ago.

As I recall,

time passed quickly

going downstream

in the gondolas.

Us playing tourist

made the days seem

like bits of local color.

We never saw

the houses collapse.

That was before our time

And after.

 

 

 

 

Zip

 

1

Blessed, flippant

the birds zip

and chatter,

each rephrasing

its own phrase

forever.

(“The authentic slapback,”

it says on the label.)

“Well, well, well,”

chimes one out there.

 

2

Loopy and clear,

my writing

in old journals---

now hurried, ragged.

What’s the rush?

Letters missing, thoughts

astray

in the blue air.

 

 

 

Listing

 

To list objects

as you come upon them

takes a lot of faith—

but faith in what?

 

*

One red stone

amid the gray cement cobble.

Dog yapping in one

empty front yard.

Light on one leaf

amid a shiny throng.

 

*

The trick

is to recognize a thought

you’ve had before

and mark it.

If you can’t do that,

you’re lost?

 

*

Union Slough

wanders

through brown sedge.

 

 

 

Until

 

To present as,

identify with

the breathing space

between the big

moments

where nothing

much happens, but

anything still could.

 

*

Let the cloud

stay where it is—

two eye sockets

near the bottom,

one closing,

one enlarging

until


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Poetry: R. L. Boyer

R. L. Boyer

Black Hole

 

only 26 million light years away an

impenetrable mystery lies waiting

at the floating hub of the milky way

an immense darkness squats invisibly

at the center of our galaxy gobbling up

ancient stars while others speed by at

velocities of 20 million miles per hour

like young gazelles outracing – if only

for a moment – the fearsome grasp of

lions as the great and luminous galaxy

wheels round its pivot like a great

spinning disk made of stars spiraling

majestically through the vast spaces of

            endless night.

 

that hole birthed timeless ages ago when

some giant star collapsed inwardly

upon itself and every 100,000 years or so

it has gobbled up some ancient neighbor

until its dark womb has swollen so dense

with the weight of 3 billion suns that its

gravity lets nothing escape its grasp ...

nothing! not even light not even great

spinning wheels made of suns on the

other side perhaps some other world is

growing in the great mouth of that

utterly unutterable mystery slowly

devouring everything as inexorably as

fate the giant insatiable maw of Death

feeding on worlds until the very end of

            Time …

 

(and if you listen closely with the ears

of astronomers you can hear it singing

a cosmic hum in B flat the lowest note

            in this universe.)

# # #

 

Something

 

     Standing in wonder before this Mystery is

     the source of all true art and true science.

     –Albert Einstein

 

something

yet not a thing

            formless and

            immense

beginningless

without end

            all worlds

            stretched out

upon the limitless

abyss like

            jewels

            upon a string

invisible

unity-in-

            diversity

            formless void

of mind

non-existent

            womb of all

            possibilities

mother and

father

            of all things

            living

primordial and

immense

            silent

            true nature

unborn

never dying

            beginningless

            without end ...

# # #

 

In Vain

 

i sought you in the stars at night

and in the morning dew

i sought you in the pale moonlight

and in the sunrise, too

 

i sought you in the armor's clang

and in the human race

i sought you in the serpent's fang

and in the mirrored face

 

i sought you in the cloud-swept moon

and in the candlelight

i sought you in the song of loons

and in the dead of night

                                               

i sought you in political schemes

and in the great oak tree

i sought you in the madman's dreams

and in the depths of the sea

                                               

i sought you in the midnight fire

and in the great and small

i sought you in the rose and briar

and in the rise and fall

 

i sought you in the summit's height

and in my mother's womb

i sought you in the eagle's flight

and in my father's tomb

                                               

i sought you in the battle din

and in the songs of bees

i sought you in the voice of the wind

singing through the cottonwood trees

                                               

i sought you in the summer heat

and in the gentle rain

i sought you through the whole wide world ...

i sought for you in vain -- in vain!

 

            i sought for you ... in vain.

# # #

 

The Tree of Immortality

 

                        Come, return to the root

                        of the root of your Self.

                        --Rumi

 

There is a power at the center of Being.

Some call it the Treasure Hard to Attain,

 

A Horn of Plenty, The Fountain of Youth,

A Pearl of Great Price, The Philosopher's Stone,

 

The Wish-fulfilling Gem, Womb of the Mothers,

The Water and the Life. Its names as inexhaustible

 

as Nature, and you and I grow out of It like

ripening fruit–like delicious golden apples!

 

I call it Paradise, the Tree of Immortality.

 

Find the hidden root, says the Oracle,

and follow it to the Source.

# # #

 

Bio: R. L. Boyer is a 7th year doctoral student in the arts and religion program at the
Graduate Theological Union and UC Berkeley. He holds an MA in Depth Psychology
from Sonoma State University and is a graduate of the Professional Program in
Screenwriting from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Ron is the
recipient of many competitive awards as a poet, author of short fiction, and screenwriter.

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