J'S THEATER: Human Micropoem 2 @ OccupyChicago

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Human Micropoem 2 @ OccupyChicago

The Human Micropoets met up again, this past Friday, on Veterans Day, for another round of HUMAN MICROPOEM public poetry recitation, in support of the Occupy Chicago and Occupy Together movements. This time the organizers aimed to convene performers during rush hour, in part to reach the large number of workers finishing their day near and those commuting past the base site. The crowd was, unsurprisingly, larger, and as before, passersby did stop and listen, watch, and sometimes participate in the "mic checking" collaborative poetry recitations. I read/recited Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays," which sounds quite different in call-and-response, choral fashion. "What did I know, what did I know / of love's austere and lonely offices?" What did we know, what did we know, of the bravery and resolve of hundreds of thousands of Americans and people all over the globe, to stand up to the economic, political and social thuggery to which we've been subjected for decades?

Afterwards, a number of the participants marched with the Occupy Chicagoans on a silent vigil to the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Site, on Wacker Drive, to show respect for and pay tribute to all US veterans being honored on Friday. The walk, with candles, to the site, was moving, and afterwards I chatted a bit with poet Dan Godston, before heading off to catch up with a friend who was visiting town. I look forward to more such gatherings, and to poetry's and the arts' active interconnection with these incredibly important and vital nodes of resistance to the dominant ideology of today, which has caused and continues to wreak so much destruction in this country and across the globe.