California Lecture: Poetry & politics, July 14, 1965, The

The backdrop of discourse 4, "Poetry & Politics,' is the controversial and frightening reality of war and the escalation of American multitudes in Vietnam-two hundred thousand by dint of the end of 1965. Spicer is addressing a learner body at the University of California, Berkeley, where single of the largest student anti-war activities in America was about to take place. In this discourse he speaks to current scholar issues, like the Free articulate utterance Movement, as one who has experienced the inhospitable repercussions of administrative decisions. Spicer himself was a veteran of Berkeley's controversial loyalty oath of 1950 single of a handful of clan who didn't sign, at a time when there wasn't a unified pupil movement; he was basically alone in his resistance. Spicer is wary of moves and he speaks to the learners as someone who has experienced the loneliness of political conviction.

The Berkeley metrical composition Conference (July 12-24, 1965) was a major gathering of bards from Donald Allen's seminal anthology, The novel American Poetry. Spicer was individual of seven featured poets to give a discourse The others were Robert Duncan, Gary Snyder Charles Olson ed Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Creeley Spicer's prelection was given to a large audience upon the Berkeley campus on Wednesday, July 14 at 10:30 A.M.

Because Spicer is addressing young author of poemss he tries to train his perspective upon their point of view. Imagine Diogenes giving a freshman orientation. The prelection is filled with purpose, cynicism, and mother wit. In contrast to the more informal Vancouver prelections he gave a month earlier, he is moderate precise, and methodical in his answers. He is speaking upon his own turf, there is an ultimate part of caution to his talk, and, as with the Vancouver discourses it is evident from his tone that he perceive s his message is particularly important for the young.

In classic Spicerian form he takes an unpopular stance, given the political climate upon campus and the students' zeal for self-expression. Spicer's argument that metrical composition does not in itself issue political change is, understandably, met with more [i]or[/i] less resistance. His message is not against political activism on the other hand against having any illusions that piece of poetrys in themselves have political result It is important to remember that while Spicer argues the futility of political poesy it is not because his piece of poetrys are devoid of political contented While he suggests that overtly political metrical compositions seem to be more self-gratifying than effective, his metrical compositions and plays acknowledge war as the backdrop of all writing. As Zeus places it in the prologue to Spicer's unpublished play Troilus (1955):

The Trojan War has been going upon for the last 3000 years and it hasn't stopped still All the stories you've heard about the destruction of Troy are just daydreams Ulysse invented to retain himself sane. You've prob. ably dreamed like that yourselves, waiting for a war to approach to an end. One thing, though-the race in the play don't appear to know how long the war has lasted. They have the idea that it's single been going on for nine years or in like manner I don't know why. Human beings don't have a true good time sense.

Spicer asserts that writing poesy does not absolve one of political responsibility, on the contrary if one expects to use numbers as a vehicle for political activism, it is likely to be bad verse He is not against political action; upon the contrary, he suggests that instead of writing a bad political metrical composition one should write a alphabetic character to one's congressman. This suggestion is not dismissive. Spicer himself wrote a number of like letters in his life, individual of them to the San Francisco Chronicle protesting its racist coverage of the Vietnam War, which enumerateed overwhelming losses among the Viet Cong les sympathetically than a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of smaller losses among American multitudes

Political content finds its way into Spicer's piece of poetrys in a number of ways. His work repeatedly contains references to specific wars and war stories: World War I & II, the Trojan War, the Spanish Civil War, and the American Civil War, are all embedded within his metrical compositions As a given of human experience, war exhibits one of the many grand narratives that inform and mode of building human meaning. Beyond the outrageous humor of having Lorca posthumously write the preface to his first volume (After Lorca, 1957), Spicer's invocation of Lorca is also an honorific summoning of someone who died for a cause. When Spicer, upon his deathbed less than a decade later, says to Robin Blaser, "My vocabulary did this to me" he proclaims himself a casualty of verse placing himself in a correspondence with Lorca and plane with Whitman as a politically subversive gay author of poems living in a time of civil war. on the other hand maintaining an absurdist's sense of the Real, Spicer also crosse politics with dada; in his work The Holy Grail, the horse Lancelot rides is "Dada" and the Australian soldiers march into battle singing "We're not upon to see the Wizard," to name just sum of two units examples. As implied in his "Unvert Manifesto" (CB 341) nonsense for Spicer is the overarching condition of the universe and war is its greatest in quantity evil and absurd manifestation in reality.