Shamanism
by Derick Varn

During a conversation over cheap coffee, a slightly older poetry professor/mentor of mine was discussing art with me. The weather was unseasonably cool for central Georgia, so I layered my clothing in kind. Enough that he could not see me choke on an apple fritter when he said: “Poetry is the last pure art. Because of its lack of popular appeal, poets have been able to remain the shamans and political radicals of our culture.”

My immediate mental response was: “that’s true, but if only poets read us, what’s the point?” After that I gulped down the apple fritter and said: “there’s a fine balance between being a pure art and a closet art.”

Closet arts tend to be stagnant. Although intra-field competition and elitism does occasionally breed some incredibly innovating work–such as the work of Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot-- it also breeds lazy poetry that gets fatter on the shitty tasting crumbs of mediocrity. Some narcissistic poets have grown so fat on their relative solitude that they believe that the individual poet is the only one who needs to comprehend their own poetry. The more “avant-garde” of Internet literature often fall prey to this absurd idea. The very purpose of writing –and indeed the purpose of words in and of themselves– is to communicate actions and ideas. Communication involves at least two people.

It is true that for whatever reason most of the public does not truly read or relate to poetry. The poetry community has largely become so narcissistic, it often ignores that shamans need non-shamans to be effective and contribute to their culture.

Although art should always comes before audience, poets need to find an audience outside of other members of the literary community. As my mentor said implied, poets should be the shamans and radicals of our culture, but we have to be an active part of our culture before we can do that.

Derick Varn is a poet and longstanding contributor to Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.