Asides

Poems on the Credit Crunch

To celebrate National Poetry Day, BBC News website readers have been sending in their poems on the credit crunch.

via BBC

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1. What does poetry have to do with the serious financial havoc the world has been enduring? Does anyone have time to consider a confection of art — spun from the imagination — while we face the chilling reality of lost homes, tattered businesses, or a compromised future? "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." We seem to be able to do so little against the loss and fear and panic. Yet poetry’s realm is precisely here — in the emotional center, where desire and terror and hope and dread converge without easy answers. Continue Reading | via Poets.org

2. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems.

   From a statement read at an event marking the release of Best American Poetry 2008, held last night at The New School, in New York City. David Lehman is the series editor of Best American Poetry, and Robert Polito is the director of the writing program at The New School. Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry. Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance. Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably. As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems. The risks poets have taken have been too great; the aesthetic negligence has been profound. The age of decadence must come to an end with the imposition of oversight and regulation on poetry composition and publishing practices. We are convinced that once we have removed these troubled and distressed poems from circulation, our cultural sector will stabilize and readers will regain confidence in American literature. We estimate that for the buyout to be successful, we will need to remove from circulation all poems written after 1904. This will be a fresh start, a new dawn of a new day. Without these illiquid poems threatening to overwhelm readers, we will be able to create a literary culture with a solid aesthetic foundation. I’m Charles Bernstein, and I approved this message. via Harper's Magazine
3. "The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals - or 'unique visitors' in web jargon - have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves." via The Telegraph (UK)
4. Only a small fraction of funding by investment banks, mortgage companies, brokerages, equity funds, hedge funds, commodities futures speculators, etc., comes from actual investor capital. The rest—up to ninety-seven percent, in the case of commodities futures contracts—is credit self-created by the banks.

   Where did the banks get this credit? The answer is that they simply cranked it out through their fractional reserve privileges derived from their government charters. In fact the only way money comes into existence in this day and age is through a loan from a bank which must be repaid with interest. The loan is secured by the borrower’s collateral or promise to pay. But the cumulative interest load on the economy grows exponentially. As a part of the federal budget, for instance, interest on the national debt is around $500 billion a year and growing.

   via Global Research: Impacts of the Financial Crisis: The U.S. Is Becoming an Impoverished Nation
5. EDINBURGH, Scotland, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- The works of Robert Burns are being Twittered as part of the celebration of the Scottish poet's 250th birthday. Users can pick up short excerpts from Burns' works, along with factoids about the Ayrshire poet, The Scotsman reported. The National Trust for Scotland is behind the project. "We like to find new ways of spreading the works of our national icons," said the trust's chairwoman, Shonaig Macpherson. "Twitter is an inexpensive and fun way to do that." Burns was born on a farm in Alloway, outside Ayr, Jan. 25, 1759. The trust is also involved in a renovation of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Appropriately, one of Burns' most famous poems was "To A Mouse," an ode to a rodent disturbed by his plow that begins "Wee slickit cowerin' timorous beastie." via UPI
   

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