Writing Problems: Surviving

Jordan, Merton, Pilinszky, Gregg, Rukeyser, Eco, Stern

Life expectancy in the United States is very low, particularly when compared with other advanced countries. It’s between Cuba’s and Albania’s. There have already been 1.07 million Covid deaths, and last year there were 49,000 gun deaths, and 37,461 car crash deaths. Firearms are the number one cause of death for children ages 1-19 (more than cancer, car crashes, malnutrition, congenital illnesses, or anything else by far).

Our health care system is non-existent, and huge disparities in race and class make this country one of the most dangerous in the world. Ye (or Kanye West) has more Instagram followers than there are Jews in the world. It’s not books about drag shows, taco trucks, or “woke” teachers! It’s the economic system, stupid.

Being victimized by the oppression, routine violence, and limitations of living in this country means that no poet is protected or immune from those forces. Therefore, poets have a special job of recognition of our responsibility. We have a responsibility to express not only grief in the form of elegy, but also to express guilt for surviving long enough to be able to make the poems. Why them and not me?

June Jordan, who was expert at showing intersectional surprise, had this to say¹: