It’s Friday in Eugene. Two interesting guests grace different parts of
our
campus. There’s musician Mark Hosler of Negativeland. And there’s
far-right columnist David Horowitz. One of them sampled U2’s songs and
Casey Kasem’s potty mouth to make fun of both. The other called
reparations
for slavery ‘racist’ and tauntingly bought ads in college papers saying
so.
Guess who was dropped from their music label? Guess who got picked up
by
more media outlets?
Most people know what free speech is. But I don’t think they know
for what
purpose it exists — and why some speech can destroy the marketplace of
ideas
in which all speech flourishes.
* * *
It’s been a difficult three days since I returned from Taiwan. The
experience was somber, incredible and exhausting. My mood has lightened
and the experience is fading, but I am still tired. I really look
forward
to this weekend.
* * *
I was feeling rather depressed, when I came across this poem by
Jaroslav
Seifert. I dedicate it to my girlfriend Tanya, for reasons I hope she
knows. I also dedicate it to my fellow Emerald writers, who do know the
meaning of free expression. In 1969, when the Russian Army was
trampling
the last dead flowers of the Prague Spring…
“This little nation, trampled and doomed — how could it possibly
justify
its existence? There before us was the justification: the poet, heavy,
with
his crutches leaning against the table; the poet, the tangible
expression of
the nation’s genius.”
The words are novelist Milan Kundera’s, not mine. And these are
Seifert’s:
“You want us to support your position because you know that we enjoy
moral
authority in the nation. But should we support you, we would lose that
authority, and then we would be of no use to you.”
He was responding to Gustav Husak, the Czech president and Soviet
puppet
installed after Alexander Dubeck was deposed. This month, America’s
most
renowned and eloquent poets did the same at George W. Bush’s poetry
party.
They refused to toe the line by remaining silent.
Because that’s not what poets do.
Transformations
A lad changed to a shrub in spring,
the shrub into a shepherd boy,
A fine hair to a lyre string,
snow into snow on hair piled high.
And words turn into question signs,
wisdom and fame to old-age lines,
and strings revert to finest hair,
the boy’s transformed into a poet
the poet is transformed once more,
becomes the shrub my which he slept
when he loved beauty till he wept.
Whoever falls in love with beauty
will love it to his dying day,
stagger toward it aimlessly,
beauty has feet of charm and grace
in sandals delicate as lace.
And in this metamorphosis
a spell binds him to woman’s love,
a single second is enough
like steam in a retort to hiss
obedient to the alchemist
and drops dead as a hunted dove.
Without a stick old age is lame,
the stick turns into anything
in this ceaseless, fantastic game,
perhaps into an angel’s wings
now spreading wide for soaring flight
bodyless, painless, feather light