OK. Then why not forget about politics and devote more time to writing?
Maybe it’s because I was raised Catholic, with a hypertrophic sense of Responsibility (i.e., Guilt). Maybe it’s because I was raised in a “political” family. Maybe it’s because I really have done some political organizing (after such knowledge, what forgiveness?). Maybe it’s feeling more pro-social the older I get. But I can never overcome the nagging feeling that I’m wasting my time — or at least that I would do well to spend less time writing, more time organizing (for instance, in militating for increased climate change mitigation and resilience). There are those who will try to convince me that writing “makes a difference.” Well, yeah. So does flower arranging. But what kind of difference? This question is particularly stark in the genre I generally work in, poetry. “Poetry makes nothing happen,” etc. It does make something happen, but not the same things political organizing does. Perhaps it’s different for widely-read novelists, with the glamor of narrative to bring it all home to people (for those who want to bring it home and not just offer escapism). Poetry might sustain the soul, but it doesn’t shelter, feed, bathe, or clothe people, and it takes time and energy away from doing those things — which seem really, really urgent, right about now. And those are the kind of things that successful political movements of the past have provided. But maybe the drip drip drip of articles, news stories, political pronouncements, water-cooler conversations, climate fiction, even blogs, really is creating an epochal shift in public opinion. We shall see. Hopefully it’s happening faster than a melting iceberg. Then there’s the “I’m a writer, not an organizer” topos. This one just doesn’t work for me (see paragraph #1, above), in part because I have managed, at various times, to do both at the same time, at least to some extent (which is hard). But I also can’t un-remember what Michael Jordan said, of the people who make Air Jordans in sweatshops in Asia: “They do their job, I do mine.” Division of labor, at its finest. Everyone does their job; it’s just that some don’t make enough to live on and others earn 100’s of 1000’s of dollars every day. “I stick to what I know. It’s a shame about the displaced people in Africa and all, but . . . well, the political organizers and aid workers do their job, the writers do theirs.” The former make half as much money as the latter and put their bodies in harm’s way, but other than that, it’s a symmetrical comparison. And having one’s job, and keeping all one’s attention on that job, is itself a form of comfort. It is hard to do two jobs at once: just ask the people trying to hold down three (or who don’t have one). Just ask people who do full time jobs and community activism (all 5 of them). Plus which, “The big shots don’t pay you $5 a day to think about anything but your $5 a day,” as the tractor driver at the beginning of The Grapes of Wrath puts it (the one who’s bulldozing the farm family’s house). To be continued, Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo . . .
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |