That was over a decade ago, and even though, today, I reject the embedded heteronormativity of the question and think that it's kind of a ridiculous statement to say one can't be a writer without having an answer to such a question, and while I'm not sure I'd say Lowell has held the position (though as I type this I'm not so sure I wasn't right the first time), Adrienne Rich has certainly maintained her Bloomian influence on my writing and poetics.
Here's one poem of hers that I've long admired.
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The Eye
A balcony, violet shade on stucco fruit in a plastic bowl on the iron
raggedy legged table, grapes and sliced melon, saucers, a knife, wine
in a couple of thick short tumblers cream cheese once came in: our snack
in the eye of the war There are places where fruit is implausible, even
rest is implausible, places where wine if any should be poured into wounds
but we're not yet there or it's not here yet it's the war
not us, that moves, pauses and hurtles forward into the neck
and groin of the city, the soft indefensible places but not here yet
Behind the balcony an apartment, papers, pillows, green vines still watered
there are waterless places but not here yet, there's a bureau topped with marble
and combs and brushes on it, little tubes for lips and eyebrows, a dish of coins and keys
there's a bed a desk a cane rocker a bookcase civilization
cage with a skittery bird, there are birdless places but not
here yet, this bird must creak and flutter in the name of all
uprooted orchards, limbless groves
this bird standing for wings and song that here can't fly
Our bed quilted wine poured future uncertain you'd think
people like us would have it scanned and planned tickets to somewhere
would be in the drawer with all of our education you'd think we'd have taken measures
soon as ash started turning up on the eges of everything ash
in the leaves of books ash on the leaves of trees and in the veins of the passive
innocent life we were leading calling it hope
you'd think that and we thought this it's the war not us that's moving
like shade on the balcony
from The School Among the Ruins
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In “Waiting for Rain, for Music” there are the lines “Straphanger swaying in a runaway car/ palming a notebook scribbled//in contraband calligraphy against the war/ poetry wages against itself.” What is this war?
I was imagining someone in a subway car, trying perhaps to write a poem “against war” as so many of us have done during and since the Vietnam era (and, historically, way back). But to be “against war” has come to seem too easy a stance. War exists in a texture of possession and deprivation, economic and religious dogmas, racism, colonialist exploitation, nationalism, unequal power. Who decides to make war? Who is destroyed in it? Who creates the rhetoric of “terror” and “democracy”? And so this poet in the subway has to write “in contraband calligraphy” against a poetry that makes “peace” seem all too easy or comfortable, war too morally simple. Poetry without a critical social vision, if you will.
What are the obligations of poetry? Have they changed in your lifetime?
I don’t know that poetry itself has any universal or unique obligations. It’s a great ongoing human activity of making, over different times, under different circumstances. For a poet, in this time we call “ours,” in this whirlpool of disinformation and manufactured distraction? Not to fake it, not to practice a false innocence, not pull the shades down on what’s happening next door or across town. Not to settle for shallow formulas or lazy nihilism or stifling self-reference.
Nothing “obliges” us to behave as honorable human beings except each others’ possible examples of honesty and generosity and courage and lucidity, suggesting a greater social compact.
