Clevelander Marcus Bales examines the nature of "intellectual life" and it's opposite, the dialectics of poetry, and the challenges of literary creation in today's arduous economy.

A lot of people in mainstream working-class jobs resent the highly educated -- and understandably, too. Education is evidence of wealth they don't have -- and won't have. They know what a ghetto is, and they're working hard to avoid it. They resent the lack of educational opportunity for themselves, and that educational opportunity is largely a matter of good luck in one's parents -- a powerful combination of resentments. Those resentments are not soothed by the moans of the privileged few about how they are "ghettoized" by the mainstream. The natural question, of course, is if it's so bad to be well-educated, if the life of the mind is so onerous, if the academy is such a ghetto, if poets are so ghettoized, so alienated by the mainstream, why not chuck it all and work at McDonald's, or as a file clerk, or learn auto mechanics, or the like -- why not, in short, get a real job?

To use terms such as "ghettoization" or "academic ghetto" to describe academia in relation to the mainstream working class is to make a claim that the academics are disadvantaged in comparison. There is no reason to use such powerfully connotative language as "ghettoized" except to make the claim that one is disadvantaged. Even though to say "marginalized" is not as powerfully metaphorical, and is to that extent (if you'll forgive me) marginally better, but it's like saying that millionaires are marginalized from the paycheck-to-paycheck life -- which is to say they're not "marginalized" at all. To speak of academics as "marginalized" from the mainstream working class world is as ludicrous as describing a Hispanic single mother of two with a 6th grade education and a job as a motel maid as being "ivory-towered" from the academic world.

Ghettos are non-volitional places. The difference between voluntary and non-volitional segregation is fundamental. Where segregation is imposed it is bad; where it is chosen it may still be bad, but it's silly to blame others for one's own choice. No one says to an intellectually talented child or adult that they must engage in the life of the mind or starve, that they must read Shakespeare, or write poems. The choice to pursue one's intellectual bent and live the life of the mind is a choice, after all.

Much of the claim for the academy as a ghetto within the larger society depends on an assumption that there is something in the larger society, in the non-intellectual life, in what academics call with ironic quotation marks "'the real world'", that is superior to the intellectual life, that there is something good and pure inhering in the non-intellectual life that the intellectual life doesn't have. The academics who embrace the notion that the mainstream has "ghettoized" the academy seem not to see how their claim of victimhood only fuels the notion that academics are the "those who can't do, teach" people. Playing the victim is a dangerous business.

Who are these victims? College-educated, most often with advanced degrees, frequently fluent in several languages, usually pretty well-traveled academics have sought out the life of the mind -- and are paid to pursue the life of the mind working for, with, and among others for whom the life of the mind is an important choice. There's no non-volitional characteristic that shouts to the observant world that a person is to be despised as good for nothing but teaching Shakespeare to freshmen. There is no observable difference that marks out the intellectually-inclined. Academics who claim the academy is "ghettoized" seem to be complaining about their advantages -- and there is little that is less attractive than the privileged whining about the burdens of their privileges.

Within the context of the academy itself, though, where academy money, power, and prestige is meted out by academy folks to academy folks, to say that one discipline or field is ghettoized by the academy may be reasonable enough because it may be true that there are powerful forces within the academy that withhold money and other rewards from some programs, and deploy money and other rewards to other endeavors. That sort of thing may, it seems to me, be reasonably called "ghettoization" within the context of the academy -- where the powerful within that context disadvantage the less powerful within that context -- but it's a very different thing from the notion of poets being "ghettoized" or "marginalized" in the larger society.

But there is no conspiracy against poets by non-intellectuals in our society that has marginalized poetry and poets. Poets and poetry are disregarded by most of the people most of the time for two reasons: first, poetry is a demanding craft, and, second, the choices that poets themselves have made to make poetry less significant and important to most people most of the time.

Poetry is rhetoric, not thought, not emotion. Poetry is how you say it, not what you say. As an illustration of this tenet, let's pretend for a moment that you have had the insight of the century, a profound thought about society, or politics, or money, or medicine, or engineering, or whatever that, after sober reflection and some careful analysis, appears to you to be literally world-changing in its significance and importance. Is it really your first thought "I must write a poem about this!"? No -- of course not -- because that kind of thing is just not the realm of poetry, because such a thing is important for what it is, what it can do, how it can change the world -- not for how it is presented, how it is said.

That poetry is not as esteemed as popular music or television shows or movies or sports is not the result of society or some members of society deciding that poetry is "out" and TV is "in", or anything like that. Poetry is a demanding craft, and few people are poets, and few people read poetry, not because it is out of fashion, but because it is demanding. In order to read a poem you have to know an enormous amount of stuff, or you don't read the poem very well. And the first poems we read we don't read very well -- but for some of us there is something there that we dimly perceive, but perceive enough of that we persevere in trying to perceive it better. Good teachers help. But in the end it is the personal choice of the reader to pursue the difficulties inherent in mastering a rhetoric that drives each of us deeper into poetry appreciation -- and for some, into poetry.

Each of us knows people, smart people, perceptive people, sympathetic and even empathetic people, who think poetry in general, and the poet's or even poetry reader's fascination with it in particular, is a complete waste of time and energy. Why bother with poetry when people are dying in useless wars and from preventable diseases? -- there are dozens of such questions. Those people are solidly in the mainstream, but their lack of regard for poetry does not marginalize or ghettoize poetry. Poetry doesn't address the issues that they think are important, or useful -- so they're indifferent to it. But indifference is not ghettoization, not even in a metaphorical sense.

Poetry is important to the people it's important to -- and there are very few of them in the world. But that doesn't mean poetry is "-ized" by the rest of the world that is occupied with finding enough food or sex or shelter today, or with any of the innumerable other immediacies of life. Poetry is pursued and appreciated by people with the time and leisure to pursue and appreciate it. To complain about the vicissitudes of that pursuit, while people starve and vomit and excrete themselves to death in the most appalling conditions imaginable all over the planet, is to invite comparison with the most opaque of the "let them eat cake" set.

Isn't it just as, if not more, reasonable to say that mainstream society is marginalized from poetry? Poetry is an art and craft that takes time and energy and money and leisure to pursue and appreciate. It is the cold, hard necessities of their lives that marginalizes the majority of people from poetry, not the attitude of the majority that marginalizes poetry. Sure, the majority are indifferent to poetry -- but unless you believe that only what the majority values is valuable, it's silly to say that the indifference of the majority to poetry is a ghettoization or a marginalization of poetry.

And for those who do believe only what the majority values is valuable, but still want a desk job, what are you doing reading or thinking about poetry? Why read or write poems? Get into TV, glossy magazines, advertising, or politics. from Cool Cleveland contributor Marcus Bales marcus@designerglass.com (:divend:)