Poetry As Protest by Gerry Fialka

Poetry As Protest by Gerry Fialka

W. H. Auden declared: “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Let’s get stimulated for fiery discussion. Auden was articulating that the job of the poet is not to be a “crusader,” but to make poems happen. He continued, “Poetry, that is, survives / in the valley of its making.” Kenneth Rexroth, who read at Venice West (later called Sponto Gallery, 7 Dudley Ave), felt the job of the poet is to subvert the bourgeoisie and woo your lover. Personally, the poems of the Berrigan Brothers motivated me to pursue peace activism. Their compelling words encouraged me to take action.

Can poetry really be an effective protest to plutocracy and war? Is rebellion seeing that something is wrong? Then what? Is revolution saying there is something wrong and here’s a new plan? A re-evolution? I believe the revolving into more peaceful and loving ways is the Venice strategy, as well as the universal goal. Duh? In preparation for our Venice Library event on Jan 3, and the 23rd Venice Film Fest on Jan 11 (with the screening of “FRANCISCO LETELIER – I WRITE YOUR NAME” the new documentary on the Venice poet & art activist) please consider the following:

Walt Whitman’s Preface to the 1855 “Leaves of Grass,” assures us that the English language is “the most powerful language of resistance.” He concludes with, “The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.”

W.B. Yeats, wrote in 1937, “I thought when I was young – Walt Whitman had something to do with it – that poet, painter, and musician should do nothing but express themselves.” Then he decided otherwise, “A poet is justified not by the expression of himself, but by the public he finds or creates, a public made but others ready to his hand if he is a mere popular poet, but a new public, a new form of life, if he is a man of genius.”

Grounds for further research? If the poet can generate new ways of feeling, perceiving, thinking and acting, then we can move the project forward in positiveness. Can we make the world a better place? Can we change our own mode of mindedness, our own life, and then the world’s too?

One major artist who has changed me and my friends and the world is Chris Marker (1921-2012), with words like “I remember the images I filmed. They have substituted themselves for my memory,” and “I betrayed Gutenberg for McLuhan long ago.” The new 2025 IMMEMORY: GUTENBERG VERSION book is highly recommended. His 1962 LA JETEE, arguably one of the best science-fiction films ever made, is about love and longing and memory. Catherine Opie called it “an incredible political poem to that time.” Another must see is SANS SOLEIL, an example of the “essay film,” a genre he practically invented. It is not an aristocratic discourse but really an attempt at “conversation,” being both “personal” and explicit” in intentions. It is worth your time to probe his 60 year career creating political art supporting black civil rights, anti-Vietnam war campaigning, and always true to the power of protest. IMMEMORY: GUTENBERG VERSION brings his seminal CDRom work into the present and future via a time-tested, durable format of the past — the book. The Brooklyn Rail wrote it “may serve as a life jacket, a way to pull back out into the world of the real.”

This ability of the book, film, song or poem to be revisited fascinates me. Not only revisitation, but also transforming it in the process. This “resonating interval” (-McLuhan) is a space for remediation. We can play the event against itself, as Marker loved to quote Jean Cocteau “Seeing as these things are beyond us, let’s pretend to be the organizer of them.”

Another major influencer is Harry Smith (1923-1991), who was a painter, filmmaker, folklorist, musicologist, and collector as well as a radical nonconformist whose work defies categorization. Like Chris Marker, Smith propagated a poetic quality with political resonance. The new book THE OCCULT HARRY SMITH – THE MAGICAL & ALCHEMICAL WORK OF AN ARTIST OF EXTREMES (edited by Peter Valente) is highly recommended. Frank Zappa-Ornette Coleman wannabe John Zorn writes: “This outstanding collection of lovingly written testimonies pays tribute to Harry with wit, respect, love, and laser-like precision. It is absolutely impossible to forget any interaction you had with Harry—and the beautiful tales in this remarkably readable and heartfelt book will have you awestruck, laughing out loud, and hungry for more. Perhaps the best collection of writings about one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures the world has ever known.”

Smith proclaimed, “I’m glad to see my dreams came true. I saw America changed through music” when he accepted 1991 Grammy Life Achievement Award, reflecting the profound impact of his Anthology of American Folk Music on bridging divides and creating a shared cultural memory. This reflects his belief that music and poetry can foster social change and influence future generations, which it did, especially for folk and rock musicians in the ‘60s and beyond, even though the Anthology was first released in 1952

Kate Millar writes in LA Review of Books 9-17-25 that “Anne Waldman seems anxious to preserve and memorialize her friends: artists, poets, and multidisciplinary creatives belonging to the ‘Outrider’ tradition, a lineage conceptualized by Waldman herself, whose works pulse with a spirit of resistance and experimentation, communally integrated and politically engaged.” Waldman, like Smith and Marker, is a compelling comprehensivist providing pattern recognition to get the “big picture.”

Millar continues, “Waldman’s poetics is inseparable from her ethics and politics. Poems clutter with scenes of aftermaths of violence, … Waldman writes of a civilization on the brink (or condition) of collapse and apocalypse. Climate disaster, political corruption, human rights violations and denials, war and genocide—all of which prompt Waldman to search for ‘new and deeper memorials’ … Here, poetry is archive in the sense that it is witness to the atrocities of history and now. In this witnessing, language becomes resurrective in power…”

Millar summarizes, “Though we can become numbed by the incessant documentation and dissemination of atrocity in the news and on our feeds, we can chant and recite our way back toward feeling. In the face of loneliness, weariness, climate death, and genocide, we must cling to word’s ceremonial and ritualistic power, curative and reconstructive, turning charnel ground into a place of rebirth. Ultimately, your life is your art is your ritual is your language is your life. Less important than the interpretation of language is the doing of it.”

Anne Waldman declared in her interview with Jim Cohn in May, 2024: “Harry Smith is a major template for many of us. He put together, he anthologized, the Invisible Republic’s range of stories. The revival around Harry’s archiving, film work, cinema work, artistic practices, his hipster and trickster energy, his alchemical and quixotic presence, has influenced my thinking of myself also as a field poet. I am interested in everything.”

Anne articulates the panoramics of poets, “You are also historian and seer. You exude your art through consciousness, relationality to the events of your time, startling, disturbing, extraordinary, from space travel to genocide. As an activist you can be a witness, scrying, prophesying, you can observe and pay attention to events around you and in your own life. There’s a long tradition of this in troubadour culture, the role of the poet as witness, seer, chronicler, the griot, telling and living the epic of the time. Capturing the heart break and injustices and sorrows of the time as well. It’s almost archival in a way. You collect, you save things, you amplify things, and you keep things alive. These traditions, in contemporary times, we’re seeing poetry within protest encampments, in refugee camps, places where people don’t have access to other forms of art. With poetry you only need the voice.”

Jack Kerouac aspired to transform America into a kinder and gentler nation (way before Bush used it as a catch-phrase) – a nation that would welcome and try to understand other cultures and religions, not bomb them. Poets and songwriters have long propagated Martin Luther’s call “If you want to change the world, pick up the pen and write.”
Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “For Berrigan, poetry was mode and method of survival.” Daniel Berrigan’s words continue to inspire me:

the cause
is the heart’s beat
and the children born
and the risen bread.
to see and not be seduced
to hear and not be deafened
to taste not be eaten
to touch and not be bought

I salute and encourage all y’all to write and be proactive. Engage all your senses. Let us praise and study Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Gil-Scott Heron, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Marge Piercy, Diane Di Prima, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, and many more. Tell me your additions. Support Beyond Baroque and all the poets in solidarity in the collective effort and movement building that is necessary to create meaningful social change.

Frank Zappa explained in 1967 on the radio in Michigan, “All my songs are poetry.” Check out the words to his iconic song “Trouble Comin’ Everyday,” with its explicit social commentary, addressing racial violence, economic inequality, police brutality and media sensationalism. The in 1983, his “Stick Together” song emphasizes unity against authority, “You know we gotta stick together.”

Reinvent Stephane Mallarme’s axiom: “Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.” into “Everything in the world exists in order to end up in the Venice BeachHead.” or “Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a protest poem.”

“…I say let the poets run the country, we’ll be better off with books and pens, instead of the misery of weapons…let the poets run the country who speak from the heart…we will have a country filled with rhymes and justice if for once, we let the poets run the country.” — Quique Aviles https://pfsuzy.medium.com/thanks-for-your-dedication-to-art-film-and-activism-2050966f9546

I welcome your reactions, Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com

Laughtears.com Upcoming Events:

*** Wed Dec31 Venice BeachHead Party at Beyond Baroque, Gerry opens with New Year Rant at 6:30pm

*** SAT, Jan 3 VENICE POETRY as POLITICAL ACTIVISM at 3pm (till 4:30pm) free – Venice Public Library, (This was scheduled at the library, but will be on zoom, due to the remodeling there from Dec 29 till the end of April) Email John Frank jfrank@lapl.org for the link. VENICE – PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE #2- Fun interactive salon hosted by Gerry Fialka – Cultural revolutionaries Gerry Fialka & Richard Modiano interconnect politics and poetry with fiery, interactive discussion. Delve deep into current Venice issues via questions: What can we do about it? What’s the difference between rights & responsibilities? Revolution & rebellion? “Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.” – Robert Frost. “You don’t have to be a communist to be anti-capitalist. It is enough to be a poet.” – Jonas Mekas. “When Philosophy raised a dialectic, a debate toward what it calls Truth; Poetry raised a theater, a drama of truth.” – Robert Duncan. “I should prefer to de-fuse this gigantic human bomb by starting a dialogue somewhere on the side-lines to distract the trigger-men, or to needle the somnambulists.” – Marshall McLuhan, who encouraged inventing new questions and new metaphors. How do we nurture Bucky Fuller’s “we are all crew, no passengers”?

*** SUN, Jan11 – 23rd Venice Film Fest at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd, free. Celebrate live music and films 5:30-BSP funk poetry, 6pm-Suzy Williams & Friends perform Venice-related songs, 7pm- Short Venice films by Jeremy Kagan & Sam Ray Wilson, 7:30- “FRANCISCO LETELIER – I WRITE YOUR NAME” (2025, 78 minutes) Compelling portrait of Venice resident, Chilean-American muralist, poet & art activist Letelier, who has created murals around the world for over four decades. Francisco’s Dad was murdered by Pinochet in 1976. Documentarians Julie Thompson & Brogan de Paor delve deep into how art & culture play powerful roles in movements for human rights and justice. Co-sponored by Venice Heritage Museum.

***TBA – Gerry Fialka hosts Venice Culture Salons (VCS#19) at Venice Heritage Museum (new location TBA, opening in the spring) – Fun, fiery, interactive discussions about our Beachtown. Free admission. Bring your stories. Delve deep into Venice music, film, art, literature & current events. Live oral history. Featuring: 16th annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY discussion & show&tell.

***Watch the 35th annual PXL THIS Toy Camera Film Festival for free Electronic Folk Art “The most audacious film festival ever” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOp3SiVQVuk&t=6s
https://pfsuzy.medium.com/pxl-this-35-the-most-audacious-film-festival-ever-by-gerry-fialka-7a0ad90f48d6
We made the cover of The Argonaut:
https://digitaledition.argonautnews.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=84e7afd9-b10c-40e8-a3ea-ebe90695f708

***EVERY FIRST TUESDAY of EVERY MONTH is Marshall McLuhan-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club online “where the hand of man never set foot”

***Check Gerry Fialka’s “I’m probably wrong about everything” Podcast on Youtube- interviews with MUSIC, ART, LIT, FILM, POETRY, MEDIA, ACTIVISTS, SCIENCE, NEW KNOWLEDGE, INFLUENCERS & amazing people world-wide https://www.youtube.com/@improbablywrongabouteveryt6781/streams
Be sure to listen to GF’s new interview with John Fugelsang (who performed at Sponto Gallery years ago) who is the author of the new NY Times best seller book “Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds.”

***Every SUN from noon – 4:30pm Brad Kay jazz merriment at Unurban 3301 Pico Blvd with Suzy Williams, Mews Small, Ginger Smith, Flo Laurence and more. FREE (except 2nd sundays) JAZZ CABARET FOLK POPULAR MUSIC Live!!! https://sundaysongbirds.com/