Remembering Poet Doug Draime

I wanted to take a moment to remember poet Doug Draime, as he passed away last week. I found out through John Bennett's Shard email list, after Doug's wife alerted him. Doug had sent me a dozen or so poems over the last couple of years, of which I posted a few on my other website, Dear Dirty America.

credit: Outlaw Poetry

Doug's poetry was often considered hard-hitting stuff about the streets, poverty, income disparity in America, and he often tackled political and social problems with a hatred for hypocrisy and elitism.

Draime's ebook, Speed of Light can be found online for free. It's worth checking out.

Here's one of his poems that he sent me. It's a good beginning to Draime's work.

Question Everything

Question this poem

and the publication

    it is appearing in.

      Question every moment

inside your ever changing cage. Now, is the

         release of your age old

                         servitude. Question the

ghosts of shadows, that your past and

                 future parade before you like

monkeys in a barrel. Question the abstract

            projector of your mind.

Question every thought

of mind: of war and

                 conflict. Question greed and all political 

  thinking. Question every hint of fear

             and betrayal. Question all

                                                      things of form

and weight. Question intensely every shade and

  shape of ego. Question the Commander

                   & Chief of the ego, Death. Question it relentlessly

until you know the truth.

                   Now, is the release of your age old servitude. Question

           every stinking lie since the Big Bang.

'Poetry Has Replaced Novels': Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem says in the Sunday Book Review:

Poetry has replaced novels. If you poured water on a great poem, you would get a novel.

I once heard novelist Salar Abdoh share with us a very similar sentiment when he came to read to our graduate students. He said he mostly read poetry those days, and that he could read poetry for the rest of his life and be happy with it. He said it with such earnestness I thought I too might buy up a few strong books of poems and hit them hard.

Each poem, if done well, unfolds into novel length insights for the patient, sincere mind. The novelist struggles to drag the reader through set ups and contrived dramas and dialogues, to rush us through what needs to be said, but isn't always interesting, only to slow us down to take in a surprise, a shock, or some sort of payoff.

Yet, with poetry, it's all there, line by line, and the mind is not constrained by what channels it chooses to flow into, other than by what's on the page. There is pleasure in both artistic set ups.

But Gloria Steinem put it so well that I suppose her line on poetry will always stick with me.

If you're a novelist, do you give the power of poetry its due in your craft?