8/22/2019 C. Amir or the Revolution of Poetry

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The Revuolution of Poetry / Amir Or 

The Revolution of Poetry / Amir Or 

Why ask a poet to write about saving the world? Seemingly it's

a job rather fit for a statesman, a philosopher or perhaps a priest.

Statesmen are people of action, whereas philosophers, prophets

and poets are visionaries. What is it then, that poetry can say

about human existence that we don't already have in our 

 philosophy, religion and history books?

Philosophy, the famous authorized professional about wisdom in

our culture, becomes less convincing when one seriously

considers "wisdom". Philosophy is speaking about wisdom and

insight, but it holds thought with thick pliers. Plenty of heavy

slow words that clumsily catch hold of ideas that wisdom graspsin the blink of an eye. Only rare philosophers like Heraclitus,

Plato or Nietzsche, who had poetic talent, could deal with this

electric intensity of thought. It seems only poetry does to words

what thought is doing to them, in their full power and scope:

hears them, tastes them, understands and mis-understands them,

combines them in strange ways, gets carried away by them,

 beats them against each other, tells. Poetry truly tells through

words everything they can grasp and more. Poetry holds wordsalive in the moment they're formed.

We don’t say it out loud but often it seems the poet is the only

one who can serve in this modern world as some metaphysical

messenger, a representative of the subconscious, a martyr or as a

 prophet. If you interviewed people in our globalized culture,

hardly anybody would explicitly confess he thought poets

occupy any of these roles in the traditional sense, and if you ask 

 poets they'll probably make clear that in reality a poet has other tasks to attend to such as writing his works, and earning a

living. The roles we poet are enlisted to – the rebuking social

 prophet, the “artiste maudit” as the martyr, the amusing jester or 

troubadour – are all reductive or at least create an unhealthy

model. But perhaps we can still admit there’s some truth in

these feelings: somehow a poet seems to create with the most

 primal materials, in the mental mass of life and its possible

realities. His works serve to mentally enhance and reshape the

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The Revuolution of Poetry / Amir Or 

world in which we live. A poetic insight can serve as a renewed

 perception of reality, and draw new sketches or blue prints for 

its future development. A writer at work seems just dreaming,

 but his are no ordinary dreams. He “dreams” the world anew,

and in this very action he gives validity and meaning to this

reality we live. Whether he is conscious of it or not, by his

creative adventure the poet goes on creating the mental future

from which our civilization of tomorrow will grow.

Poetry reshuffles and recreates social reality. Even the most

low-keyed poet is a rebel and a revolutionary, who by his very

creativity threatens the prevalent order of reality we are familiar 

with.

In the end of the day, history of human evolution is the history

of creative ideas: every achievement of humanity is an

achievement of the human mind. A society's attitude towards

artistic creativity is therefore an important factor in widening or 

narrowing its spiritual capacities, and enhancing or weakening

its creative imagination and vital powers. That's why a society

that fails in the field of art and literature is a society that has

 become mentally fossilized and harmed its own capacity for self-renewal and rejuvenation.

Poetry is an on going mental revolution that everybody is

entitled to his share in it.

That's what we hope the WPM is going to strive for and

gradually achieve.