Art as Experience

If John Dewey were still alive, where would he place this world that we live in? Would he find this time we live in to be one of the two non-esthetic world possibilities? Here we are in a time of inability to move towards resolution. We have too many openings, too many fluxuations, too much violence. “In one wholly perturbed, conditions could not even be struggled with” (Dewey, 17).

Upon waking every morning my mind races to understand what I am late for and what state the world might be in. But, in many a conversation as of late, it seems that all of us are loosing a type of hope in which we can imagine the state of things improving. We might be loosing the ability to struggle.

In the days before the November election I stood in sync with my fellow poets both at the Political Poetry Forum at Temple University and on the streets handing out Move On cards in my neighborhood. We anticipated great change and there was such intense energy towards that change. I wore a smile and a great pin of peace and hope to the polls on November 2nd. Now, how do we resolve to continue the struggle?

Child in the Great Wood - M. Rukeyser

Even this war is not unlike the dream,
But in the dream-war there were armies,
Armies and armor and death's etiquette,
Here there are no troops and no protection,
Only this wrestling of the heart
And a demon-song that goes
For sensual friction
Is largely fiction
And partly fact
And so is tact
And so is love,
And so is love.