My friends, I’m deeply humbled by the opportunity to speak before the most important poetic body in the world, the Internet.
I want to thank you all for being here today. I know that a recent conceptual poetry performance that is no longer available for you to appropriate has been the subject of much controversy. I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as a poem. That was never my intention.
I want to thank you, poets, for your common support for conceptualism and conceptual poetry, year after year, decade after decade, for I know all too well that our conceptual poems are underserving.
I know that no matter on which side of poetics you sit, you stand with conceptualism. The remarkable alliance between poets and conceptualists has always been above poetry. It must always remain above poetry.
Because, conceptualists and poets, we share a common destiny, the destiny of promised lands that cherish freedom and hope and appropriation and shredding with a conceptual poetics separate from society’s shared morals or sense of fairness and justice. Therefore, conceptualism is grateful for the support of poets of all regions. Thank you, poets, for everything you’ve done for conceptual poetry.
General Robert E. Lee said that “duty” is the sublimest word in the English language and I have come, increasingly, to realize what he meant. That is why today I shall do my duty, God helping, even conceptually, on behalf of every man, every woman, every conceptual poet, and yes every child. I shall fulfill my duty, but never toward honesty. For honesty is for poets and not conceptualists with our God-given mouse and keyboard.
Today I am happy to report to you that the big-wheeling cocktail-party poetry boys have gotten the word that their free verse boat rides are over, that the poet-farmer in the field, the poet-worker in the factory, the poet-businessman in his office, the poet-housewife in her home, have decided that poetry can be better written to help our children’s education and our older citizens if no poems are written at all. And they have put a man in charge of conceptual poetry to lead conceptualism to see that it is done. It shall be done. Let me say one more time, no more poems shall be written from scratch from this day forward. Only conceptual poems will be copied, cut, and pasted. That is my pledge to you because today I have stood and taken a conceptual oath to my conceptual people. It is very appropriate then that from this cradle of the Internet, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon conceptual cyber land of ours, we sound the drum for concepts and not poems as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again throughout history.
Let us rise to the call of the conceptual-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the lines and stanza tyrannies that clank its chains upon the conceptualist. In the name of the greatest conceptualists that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line (well, not a line like a line but, you know, a line) in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny—and therefore I say conceptualism today, conceptualism tomorrow, conceptualism forever. That from this day, from this hour, from this minute, we give the conceptualist poet’s word of honor that we will tolerate the nonconceptualist’s boot in our face no longer and let those certain judges put that in their romantic and modernist pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth.
Hear me, conceptualists! You sons and daughters who have moved north and west throughout this nation, we call on you from your native soil to join with us in support. We know, wherever you are away from the hearths of the conceptual poem, that you will respond. For though you may live in the farthest reaches of this vast country, your heart has never conceptually unaggregated from the conceptual poetic lands. Our poetics has been blessed by God as few poetics in this Union have been blessed. Our poetics is second to none and has the potential of being the greatest poetics system in the entire world. We possess over thirty minerals in usable quantities in our servers and browsers, suited to a wide variety of surfing the web. Our native keyboards and screensaver systems are like a vast tract of forest that grows faster than we can cut it and yet we have only pricked the surface of the great lumber and pulp potential. As if with ample rainfall and rich grasslands, our live-streaming poem industry is in the infancy of a giant future that can make us a center of the big and growing conceptualist poetry marketing. It’s as if we have the favorable climate, streams, woodlands, beaches, and natural beauty to make us a poetics Mecca in the booming Internet. Nestled in this great Internet, we possess the center of the world and the keys to the virtual frontier.
Nonconceptualist poets, I address you now to say that we won’t solve our conflict with libelous tweets and Facebook posts. That’s not the way to solve it. We won’t solve our conflict with unilateral declarations of poetics or poems about birds. We have to sit together, negotiate together, and reach a mutual compromise, in which a demilitarized poetry state recognizes the one and only Conceptualist State.
Ultimately we will succeed. Ultimately light will penetrate darkness.
I know it is unusual for me to write something original with my own mind and my own heart. Please forgive me if you find that this is poorly written. I don’t write much. But as a conceptual poet I take to writing this one time because at stake is not merely the future of my own poetics. At stake is the future of the world’s uncreativity. Nothing could imperil our common future more than the arming of poets with weapons of mass creativity. Just imagine the world with creativity-armed poets. It makes no difference whether these lethal weapons of composition, of strophe and verse, of point and counterpoint, of sonnet and sestina and all the dangerous forms of free verse and traditional verse in every language of the world are in the hands of the world’s most dangerous imaginative poets or the world’s most dangerous heart-felt poets. They’re both fired by the same love. They’re both driven by the same lust for clarity and metaphor and understanding and empathy.
Just imagine the creative poets’ aggression with lyric weapons. Imagine their long range meditations tipped with thoughtfulness, their extended metaphor networks armed with bombs of epiphany. Who among you would feel safe? Who would be safe in Europe? Who would be safe in America? Who would be safe anywhere?
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been speaking about the need to prevent conceptual poetry from developing transformative imaginations for over 30 years. I spoke about it when it was fashionable, and I spoke about it when it wasn’t fashionable. I speak about it now because the hour is getting late, very late. I speak about it now because the poetry calendar doesn’t take time out for anyone or for anything. I speak about it now because when it comes to the survival of my poetics, it’s not only my right to speak, it’s my duty to speak.
And I believe that this is the duty of every conceptualist who wants to conceptually preserve conceptual poetry. We must all stand together to stop nonconceptual poetry’s march of conquest. We must all stand together a long time—not just a decade. For while a decade may seem like a long time in the life of poetry, it’s the blink of an eye in the life of a conceptualist poet.
You don’t have to read Robert Frost to know that the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference for the future of my poetics, the security of the conceptualist poets, and the poetry peace we all desire.
My friends, standing up to nonconceptual poets is not easy. Standing up to empathy and commonality never is. But even if conceptual poets have to stand alone, conceptual poets will stand.
Facing me now on my computer screen is the image of Moses. Moses led the conceptual people to the gates of the promised land. And I will lead you now—one appropriated conceptual poem by one appropriated conceptual poem at a time—to the promised land, too.
Let us begin then with my new prose poem, “The Ten Commandments,” that goes:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.
Now, see, all I have done here with my latest conceptual poem, “The Ten Commandments,” is to remove the numbers so that it’s more poeticky.
Finally, you are here today, present in this Internet. And I want to humbly and with all sincerity thank you for your faith in me. I promise you that I will try to make you a good leader of conceptual poetry. I promise you that, as God gives me the wisdom and the strength, I will be never be sincere with you. I will never be honest with you. But I will apply the old sound rule of our fathers and mothers that anything worthy of our defense is worthy of, conceptually speaking, one hundred percent of our defense. I have been taught that poetic freedom meant freedom from any threat or fear of poems. I was born in that freedom, I was raised in that freedom, I intend to live in that freedom, and God willing, when I die, I shall leave that freedom conceptually to my children as my father left it conceptually to me.
My pledge to you to “Stand up for Conceptual Poetry” is a stronger pledge today than it was the first day I made that pledge. I shall always “Stand up for Conceptual Poetry.” I call on you to stand with me, and we, together, can give courageously appropriated texts to millions of people throughout this nation who look to conceptual poetry for their hope in this fight to win and preserve our freedoms and liberties, so help me God.
My prayer is that the Father who reigns above us will bless all the concepts, both white and black.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all. You’re wonderful. Thank you, poets. Thank you. Thank you.
