Entr'acte: Let Us Sing a New Song

In her second book of poetry, published while the student-led antiwar movement was still very actively protesting the US's military involvement in Southeast Asia, Denise Levertov included a piece titled "Entr'acte: Let Us Sing Unto the Lord a New Poem." I was in high school, was launching myself into political activism like a one skinny armed flotilla in the forbidding seas of Joe McCarthy's hometown in the middle of middle class America, and I came upon this slim volume of poetry like a life vessel. Appropriately, the volume was titled, To Stay Alive.

I painted my first abstract watercolor to the above poem. Neither the medium nor the style would turn out to be my own, but then, neither was the poem, so it did quite nicely for many years, and for many years, all the way through my undergraduate years and a few beyond, it was the only piece of framed "artwork" on the walls of my successive bedrooms. When I get home, I'll take and post a photo of it, for your amusement. It's one of the few mementoes I've managed to keep from those years when we moved from city to city, house to house, room to room faster than a hungry mouse sometimes. In retrospect, I'd rather I hung onto the Lawrence Ferlinghetti poster I also tacked onto every wall I claimed as mine, "The World Is a Beautiful Place."

What I've remembered from this poem of Levertov's are fragments, perhaps imperfect. "There's a pulse in Richard...revolution revolution revolution ...And another, seldom heard: poetry poetry. ... But when the rhythms mesh then ...the singing begins." It was like Levertov knew all the strainings of my young soul, to be a radical, to be a poet, to be full of music and alive and like the river, always running.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook today, "Poems are, by definition, agents of change." I wondered what she knew that I didn't. "Please elaborate," I commented. Had I missed something all these years? Was there something inherent to poetry that meant Change? The fingers of my hands plus your hands plus many other hands are insufficient to count the number of poets who have been revolutionary; was it true that they couldn't be otherwise? My definition of poetry contains nothing that suggests they must be agents of change, but I never presume that I'm right, and my pulse quickens when someone suggests something new and interesting like this.

It's a subject of interest to me. Among my other idiosyncracies, I have been collecting names of poets in exile. There are so many of them. I am tempted to write something like "Poets are, by their nature, in exile." But I am not so hasty. It turns out my friend really meant that she was talking not about the definition of poetry, but her own personal definition of Good Poetry. And I suspect that poets are not intrinisically in exile but that many would like to think they are in exile; it sets them apart, makes them special, gives them a longer than necessary shadow that precedes them down streets crowded with the ordinary, the prosaic minions.

But some are truly in exile. These are the political poets, by and large. Joseph Brodsky (Soviet Union). Nabeel Yasin (Iraq). Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine). Ziba Karbassi (Iran). And, of course, Pablo Neruda, from his beloved Chile, until Allende brought him back. When you look at the list of countries that force their poets to leave in order to share the wisdom and the beauty of their words, it should speak powerfully. A nation that banishes its poets loses its own heartbeat.

"Heart's river, / living water, / poetry:" continues Levertov. "and if that pulse / grow faint / fever shall parch the soul, breath / choke upon ashes."

If I ever stop thrilling to this poem of my youthful spirit, I will indeed be old. Let us sing.