Poetry is Dangerous: An Essay by Kazim Ali

A reading of the essay "Poetry is Dangerous" by Kazim Ali from ORANGE ALERT: ESSAYS ON POETRY, ART AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF SILENCE (University of Michigan 2010).

About ORANGE ALERT:
A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.

Kazim Ali shines a light on the intersections between cultures in these essays on the craft of poetry, offering a hand to poets either geographically or metaphorically outside the mainstream of Western culture.

In Orange Alert, Ali discusses poets including Agha Shahid Ali, Jane Cooper, Bhanu Kapil, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, and Samuel Beckett. Additionally, he looks at intersections between art forms, showing how areas of confluence enrich the literary arts. He considers painters Agnes Martin and Piet Mondrian, musicians Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono, and philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard. In his interrogations of the way poetry means, Ali links the poetic endeavor to such diverse texts as Moby-Dick, Battlestar Galactica, and Marilyn Buck's prison journals.

Ali unpacks the mysteries of contemporary poetry by discussing it in relation to other art forms and to contemporary television; film; and electronic media, including the Internet, YouTube, and Facebook.

Whether he is discussing the way cell phones have altered the concept of physical intimacy and introduced new verb forms, or talking about the way Emily Dickinson's mysteries are more clearly revealed in French translation, Ali is at once clear and complex, rigorous and charming, accessible and demanding.

Check out www.kazimali.com for more information.

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• Orange
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• Essay
• Poem
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• Michigan
• Kazim
• Ali

[PoetryETrain]

Well done, this has been added to our playlists here and on facebook...

[Lindasac]

Well done Kazim. 

[nadagordon]

Wow. What a story, Kazim. Thank you for this. Stay dangerous, my friend.