Bashō's Road

to the small poem and the quiet voice within

1. Mike Koehler 01.20.10 / 1am

   One of the things I’ve always liked about Li Po is his timelessness. Everything in this poem, could have been written yesterday, if he lived now. He has been my hero, my muse, and my favorite drinking companion. Thanks for unearthing this, surely the earliest rant on record.
2. d. f. tweney 01.21.10 / 1am

   I like this poem, and especially love its title. But I disagree about timelessness: This poem has a strong rhetorical, exhortative voice (& the use of “&”) that make me feel strongly, without looking it up, that it was written some time between 1968 and 1973.
3. Barbara Fitz Vroman 01.21.10 / 6am

   I think Eric wrote it. Most Chinese poets were enlightened, not bitter.
4. Eric Chaet 01.21.10 / 5pm

   It’s one thing to be bitter, another to work against oppression. Many work against oppression by violence—some of us by manifesting intellectual effort.

   Otherwise, aren’t art & literature merely entertainment, like a football game or a popular song about being infatuated—or vanity, showing off?

   If you don’t work against oppression & madness with intellectual effort, oppression & madness will waste you—you probably notice that you’re being wasted—or force you to resort to violence, merely to survive, eventually.

   In Li Po’s time, something like one-third of the Chinese died in the revolution against the T’ang dynasty. Our time is unstable & there is already a lot of violence, you may have noticed. Remember when the threat of great violence was attributed to the threat from the Soviet Union?

   Things have changed—yet the threat of great violence persists. It persists within what we are part of. Whatever threat of great violence from outside of what we’re part of, is actually within what we’re part of.

   Voltaire, the pre-eminent European Enlightenment figure, ended his many letters, which were intellectual weapons, “Down with the Infamy.” A useful tactic, it seems to me. He also ridiculed the pretensions of the powerful, & everyone’s delusions, relentlessly.

   But maybe my critic is referring to Buddhist-type Enlightenment—which the unenlightened, it seems to me, interpret as license to be passive in the face of oppression.

   That may be a misunderstanding on their part, or Gautama Buddha’s, or both—or a rationalization for cowardice. I sympathize. I’m timid by nature. I’m a mammal, too. I’m often afraid of the consequences of speaking out. For instance, I hate to be thought one of the group that includes so many who speak out unwisely, & egotistically—truly unenlightened beings.

   And I’m afraid of being singled out for retribution. And I’m afraid of continually being paid in reflex-action criticism, rather than dollars now & then, if only I’d behave more “sensibly.”

   All that keeps me speaking out, is that I’m even more afraid of silently being wasted by oppression & madness—& consideration for others similarly being wasted, & those to come.

   Oppression can come from those who rule you from above, & from those who would rule you, horizontally—your colleagues, cohorts, neighbors, fellow citizens, those who call you names when, after carefully considering whether to speak out, & how, you dare to speak out—or dismiss you as one of the unenlightened egotists to whom you bear a superficial resemblance.

   It seems to me that, like it or not, the current set of oppressions—& rationalizations & other madness—will lead to more & more violence. You can figure out what it might be useful to say & do before saying & doing anything hardly matters any more, & do it—or not.

   If I were oppressed, & gave up on doing anything about it, I’d certainly be bitter!

   Down with the current set of oppressions & delusions! Down with the Infamy!

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