The Surface Features of Texts

The first line of di Prima's poem on the war against the imagination says it all: "the war against the imagination is the only war/all wars are subsumed in it." For di Prima, the importance of imagination and ingenuity is not only specific to the arts, she seems to extend the idea of imagination outside of an art-specific realm; or maybe it is better to say she supports disconnecting the idea of imagination and creativity solely to arts, which are marginalized and passive, and apply imagination to our daily lives -- almost a surrealistic subversion kind of approach. Thus, to write in non-standard ways is not only to express yourself but to challenge the contracts, social and political, that have been forged, to assume a fighting position in the culture war, presumably.

Maso also believes that through breaking the rules in literature, specifically, that we might collectively make ourselves heard, or offer up a more accurate, complex, scared, human, vulnerable, passionate piece of ourselves then would otherwise be transmitted through the traditional forms. Maso extends this belief to our being able to offer up new and subversive meanings if we refuse to obligate ourselves to the expectations of the literary orthodoxies.

I think both of them are talking about giving a more accurate account of things through a debunking of the myth of separation between poetry and reality, or reality and dreams/the imagination. By building a bridge between poetry and reality, by making our dreams real through acts of poetics both recorded as symbols both on a page and not. They believe we can transform the inevitable death of ourselves, our dreams, our imagination, by making them reality -- on the page and in our daily lives. I think both of them would agree with the statement "the personal is political." And so do I, and so do I...

WHAT IS MORE SYMBOLIC:

1. Kathy Acker writing, "suicide is a protest of control."
2. A man setting himself to fatal flame to protest the Vietnam war.

AND DOES IT MATTER?