Radical Conservative

Studs Terkel used to describe himself as a radical conservative. Radical, in the sense of ‘root’, and conservative, in the sense of preserving this root. I am certain that the root or radical he wanted to conserve was a radical notion of freedom, and that he saw radical freedom as the core value of America, yes, but also of human existence; a non-negotiable, ingrained value that cannot be granted or removed by any power. The state cannot grant or deny freedom, it can only recognize it. The political, social and cultural history of this country is one of struggle; a struggle to recognize each right of freedom as it becomes visible.

Robert Graves once wrote that a poet should neither follow nor lead. There is no flag for a poet. A poet’s only allegiance is to the muse, not to any nation, creed or ideology.

Kenneth Rexroth lived a poet’s life, dedicated to radical freedom, without flags, without followers or leaders. Kenneth Rexroth’s life was devoted to intense, constant and promiscuous reading, travel, romantic love, good food, good sex and good wine and meditation. The pursuit of money was beneath his dignity. He also famously said of the Beats, ‘An entomologist is not a bug.’ He and Terkel spring from the same world and are of the same generation. Rexroth’s Autobiographical Novel is a genealogy of radical conservatism, radical America. It is peopled with passionate eccentrics, autodidacts, hell raisers, abolitionists, feminists, hermits. He lights out for the one place left with no roads on the map. Like Whitman he is as dedicated to nature as he is to the city. He sees no contradiction there. Wherever there is life, there he is.

Stephen Spender, in his introduction to Under the Volcano, says that Malcom Lowry and and George Orwell share a belief in Anarcho-socialist conservatism. This is easy to parse. Conservative in the sense of a good country pub, of ordinary working people and their rootedness in place and tradition. Anarcho in the sense that all people should be free from constraint to pursue personal happiness, that freedom is a basic condition of humanity, that pleasure is good, that we need no religious or public authority to teach us to be good, that relations between people are adequate to the job. Socialist because wealth, profit, are a social product and should serve socially useful ends at the expense of maximum profit. Socialism recognizes that without a community, no individual exists, and that individual wealth despite appearances is produced collectively, and a portion of it belongs therefore to the collective. These three values held together are like the separation of powers, they serve to check and balance each other.

Freedom is in philosophy and theology by no means a self evident concept, it is problematic, it must be investigated. But from the point of view of the imagination, for the poet, it has no need of justification. The poet isn’t out to prove anything. We are constrained by gravity, by natural selection, by time, but the poet is free to imagine dark matter, propulsive, not attractive gravity; particles that move back in time; eternity.  

I write out of my own tradition. Its roots go deeper than Homer and its branches never end. I am a part of something that existed before me and will exist after me. To write a poem is to participate in the creative act of the universe, the one descending act, the branching mind, the being that becomes. To be constrained by the tao is to be free.